The Mississippi State Department of Health announced on Tuesday that appointments for the new bivalent COVID-19 booster shot are now available at all county health department clinics.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the new booster formulation on Aug. 31, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed suit the next day. The release of the boosters is the largest part of government efforts to get ahead of a potential seasonal surge in infections.
“We strongly recommend that anyone eligible should go ahead and receive the updated booster now to provide the best protection against COVID-19 infection and severe complications from COVID-19,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said in a press release. “There is always the possibility of increased cases as we move into the fall and winter months. Don’t wait to protect yourself.”
The new booster shot is a bivalent vaccine, which means that it targets two versions of COVID-19. While the original booster shot only targeted the original strain of the virus, the new booster also targets the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
Mississippians who want to get the new booster can make appointments through the website or by calling the health department’s COVID-19 hotline at 877-978-6453.
People aged 12 and older who have been fully vaccinated are eligible for the new booster, regardless of whether they received other booster doses. A person can only receive the new booster at least two months out from their last shot.
Children between the ages of 5 and 11 are only eligible for the original booster shot, though the FDA is working on making the new booster available for this age group.
This is the first COVID-19 vaccine released to the public before data from human trials had been analyzed. The Biden Administration has compared the new booster to the annual flu shot, which is reformulated each year to target the latest versions of influenza and tested on animals before being released to the public.
An average of 832 cases per day are currently being reported across the state. However, the true infection rate is unknown because of the increased availability and utilization of at-home tests, which are not reported to the health department. The rate of cases, hospitalizations and deaths plummeted across the state after the peak of the omicron wave in January, but have been steadily increasing again since May.
Mississippi remains one of the least vaccinated states in America. As of Sept. 8, 61% of the state’s population had received one dose, 53% were fully vaccinated and 21% had received a booster shot, according to CDC data.
The state has reported 918,874 total cases, meaning that since the beginning of the pandemic, at least one-third of Mississippians have been infected with COVID-19. 12,821 Mississippians have died from the virus.
In 1965, the pro-Black Deacons for Defense group and the local Ku Klux Klan met on the second floor of the Adams County Courthouse in the middle of an area of Mississippi so thick with white terrorists that it was often called Klan Nation. National Guard Adjutant General Walter Giles Johnson called the meeting to order after the governor sent 650 National Guardsmen to Natchez to watch the streets and guard them following the attempted assassination of activist George Metcalf.
“There was fear that a big riot was going to break out because Blacks were fed up,” Roscoe Barnes III told the Mississippi Free Press. “They started to arm themselves. The Deacons for Defense formed, and the governor of Mississippi feared that just as there had been a riot in Watts, something was going to break out in Natchez.”
During the meeting between the Klan and the Deacons, the adjutant general told both groups that the city would be peaceful, that no riots would take place.
“He told them to look outside the window into the parking lot, and he showed them an anti-aircraft infantry gun that was posted outside the courthouses,” Barnes explained. “And he said Natchez would be peaceful. Now, I talked to old-timers, different people here, and none of them knew that story.”
In 1965, Adjutant General Walter Giles Johnson of the National Guard held a meeting on the second floor of the Adams County Courthouse between the Ku Klux Klan and the Deacons for Defense to ask for peace following the attempted assassination of civil-rights activist George Metcalf. Photo courtesy Historic Natchez Foundation
While doing research on the Adams County Courthouse, Barnes found out about the meeting in Concordia Sentinel (Ferriday, La.) editor Stanley Nelson’s research materials. Barnes, who is not a Natchez native, has learned much about the city’s pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Natchez Civil Rights Trail Committee.
Gov. Tate Reeves asked the U.S. Small Business Administration to open low-interest disaster loans to Hinds County businesses hurt by the Jackson water crisis in a formal letter Monday.
“Jackson businesses have been hit incredibly hard by the ongoing water crisis,” Reeves said in a statement. “They have shown their resilience and their commitment to this city throughout the years, and my administration will continue to do everything it can to support them during this difficult time.”
In his letter to the program’s director, Reeves outlined how businesses from daycares to restaurants had to shut down when they lost water pressure. Restaurants that have been open have had a major loss of customers while harboring extra expenses to buy clean water to keep their doors open.
Some businesses also took on the costs of portable toilets when their own could not flush. Hotels, the governor mentioned, also have had a sharp decline in overnight stays.
