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Mississippi Issues

338 190 Derrick Jones

Gerrymandering Makes Many Officials Untouchable

2016/04/08 – Last month, State Rep. Karl Oliver offered a galling example of how protected Mississippi legislators are and how broken state-level democracy remains to this day.

Gulfport resident Becky Guidry sent emails to House members in March urging them to reject a new corporate-friendly bill that would cut more than $570 million in state revenue because the state already was in a $65 million budget shortfall – due, in part, to even more recent tax cuts.

Oliver, a Republican, responded to Guidry in an email, pointing out that she has not always lived in Mississippi and should go back to where she came from.

“I see you are not a native to the great state of Mississippi nor do you and I have similar political views,” wrote Oliver, who owns a funeral home in Winona, MS.  “… I appreciate you going to the trouble to share yours with me, but quite frankly, and with all due respect, I could care less.  I would, however, recommend that there are a rather large number of like-minded citizens in Illinois that would love to see you return.”

Olivers’ cohorts in the House, rather than chide or censure him for his insensitivity, merely snickered.  Twitter account #FedUpWith50th reported that Rep. Jeff Smith, another Republican, “wanted to congratulate and recognize the junior gentleman from Winona on making national headlines, and his notoriety.  We’re so proud of him.”

However self-incriminating state politicians like Oliver act, many are shielded from consequences by undemocratic politics.

“Legislators in this state have a long history of ignoring voters, whether it’s black voters who were utterly removed from the democratic process by disfranchisement, despite comprising a large percentage of the state, or poor voters who can’t afford to buy their representative’s ear,” said MSNAACP President Derrick Johnson.

The MSNAACP has already discussed how unethical gerrymandering by both Republican leaders and black Democrats has successfully insulated many incumbents from replacement in a fair election.

Oliver’s District 46, for example, was similarly carved up by legislators in 2012 to exclude black residents living in the city of Greenwood, who typically vote Democratic.  The top map below outlines Oliver’s district in blue, while the dot representation offered by the map beneath it reveals just how much of that area is comprised of white voters.

 

gerrymandering_chart

Answer: all of it.

 

Fighting the injustice of gerrymandering is difficult because the gerrymandered districts also draw support from the opposite side of the political aisle, from Democratic members of redistricting committees.  It turns out that many black Democrats are also insulated from political upset because of the higher percentage of black voters the gerrymandered districts give them and, as a result, offer little complaint when the maps are submitted for approval.  Rep. Willie Perkins, Sr., for example, represents District 32, which contains the south Greenwood black population cast off from Oliver’s district.  The arrangement gives Perkins a district that is 80.58 percent black and virtually assures his re-election.

The state House has 42 majority-black districts out of a total of 122, but a large percentage of those black districts are more than 65 percent black.  Some, like District 69, are as high as 86 percent black, representing clear evidence of voter “packing,” which reduces black political influence in surrounding districts.

Legislators are protected by more than just friendly election maps created by their buddies in the legislature, however.  Many of the lawmakers at the state Capitol are financially dependent upon out-of-state lobbyists to fund their campaigns, rather than individual Mississippi voters.

Oliver, for example, received $750 from oil and gas lobbyists Koch Industries and $500 from payday loan company Tower Loan in 2014.  In 2015 he received $1,000 from Empower PAC, among many other business-related contributors.

Source: MS NAACP

326 245 Derrick Jones

School Consolidation: PR Without Solutions

2016/04/08 – Legislators are using self-inflicted revenue shortfalls to push for major consolidation of state schools, despite consolidation’s limited national success.

House Education Committee members voted to consolidate the municipal district of Winona into its neighboring Carroll County and Montgomery County districts last month.  While legislators have since narrowed that consolidation effort down to Montgomery County Schools and the Winona District, committee chairman Rep. John Moore, R-Brandon, said he and his cohorts are already hammering away at larger consolidation efforts in upcoming years.

“I think you’re not going to see 82 (school districts) but something around 50 or less school districts,” Moore told the Jackson Free Press. “All of these consolidations are being done (now) for low performance or an inability to operate financially.”

Mississippi Association of Educators Director Frank Yates pointed out that Moore failed to detail the small amount of savings gathered from the consolidation venture.