“Overall, with little to no running water throughout the city, businesses could not serve, clean, cool, or sanitize, forcing them to either suffer losses or temporarily shut down,” the letter says.
In order to prove the county could qualify for the loan program, the governor’s office had to survey local businesses and show at least five small businesses “suffered substantial economic injury.”
Restaurants and other affected businesses filled out paperwork about their costs and losses to Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, giving the governor the data needed to apply to the program.
If activated, individual businesses could receive up to $2 million in SBA loans under the disaster program to help with expenses and obligations that could have been met had the water crisis not occurred. The loan amount a business can receive will be based on its economic injury and the company’s financial needs.
Text messages entered Monday into the state’s ongoing civil lawsuit over the welfare scandal reveal that former Gov. Phil Bryant pushed to make NFL legend Brett Favre’s volleyball idea a reality.
The texts show that the then-governor even guided Favre on how to write a funding proposal so that it could be accepted by the Mississippi Department of Human Services – even after Bryant ousted the former welfare agency director John Davis for suspected fraud.
“Just left Brett Favre,” Bryant then texted nonprofit founder Nancy New in July of 2019, within weeks of Davis’ departure. “Can we help him with his project. We should meet soon to see how I can make sure we keep your projects on course.”
When Favre asked Bryant how the new agency director might affect their plans to fund the volleyball stadium, Bryant assured him, “I will handle that… long story but had to make a change. But I will call Nancy and see what it will take,” according to the filing and a text Favre forwarded to New.
The newly released texts, filed Monday by an attorney representing Nancy New’s nonprofit, show that Bryant, Favre, New, Davis and others worked together to channel at least $5 million of the state’s welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, where Favre’s daughter played the sport. Favre received most of the credit for raising funds to construct the facility.
Bryant has for years denied any close involvement in the steering of welfare funds to the volleyball stadium, though plans for the project even included naming the building after him, one text shows.
New, a friend of Bryant’s wife Deborah, ran a nonprofit that was in charge of spending tens of millions of flexible federal welfare dollars outside of public view. What followed was the biggest public fraud case in state history, according to the state auditor’s office. Nonprofit leaders had misspent at least $77 million in funds that were supposed to help the needy, forensic auditors found.
New pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts related to the scheme, and Davis awaits trial. But neither Bryant nor Favre have been charged with any crime.
And while the state-of-the-art facility represents the single largest known fraudulent purchase within the scheme, according to one of the criminal defendant’s plea agreement, the state is not pursuing the matter in its ongoing civil complaint. Current Gov. Tate Reeves abruptly fired the attorney bringing the state’s case when he tried to subpoena documents related to the volleyball stadium.
The messages also show that a separate $1.1 million welfare contract Favre received to promote the program – the subject of many national headlines – was simply a way to get more funding to the volleyball project.
“I could record a few radio spots,” Favre texted New, according to the new filing. “…and whatever compensation could go to USM.”
New, who is now aiding prosecutors as part of her plea deal, alleged that Bryant directed her to make the payment to Favre in a bombshell response to the complaint in July.
The allegation and defense “are not based on speculation or conjecture,” the Monday filing reads. “The evidence suggests that MDHS Executives, including Governor Bryant, knew that Favre was seeking funds from MDHS to build the Volleyball Facility … and participated in directing, approving, or providing Favre MDHS funds to be used for construction of the Volleyball Facility.”
The latest motion, filed on behalf of New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, represents the first time these messages, which include texts directly between New and Bryant and New and Favre, have been made public. The messages are printed here exactly as they appear in the filing without corrections.
In July, the attorney for New and the nonprofit, Gerry Bufkin, filed a subpoena on Bryant asking for the former governor’s communication related to the volleyball project.
On Aug. 26, Bryant’s recently-hired attorney Billy Quin filed an objection to the subpoena, refusing to turn over the records without a protective order. Quin argued that Bryant’s texts are protected by executive privilege and that producing them to the public would run afoul of existing gag orders in the criminal cases.
Bufkin’s latest motion includes texts that the attorney picked, not entire text threads, and may only reflect one side of the story. In a short statement to Mississippi Today for this story, Bryant didn’t offer an explanation for his communication.
“(The New defense team’s) refusal to agree to a protective order, along with their failure to convey the Governor’s position to the court, unfortunately shows they are more concerned with pretrial publicity than they are with civil justice,” Bryant said.
Bufkin’s motion asks for the court to compel Bryant to produce the documents, arguing they are central to New’s defense.
“Defendant reasonably relied on then-Governor Phil Bryant, acting within his broad statutory authority as chief executive of the State,” reads New’s July response to the complaint, “including authority over MDHS and TANF, and his extensive knowledge of Permissible TANF Expenditures from 12 years as State Auditor, four years as Lieutenant Governor, and a number of years as Governor leading up to and including the relevant time period.”
Bufkin told Mississippi Today that the governor’s involvement in building the volleyball stadium, as the texts suggest, “lends an air of credibility to the project, which is important to our defenses.”
Federal regulations prohibit states from using money from the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), on “brick and mortar,” or the construction of buildings.
The scheme to circumvent federal regulations in order to build the volleyball stadium has already resulted in a criminal conviction.
New’s son Zach New admitted in his April plea agreement to defrauding the government when he participated in a scheme “to disguise the USM construction project as a ‘lease’ as a means of circumventing the limited purpose grant’s strict prohibition against ‘brick and mortar’ construction projects in violation of Miss. Code Ann. 97-7-10.”
Favre’s attorney Bud Holmes denied that the athlete knew the money he received was from the welfare fund. “Brett Favre has been honorable throughout this whole thing,” Holmes said Monday.
When Mississippi Today asked Favre by text in 2020 if he had discussed the volleyball project with the governor, Favre said, simply: “No.”
Former NFL football player Brett Favre, welfare officials and University of Southern Mississippi staffers met in July of 2017 to discuss the welfare agency funding the construction of a multi-million dollar volleyball stadium on campus. From left to right, attendees of the gathering were former professional wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase, MDHS deputy Garrig Sheilds, then-USM Director of Athletics Jon Gilbert, Mississippi Community Education Center founder Nancy New, then-MDHS Director John Davis, Favre, another university staffer and Zach New. Credit: Hinds County Circuit Court
The motion filed Monday offers a detailed look at the earliest days of the planning of the USM volleyball center between Favre, New, Davis and other key players — a chronology that had not up to this point been publicly revealed.
Favre first asked for funding from Mississippi Department of Human Services during a July 24, 2017, meeting at USM with New, Davis, university athletic staff and others, according to the motion.
By this time, the University of Southern Mississippi and the Southern Miss Athletic Foundation, which would pay for the construction, had already made some progress on Favre’s idea. On July 1, according to records, the university leased its athletic facilities and fields to the foundation for $1, which made it possible for the foundation to lease the facilities to the New nonprofit for $5 million.
Because of the strict prohibition on using TANF funds to pay for construction, the parties had to craft an agreement that would look to satisfy federal law and give the illusion they were helping needy families. With the help of legal advice from MDHS attorneys, they came up with the idea for New’s nonprofit to enter a $5 million up-front lease of the university’s athletic facilities, which the nonprofit would purportedly use for programming. And in exchange, the foundation would include offices for the nonprofit inside the volleyball facility, which they called a “Wellness Center.”
Davis immediately committed $4 million to the project, according to the motion.
“While Favre was pleased with MDHS’s $4 million commitment, he knew a state-of-the-art Volleyball Facility was likely to cost more,” the filing reads. “To make matters worse, USM apparently had a policy that any construction project on campus had to be funded fully, and the money deposited in USM’s account, before construction could begin.”
Favre thought of a way to get some extra cash to the program: even more money could flow through his company in exchange for the athlete cutting ads for the state’s welfare program. New said she thought it was a good idea.
“Was just thinking that here is the way to do it!!” Favre texted.
Only days after Favre received the financial commitment from Davis, he “had grown impatient with USM, which was moving slowly. Favre contacted Governor Bryant to speed things along. In response, Governor Bryant called Nancy New,” the motion reads.
“Wow,” New texted Favre, “just got off the phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!”
The governor remained in tune on the project as it progressed. On Nov. 2, 2017, New texted Favre, “I saw the Gov last night … it’s all going to work out.”
Four days later, New’s nonprofit paid the first lump sum of $2.5 million. It paid another $2.5 million on Dec. 5, 2017, according to White’s audit. Favre also received his first payment under the advertising agreement of $500,000 in December 2017.