“When it came to the financial savings, all they had to offer were generalities,” Yates said.  “All they can say is ‘you save money on administration cuts,’ but it remains to be seen how much savings that really is.  Let’s say you put Winona and Kilmichael (schools) together.  Well, you might save what you’re paying out for one superintendent’s salary and one or two secretaries.  But the schools are still going to be there and they’re going to be open, so some form of oversight is still going to be necessary.  So are you going to add an assistant superintendent?  Well, he’ll make $20,000 less than the superintendent, so when you boil it down, you can’t say you’re going to save a ton of money.”

Yates added that Moore also neglected to point out in his debate that many of the districts are failing financially due to K-12 opponents in the legislature who have voted to underfund state schools by more than $1.3 billion over the last two decades in order to finance multiple corporate tax giveaways.  The state cut general funding per student for K-12 schools by 9 percent and funding per student for higher education by 23 percent since 2008.  Most notable is the legislative handout of $1.3 billion to the state’s Nissan plant in Canton — the estimated total deficit those same politicians imposed on state schools.

In addition to obvious corporate giveaways, Mississippi legislators also gave corporations more than $300 million in tax breaks and tax credits during the last four years.  Last year legislators altered tax calculations for businesses, saving them about $100 million by providing sales tax breaks for developers to build suburban strip malls and sales tax holidays for items such as hunting equipment.  Legislators also handed out a reduction in the tax on a business’s inventory, robbing the state general fund of $126 million.

More tax cuts appeared during this year’s legislative session and, though there was already a $65 million revenue shortfall, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves offered an additional $577 million tax cut proposal.  His critics compare that to “fixing” stratospheric credit card debt by quitting your second job.

While legislators struggle to finance tax cuts for their corporate friends by cutting services and reducing schools, public education advocates are arguing that consolidation efforts in other states are having a negative impact on impoverished and minority students.

newsletter_chart

Source:  http://www.wpaag.org/Rural%20Trust%20-%20ACT%20and%20School%20Size.htm

The Rural School Community Trust (RSCT) of Arkansas discovered that while students in more affluent districts tend to do better in larger districts, students in poorer communities produce better test scores while attending smaller districts.

“The achievement gap between students from the wealthiest and the poorest communities is much greater among those who attend large districts (ACT score 21.0 for the wealthy, 17.7 for the poor) than among those who attend small districts (20.3 for the wealthy, 18.4 for the poor),” RSCT reported.

The study also revealed that poor students in smaller districts tended to deliver more test scores, in general.

“…[T]he small districts are testing more kids than the large (districts), especially at the poorest income level.  At each income level, the student participation rate on the ACT test was either as high or higher in small districts as in large districts,” stated RSCT.  “For small districts the participation rate was either 9 or 10 percent for communities at every income level.  Small districts with above-average poverty had the highest rate of participation at 10 percent.  By contrast, the participation rate in large districts fell as the level of poverty increased.  In the poorest communities, large districts got only 6 percent of their students into the test room.”

A Penn State College of Education study concluded that the benefits of consolidating rural schools were limited.

“An extensive account of West Virginia students and their families depicts the experience as inflicting considerable harm,” the study reported.  “After the school consolidation (closures), students attended larger schools where they received less individual attention, endured longer bus rides to and from school (and hence longer days), and had fewer opportunities to participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities (a result of both increased competition for limited spots and transportation issues).”

The university added that students’ families experienced fewer opportunities to participate in formal school governance roles through associations like the Parent Teacher Association and other methods.  It noted that increased travel times “proved a barrier to volunteering, visiting classrooms, and taking part in parent-teacher conferences.”

Critics express considerable concern at the possibly of consolidation leading to school congestion.  Author Kathleen Cotton observed that stuffing students into bigger schools further alienated students who are already struggling with their studies.

“We know that the states with the largest schools and school districts have the worst achievement, affective, and social outcomes.  We also know that the students who stand to benefit most from small schools are economically disadvantaged and minority students,” Cotton wrote, adding that the nation may be acting against the interest of minorities by funneling high proportions of minority youngsters into large schools within very large school districts.

The National Education Policy Center made the same argument in an extensive 2011 report, explaining that “impoverished places, in particular, often benefit from smaller schools and districts, with more teacher interaction, and can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.”

Like Yates, the report dismissed many state-level consolidation proposals as merely serving “a public relations purpose in times of fiscal crisis, rather than substantive fiscal or educational purposes.”

360 360 Derrick Jones

State Withholds Childcare Subsidies for Minority Mothers, Report Says

2016/04/08 – Carley Dear has a four-year-old son, Tailon, who is lucky enough to attend North Jackson’s Richard Brandon Head Start Center every weekday morning.  Soon after the sun peeps over the horizon, his mom drops him off and at the center Tailon eats a good breakfast, tackles his study skills, and learns to get along with other small humans with equally squeaky voices.