“Nancy Santa came today and dropped some money off,” Favre texted New that day, “thank you my goodness thank you. We need to setup the promo for you soon. Your way to kind.”
The nonprofit paid the athlete another $600,000 in June 2018.
By 2019, as the cost of construction for the volleyball center grew and Favre had committed to pay more than $1 million himself that he expected to receive from MDHS, the athlete became antsy. According to a calendar entry entered by Davis, Bryant and Favre requested to meet with welfare officials about the USM facility in January of 2019.
An emailed calendar invite obtained by Mississippi Today shows Mississippi Department of Human Services Director John Davis invited his colleague, former wrestler Ted DiBiase, to meet at Nancy New’s office to discuss topics of interest to Brett Favre and the governor.
Favre nudged the welfare officials who promised to help, but the state agency and nonprofits were in financial turmoil. Months went by with no USM payments.
In June of 2019, Bryant ousted Davis after an MDHS employee came forward with a tip about suspected fraud. Bryant replaced Davis with former FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Freeze.
When Favre asked Bryant if Davis’ departure would affect the project, according to the motion, the governor responded, “I will handle that… long story but had to make a change. But I will call Nancy and see what it will take.”
“Just left Brett Favre,” Bryant then texted New. “Can we help him with his project. We should meet soon to see how I can make sure we keep your projects on course.”
Later that day, New texted Favre to tell him that she would be meeting with the governor in two days.
“He wants me to continue to help you and us get our project done,” she said.
With the new guard in place at the top of the welfare agency, Favre and New tried to put together a proposal for more volleyball funding that would pass the smell test. Part of their plan was to put Bryant’s name on the building, according to one text from New to Favre. Favre relayed to New that Bryant said New would have to submit proper paperwork to MDHS.
“While the Governor’s text to Favre said New needed to ‘get the paperwork in,’ the Governor confided to Favre on a call that he had already seen Favre’s proposal. Favre texted New, ‘[the Governor] said to me just a second ago that he has seen [the funding proposal] but hint hint that you need to reword it to get it accepted,” reads New’s motion.
New had questions about how to reword the proposal, but instead of having a conversation directly with the governor, she relied on what the governor would tell Favre, the texts show.
“Hopefully she can put more details in the proposal,” Bryant said, according to a text Favre forwarded to New. “Like how many times the facility will be used and how many child will be served and for what specific purpose.”
Favre later texted, “I really feel like he is trying to figure out a way to get it done without actually saying it.”
Favre, New, Bryant and Freeze met in September 2019 to discuss progress on the new facility.
Though the texts illustrate the governor’s support for the program around that time, Bryant said in an April 2022 interview with Mississippi Today that he rejected the request from New and Favre fund the project further.
“I stood up and I said, ‘No,’” Bryant told Mississippi Today. “… I remember a meeting with Nancy New and Chris (Freeze), and maybe it was another one, and me. And she came in one more time, ‘Volleyball, volleyball.’ And she said, ‘My budgets have been cut and I can’t do all of these things … And that’s another thing: ‘Budgets are cut,’ so I’m thinking somebody’s watching over spending. And then she said, ‘And oh, by the way, can we have the money for the volleyball?’ And I said, ‘No. No, we’re not spending anything right now. That is terminated.’”
Two days after the meeting, New received a letter from the welfare agency informing her that the agency was increasing her TANF subgrant by $1.1 million, which the letter said was for the purpose of reimbursing payments the nonprofit made to its partners.
Under Freeze, MDHS reinstated its bid process for TANF subgrants and in December, the agency notified New’s nonprofit that she had won another grant for the coming year. That month, Bryant texted New to ask if she had received the award.
“Yes, we did,” New responded to the former governor. “From all the craziness going on, we had been made to believe we were not getting refunded. But we did. ‘Someone’ was definitely pulling for us behind the scenes. Thank you.”
Bryant responded with a smiley face.
In early 2020, as funding to the nonprofits slowed and Bryant entered the waning days in his final term as governor, Favre and state officials scrambled to come up with the funds to finish the USM volleyball project. Communication obtained by Mississippi Today shows that another state agency that had been receiving grants from the welfare department joined talks of funding the remainder of the construction.
New sent Favre’s funding request to Andrea Mayfield, then-director of the Mississippi Community College Board.
“I am at a loss right now,” New wrote, “and am honestly trying to save coworkers’ jobs, too. Are we closer on a lease, etc. for him. Sorry to have to ask this as I know everybody is doing everything they can. Thank y’all.”
Mayfield proposed having the USM athletic foundation front the $556,000 that the builders needed, and then be reimbursed by various state agencies through monthly rent payments.
“I can work each agency to execute a contract. Once they execute a contract with me, I can quickly execute with MCEC. I am sorry it is taking time. I am at the mercy of each partners schedule. Thoughts?” Mayfield texted USM Athletic Director Jeremy McClain, according to the message she forwarded to New and Favre.
“Let me know,” Favre responded, “and we have a few weeks until it’s finished. If need be Deanna and I will just pay it. If the university will at least Agree on a deal maybe we can get some funding fairly quickly.”
It’s unclear if any more federal grants went to Favre or the athletic foundation after this point.
Bufkin isn’t the only person who has subpoenaed the former governor’s communication related to the volleyball project. Attorney Brad Pigott, who originally represented the state’s welfare department in the civil suit, also subpoenaed the athletic foundation for its communication with Bryant or his wife Deborah Bryant – and was fired from the case as a result.
Pigott previously called the $5 million agreement between the New nonprofit and the athletic foundation “a sham, fraudulent, so-called lease agreement” in which the parties pretended that the purpose of the deal was for the nonprofit to provide services at the facilities, “all of which was a lie,” Pigott said.
The state’s civil case, which seeks to recoup $24 million from 38 people or organizations, appears to have slowed since Pigott’s firing. The athletic foundation is not named as defendant and the volleyball stadium is not discussed once in the complaint. The state canceled and has not rescheduled several depositions that were supposed to take place this month — including one with Favre.
“People are going to go to jail over this, at least the state should be willing to find out the truth of what happened,” Pigott told Mississippi Today after his firing in July.
It’s unclear how the athletic foundation has responded, if at all, to either Bufkin or the state’s subpoena, as no related filings appear in the case file. Objections to subpoenas, such as Bryant’s, are not entered into court. If a subpoenaed entity produces documents as requested, those documents could also go directly to the requesting parties and would not appear in the public court file.
The FBI is still investigating the welfare scandal, but officials haven’t publicly indicated which figures they might be pursuing. President Joe Biden recently nominated Todd Gee to serve as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, a position that has been vacant for nearly two years. Gee, a Vicksburg native, will inherit the welfare investigation in his new job after serving as the deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice since 2018.
Gee previously served as lead counsel for the House Homeland Security Committee under chair U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who in July wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Bryant’s role in the welfare scheme.
White, the state auditor who originally investigated the case, was appointed by and formerly served as a campaign manager for Bryant. Shortly after his office arrested New, Davis and four others for their alleged roles in the scheme, White publicly called Bryant the whistleblower in the case.
Asked on Monday how he would characterize Bryant’s role in the scandal now, White said, “I wouldn’t because we don’t know everything that’s going to come out ultimately.”
“I would just let the public decide how they interpret his actions over the course of that entire thing,” White said. “You know, really, if you think back about the corpus of events here that happened, a lot of it has been put out in the news. And so I think anybody who’s reading the newspaper can look at that and say, ‘OK, people at DHS did this right, and they did this wrong. People in the governor’s office did this right, and they did that wrong.’ And they can decide.”
“That’s not for me to decide what somebody’s legacy is,” White added.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is asking the federal government to step in and help Jackson businesses overcome economic hardships caused by the capital city’s ongoing water crisis.
In a letter to U.S. Small Business Director Kem R. Fleming, the governor requested a Small Business Administrative Declaration, which would open the doors for businesses in Hinds County to obtain funds through the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
“Jackson businesses have been hit incredibly hard by the ongoing water crisis,” the governor said in a statement Monday. “They have shown their resilience and their commitment to this city throughout the years, and my administration will continue to do everything it can to support them during this difficult time.”
Since July 29, Jackson has been under a boil-water notice, forcing businesses in the capital city to make costly changes in operations, especially in hospitality businesses like hotels and restaurants.