The young mother is still a high school student, however, who is finishing her senior year at Murrah High School.  After graduating she plans to attend USM and pursue a media degree and a career as a reporter.

The Head Start Center in Jackson, like Head Start centers throughout Mississippi, hosts children at a fraction of the cost of traditional day care.  This leaves a monumental impact upon the life of Dear and many young women like her who are trying to struggle over the 20-year speed bump that teen pregnancy often produces.

“Before my son started coming here, I was having to pay $130 every two weeks for daycare,” Dear said.

A $260 monthly childcare bill would decimate most young mothers, especially since many traditional teen jobs pay only about $500 or $600 a month — if the boss even gives them a full 40-hour work week.  Owning a car to get you to work might be out of the question under those circumstances.  Rent, most likely, would also be impossible without a long collection of roommates — and many roommates don’t care for kids.

“With Richard Brandon Head Start, Tailon can go to school in the morning, and I can go to school, too.  It really helps,” Dear said.  “Without affordable daycare I wouldn’t be able to afford … well, I couldn’t afford much, I guess.  I’d have to be home and missing out on school.”

As essential as affordable childcare services are, Dear and her son are actually among the very few eligible Mississippians who manage to receive it.  The vast majority of state residents who qualify for some form of government-subsidized childcare will never get it, thanks to uncommitted legislators and their insensitive policies.

Mississippi is so oblivious to the value of childcare aid that the state earned the notorious “honor” of recently being recognized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) for its insensitivity.  The organization issued a report earlier this year on the harmful impacts of the state’s apparent indifference to low-income working families of color.

In 2015, USCCR’s Mississippi State Advisory Committee voted to investigate discrimination claims against recipients and providers of childcare services based on race or color by the federal low-income childcare subsidy program in Mississippi.  What they found was surprisingly bad, especially since any poverty-reducing program should be welcomed in Mississippi, which has a childhood poverty rate of 29 percent.  The situation is even worse for African-American children, like Tailon Dear, with almost half of black Mississippi youth (47 percent) living at or below the poverty level in 2014.

“The Mississippi State Advisory Committee Memorandum found that far too many eligible children are not serviced by the subsidy program and that the money that should support this eligible population of children is redirected elsewhere,” the Commission stated.  “… Instead of finding appropriate ways for working families to have full access to this transformative program, it appears that ill-explained barriers prevent childcare providers and parents from access.”

These barriers are terribly effective.  While 124,426 children in Mississippi under the age of six were eligible for Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) funding in 2013, only about 18,300 (14.7 percent) actually received assistance each month.

The problem lies in the state’s management of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants, which ultimately feed into the CCDF.  In 1996, then President Bill Clinton signed a rule to alter a pre-existing national childcare grant program that reduced it from a federally managed disbursement system helping low-income parents pay for childcare to a block grant program managed by individual states.  Almost immediately, some states proved more apathetic to child poverty than others.

The federal government mandates only three stipulations for state officials to meet:  (1) benefi­ciaries must earn no more than 85 percent of the state’s median income of $2,917 per month, (2) parents must be able to choose their childcare providers, and (3) providers must charge beneficiaries the same amount they charge other patrons.  These underdeveloped federal requirements leave plenty of room for states to monkey with the program and erect countless obstructions to its operations.

And monkey, they have.  On top of the list of documents and requirements the state of Mississippi requires to prove eligibility (including a mandatory number of hours of weekly work and a poverty-level income cap), the state also requires single parents to verify either the existence of child support from an absent parent or that the parent is taking advantage of MDHS’ Child Support Services to recoup that child support.

With the help of every barrier the state could legally erect, the number of children receiving child care assistance through Child Care and Development Block Grants between 2006 and 2013 declined by 53 percent — a decline larger than all but four states, the report claims.

“Legislators in this state have never acted as if affordable childcare can make a difference,” said Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative Executive Director Carol Burnett, who advocates heavily for the state to open the doors to more childcare funding.

Burnett explained that affordable childcare for low-income mothers and their children could mean the difference between a productive future and a life of poverty, as mothers like Dear no longer have to weigh the pros and cons of paying for childcare vs. abandoning the prospect of work or education entirely in order to take care of their children.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services operates the program and Gov. Phil Bryant holds sway over MDHS.  Burnett said the governor, therefore, ultimately has the power to bring relief to minority women who are disproportionately affected by poverty in the state.  But so far, Burnett said, Bryant’s voice is silent and cold.