“First, you’re gonna have to start a couple hours early,” John Tierre, the owner of Johnny T’s Bistro & Blues in Downtown Jackson, told the Mississippi Free Press in mid-August. “That’s already labor in itself, whatever you’re paying per hour. You gotta get in and start boiling water for everything that you’re gonna be using in service. …
“Not only do we have to boil water just to wash dishes, for the bar, for glasses, but there’s the $200 or $300 a day in ice purchases, canned sodas, bottled water, things of that nature.”
The situation only grew more dire for residents and business owners alike on Aug. 29, when failures at the city’s main water treatment plant resulted in a loss of running water citywide. With the help of state and federal resources, water pressure resumed a week later, but the same issues Tierre was dealing with throughout August are still present because the city remains under a boil water notice.
The governor’s statement on Monday noted that “daycare centers were forced to limit or eliminate services because they could not easily keep their facilities clean. With little to no running water throughout the city, businesses could not serve, clean, cool or
The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a team from its Office of Inspector General to Jackson to investigate the city’s water management, NBC News reported Friday.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said on Monday he had few details on what the federal agency was looking into.
“I don’t have a great deal of details on it,” Lumumba said at a press briefing. “I’ve had city employees that have called and said someone asked them some questions.
“I just shared with them to cooperate. That’s all I know. I don’t know the scope, I don’t know the timeline that they’re looking at.”
The EPA’s OIG is an independent team that conducts audits and investigations, looking to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement and misconduct.” The office is funded separately from the rest of the EPA.
An agency spokesperson told NBC News the probe would entail a “multidisciplinary” review of recent issues with the capital city’s water system.
Last week, EPA Administrator Michael Regan spoke to Mississippi politicians about the availability of federal funds that could assist Jackson. Regan did not mention his agency’s investigation.
While it’s unclear who or what specifically is being investigated, the NBC report said that the probe “will start with conversations with local, state and federal players who have a role in overseeing the public resources dedicated to ensuring residents have clean water.”
In college football, they are called guarantee games. One university pays another an exorbitant flat fee to play a football game on the road with no return game.
Normally, the home team draws a crowd large enough to easily cover the one-time fee. In theory, the home team also buys an easy victory to pad its record and help it qualify for a bowl game.
It does not always work out this way, as we shall see.
These games are most common in September before the major conference teams enter their league schedules.
Rick Cleveland
Southern Miss played a guarantee game Saturday at Miami. Miami paid Southern Miss $1.5 million to play at Hard Rock Stadium. After trailing for much of the first half, the Hurricanes dominated the second half with superior depth and won 30 to 7. That’s how these things usually work. After expenses, Southern Miss cleared $1.375 million. Miami got its victory.
Again, these games are most common this time of the season. Ole Miss bought a victory from Central Arkansas. LSU bought one from Southern University. Ohio State bought one from Arkansas State. Georgia paid Samford well for its 33-0 drubbing. We could go on and on.
But…
This is rich:
Texas A&M paid Appalachian State $1.5 million to play at College Station. App State flew out of town with the massive check – and a 17-14 victory.
Notre Dame forked over $1.25 million to Marshall to play at South Bend. You know what happened. The Thundering Herd took the money and also won the game, 26-21.
Nebraska, which we once referred to as mighty Nebraska, paid Georgia Southern slightly more than $1.4 million to play at Lincoln. Georgia Southern took the money and ran – and passed – to a 45-42 victory that was the last straw for Nebraska coach Scott Frost, who was fired afterward.
Readers who aren’t familiar with college football and its finances might be surprised to learn the exorbitant amounts paid for these guarantee games. In big-time college athletics, it does seem universities from the power conferences play with Monopoly money.
Let’s take it one step further. Nebraska will have to pay Frost $15 million to buy out the remainder of his contract. That’s a lot of zeroes. If Nebraska had waited until Oct. 1 – not quite three more weeks – the buyout would have dropped to $7.5 million.
I did the math. In effect, Nebraska is paying $375,000 per day to fire Scott Frost 20 days before his buyout would have been reduced by half. Like I said, it’s like Monopoly money.
Yes, Scott Frost had to make a lot of mistakes to win only 16 of 47 games in his four-plus seasons at his alma mater. But somebody else had to make a much bigger mistake to hire a guy that you are now paying $15 million not to coach. And now you’ve got to pay somebody several more million to come be your coach.
Let’s take it another step. Clay Helton, the new Georgia Southern coach, still is being paid not to coach Southern Cal. That’s right, USC fired Helton last September after a lopsided loss to Stanford. Southern Cal owed Helton $10 million over the final two years of his contract.
So a coach Southern Cal pays $10 million not to coach led Georgia Southern to a victory that caused Nebraska to pay $15 million to another guy not to coach. That’s $25 million those two football powers are paying people not to coach.
Meanwhile, Georgia Southern – a Sun Belt Conference team just like Marshall and App State – pays Helton $800,000 to coach. Georgia Southern appears to be getting a lot more for its money that Southern Cal did. Yet, he’s the same guy, the same coach.
The moral of this story?
Not sure there is one other than this: When scheduling these high-dollar guarantee games, athletic directors might want to look at teams outside the Sun Belt.
“I just want to wet my beak a little.” That demand for a payoff from Don Fanucci to a young Vito Corleone in Godfather II may explain Jackson’s water problems. And other problems too due to incompetent bureaucrats. There are lots of them from Jackson to Washington. Some may be crooked too. We can live with crooked bureaucrats and politicians who aren’t too blatant and too greedy – if they are competent.
But when the toilets don’t flush and you can’t drink the water, and all you hear is “we need more money” and “it’s not my fault”, you know incompetents are in charge. And too many beaks are getting wet. And it’s time to do something.
Vito did something. He offed Don Fanucci – an incompetent extortionist, bully, and crook. And took over his business. Vito was a crook too. But he was competent. He protected the weak, administered neighborhood justice, kept order, was a faithful husband, and didn’t kill people just for the fun of it. Killing was just business. He was good at business. There are lessons here. Maybe even a few morals.
It’s not that we need crooks if they are good at business, although I would rather have a competent professional than a feckless amateur. It’s that we need an honest competent crook. Is honest crook an oxymoron? Probably. But you know what I mean.
A recent report from a competent professional engineer says this about our water system: “… the Jackson system is a ticking bomb poised to cause immeasurable harm to water customers. I have witnessed many water systems in the US and abroad that do not meet US EPA Safe Drinking Water Standards. This is one of the worst for a developed country. There are immediate concerns with the continued operation of the system as it is currently operated but it poses additional harm as microbial and viral contaminates enter the system due to lack of adequate maintenance.”
The report goes on to note the City’s failure to comply with the March 2020 EPA Emergency Order re disinfection and pH (acidity) control and sampling for coliform bacteria. And the City’s failures to meet Lead and Copper Rule requirements since 2015. It says these violations are emergencies (the City says they are not) because they “…are linked to fetal deformity, impairment of child mental and physical development, adult kidney disease, and blood chemistry issues…. Keep in mind the ingestion of lead in the body cannot be cleansed or flushed…. So the city is playing roulette with the lives of the citizens of Jackson.”
The City Council President’s recent letter to the WSJ Editor in response to its “Jackson’s Water Woes Explained” says Jackson’s Mayor didn’t tell the council or Jackson’s citizens about the EPA Emergency Order for over a year. Maybe the stylish young Mayor thought the City Council and the citizens didn’t have a need to know. Maybe he was concerned citizens might worry unnecessarily about non-emergencies like contaminated drinking
A clarion call by Gov. Tate Reeves, Speaker Philip Gunn and many other Republicans is that Mississippi should emulate Tennessee and eliminate the income tax.
But for at least a brief time, the Tennessee Legislature, exalted in the past by Reeves and Gunn for its position on taxes, has enacted tax policy that often has been opposed by many Mississippi Republicans.
For the entire month August, Tennessee lawmakers eliminated the state’s 4% tax on groceries. Various groups in Mississippi have advocated unsuccessfully for permanently cutting or eliminating the state’s 7% tax on food, which is the highest statewide tax of its kind in the poorest state in the nation.
Mississippi has its own version a sales tax holiday. Mississippians recently got to experience the so-called 2nd Amendment sales tax holiday enacted in 2014 by the Legislature, where the normally 7% levy on guns and other hunting items is lifted for a weekend.
Just to be clear, the Tennessee Legislature eliminated the sales tax on food for a month while the Mississippi Legislature lifted the tax on guns for a weekend.
There has been no holiday or respite in Mississippi from the 7% tax on groceries.