Source: MS NAACP

360 360 Derrick Jones

Press Release: MS NAACP Responds to Gov. Bryant’s Signing of the “Religious Freedom Act”

2016/04/06 – Once again, Governor Phil Bryant has proven that his legacy will be one built on hate and the discrimination of others.

The innocuous sounding HB 1523 Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, also known as the “Religious Freedom Act” has nothing to do with freedom or conscience and everything to do with discrimination. A bill that aimed to legalize hatred was signed into law today by Governor Bryant.

And it is hatred. It is discrimination.

Governor Bryant and legislators argued that this law only provides protection to those who want to discriminate against others based upon their “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” But this language isn’t new.

There was a time when the idea that African-Americans were only suited for slavery was once a sincerely held religious belief and moral conviction for citizens in Mississippi.

There was a time when the idea that the intermarrying between whites and blacks was prohibited which was considered a sincerely held religious belief and moral conviction for citizens in Mississippi.

And now this same language is being used to deny another group of people what is their basic and legal right.

“It truly troubles me to know that Mississippi has yet to learn from its past as it continues to discriminate and divide its citizens,” says Derrick Johnson, President of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP.

“I call on those citizens of conscience who have a sincerely held belief and a moral conviction not to discriminate others, I ask you to join us and not to patronize any business that seeks to discriminate against others under the cover of this law” stated Johnson.

Source: MS NAACP

1024 614 Derrick Jones

Mississippi’s Confederate Heritage Month Proclamation Prompts Outcry

2016/04/05 – The Confederacy is rising again, this time using perhaps the final weapon in its arsenal: calendars.

Mississippi governor Phil Bryant recently proclaimed April to be Confederate Heritage Month, adding an official flourish to a longstanding tradition in his state and several others. April, he wrote in the proclamation, is “the month in which the Confederate States began and ended a four-year struggle”.

Bryant’s proclamation does not mention the central cause of the struggle – slavery – but instead announces the month as a chance to “gain insight from our mistakes and successes” and to “earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us”. It also sets aside 25 April as “Confederate Memorial Day”.

The proclamation set off an outcry around the state. Bryant may have expected less-than-universal acceptance of his declaration: he did not issue it on the official Mississippi state website, alongside other proclamations. Instead it appeared without notice on the site of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The SCV is a group dedicated to preserving the vestiges of southern rebellion – including the Mississippi state flag, which is the last in the nation to feature a version of the Confederate battle flag.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leaders in Mississippi reacted by proposing a civil war remembrance of their own: Union Army Heritage Month.

“These white and black Mississippi patriots fought for the continuation of the United States of America as one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” Derrick Johnson, president of Mississippi’s NAACP, wrote to the Clarion-Ledger.

“Should not these soldiers be honored, too?”

Scores rallied on the steps of the capitol, in Jackson. They were diverse. Kathleen Chambers personified a shift in the state’s mentality: she is young and white, and instead of a southern drawl she spoke with the universal up-talk of young people.

“Any white people I know? They’re not OK with this,” she said to the local television station WAPT.

Of Bryant, she said: “He’s trying to turn a Confederate heritage into a good thing, when it’s not. It shouldn’t be celebrated. Especially we shouldn’t celebrate owning people in the past.”

Other states around the south – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and, until a few years ago, Virginia – celebrate similar months, with variations. Unlike Mississippi, Alabama’s proclamation keeps the cause of the war in view: “Our recognition of Confederate history also recognizes that slavery was one of the causes of the war, an issue in the war, was ended by the war and slavery is hereby condemned.”

Virginia may be a bellwether for the fate of the Confederate calendar. The last time Virginia declared such a month, in 2010, the backlash was immediate. On 8 April that year Governor Bob McConnell issued a lengthy apology to the citizens of his state and amended his proclamation.

“The proclamation issued by this office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission,” he wrote. “The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed.

“The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the civil war. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

McDonnell injected this section into the middle of his proclamation: “WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history.”

In Mississippi, Bryant has showed no inclination to include such an acknowledgment. But Clay Chandler, the governor’s director of communications, told the Times-Picayune in Mississippi: “Like his predecessors – both Republican and Democrat – who issued similar proclamations, Governor Bryant believes Mississippi’s history deserves study and reflection, no matter how unpleasant or complicated parts of it may be.”

And, he said: “Like the proclamation says, gaining insight from our mistakes and successes will help us move forward.”

Source: The Guardian