Mississippi does provide on a weekend in July a sales tax holiday on back-to-school items, including clothing and supplies. The sales tax holiday on back-to-school items was an effort, supporters said when it passed in 2009, to provide financial relief to low-wage earners.
But multiple studies by both liberal and conservative groups have called the so-called sales tax holidays bad tax policy. The conservative Tax Foundation found that sales tax holidays “do not promote economic growth or significantly increase consumer purchases.” And various studies have found the holidays do not help the poor because they generally do not have the financial wherewithal to make larger purchases to take advantage of the time-restricted tax break. They are forced to spread out their purchases over an extended period because of their limited income.
“Low-income consumers may be less able to shift their purchases to coincide with the holiday, and some, such as the elderly, might have needs other than the goods offered. Overall, opponents say, sales tax holidays simply shift the timing of consumer purchases,” according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Tennessee’s month-long sales tax holiday on food purchases is a bit different than the average sales tax holiday because of its unusual length and because it provides tax relief on items that everyone must have. Everybody has to have food.
The exemption of the 4% tax on groceries was the Tennessee Legislature’s effort to provide widespread relief in 2022 to offset high inflation. Many states are taking a portion of what is in many cases unprecedented surpluses to provide some sort of rebate (usually direct cash payments) to residents below a certain income level to offset the high inflation. States as diverse as California, Indiana and New Mexico are among the about 20 states providing rebates.
Tennessee opted to do it by enacting the sales tax holiday on food for a month instead of providing the cash rebate.
The Mississippi Legislature, despite a record surplus and unprecedented tax collections, opted not to provide any rebates or short-term tax relief during calendar year 2022. The Legislature did enact a record $500 million tax cut, but it does not begin until January and will be phased in over multiple years. For many Mississippians, they will not receive the benefit of the tax cut until they file their 2022 state income taxes in 2023.
Multi-year efforts to reduce or eliminate the sales tax on food in Mississippi have been unsuccessful. Multiple studies have found that lower income people in Mississippi pay a larger percentage of their income on taxes than do higher wage earners because of the state’s high sales tax, particularly the tax on food. Poor people have to spend a higher percentage of their income to buy a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread than do the wealthy.
A 2021 study by One Voice and the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy found that the bottom 80% of Mississippians — earning less than $77,500 annually — pay a greater percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do those in the top 20%.
Mississippi had a low income tax rate even before the Legislature during the 2022 session opted to further cut the income tax. On the other hand, Mississippi has one of the highest statewide sales tax rates in the nation and the highest rate on food.
In addition to the sales tax holiday on food, Tennessee also currently has a year-long sales tax holiday on the purchases of gun safes and other gun safety items. Mississippi’s 2nd Amendment sales tax holiday does not cover such safety items.
Jean Carson warmly welcomes customers who stop by the Afrikan Art Gallery at 800 North Farish St., a few blocks north of downtown Jackson, through a haze of scented, burning incense, making sure to mention the gallery’s goods are authentic and handmade.
Many items, such as the clothing, are from Ghana, and the wood carvings are from Kenya. The gallery has backpacks for every age in colorful hues and intricate patterns, such as the popular Kente cloth, and “mud cloth,” a Malian cotton cloth dyed using fermented mud. The colors are striking and bold — “a feast for the eyes and a smile for your soul,” said Carson, the manager here.
Before this location, the Afrikan Art Gallery was located near the intersection at Bailey Avenue and Fortification Street. Owner Nyika Ajanaku once operated five businesses in the metro area. Currently, the one store is located in the Jessie Williams Building, a space that’s not only an art gallery, but also a meeting place for book signings, educational seminars and after-school activities for children.
Ajanaku has imported a variety of artwork, clothing, jewelry, musical instruments and wood carvings from Africa. From dashikis to kaftans and sundresses, he has filled his store with everything a customer needs to complete an ensemble and decorate a dwelling.
“I just love it here,” said long-time customer Ada Miller Robinson. “I’ve been coming and buying here for years,” she says, shortly before darting off to help Clemontine Whitaker, a fellow-customer and friend. Both ladies admire a sun dress Robinson models for Whitaker, while Carson tends to a family browsing the jewelry cases.
Ajanaku has been a mainstay in the area for 49 years. His advertising for the gallery reads: “Where the Afrikan image is everything!”
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
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