JPBlog

I missed it yesterday, but it looks as though the powers-that-be here in Mississippi really want that biological facility at Flora. Are they that dumb and irresponsible? Sadly, it appears so.

Read the article.

The JP Blog has commented before on the government's plans to move the Plum Island hoof-and-mouth disease facility to a location on the mainland and renaming it the National Bio-and-Agro-Defense Facility that will also study diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans.

Flora is on the short list for the laboratory, along with Athens, Ga., Manhattan, Kan., Butner, N.C., and San Antonio.

USA Today recently ran an article on the issue in which our own representative Chip Pickering is quoted as strongly supporting the move to Flora.

Read the article and ask yourself whether or not you would like to live anywhere close to a facility that works not only with hoof-and-mouth disease, but also with diseases that can infect human beings.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there is a nationwide crisis in mental health treatment that is stressing the legal system and society in general: the shortage in public psychiatric beds—100,000 of them.

The history of public institutional psychiatric care since the 1050s has been a story of deinstitutionalization and treatment with new drugs for schizophrenia (Thorazine), depression (tricyclics), bipolar disorder (lithium and valproic acid), and numerous other mental disorders for which the only treatment had previously been involuntary confinement, too often under inhumane and squalid conditions. It has also involved policy decisions by Federal and state governments as to Medicare and Medicaid funding (patients in public hospitals not eligible) and a series of civil rights lawsuits that restricted the ability of states to confine the mentally ill indefinitely without due process or treatment.

The 15 experts consulted by the Center consistently estimated that 50 (range 40 to 60) public psychiatric beds per 100,000 population are needed for hospitalization for individuals with serious psychiatric disorders. This assumes the availability of good outpatient programs and outpatient commitment.

Mississippi, at 49.7 beds per 100,000, barely meets that minimum (at least within a margin of error), but it is the only state to do so, followed by South Dakota at 40.3.

The consequences of this negligence are not speculative:

1. Marked increase of persons who are homeless.

The effect of mentally ill homeless persons on the quality of life on nation’s sidewalks and in parks and public libraries are known by all who live in cities. According to one observer: “A simple visit to the local elementary school, post office or grocery store . . . can be a Dantean journey through the dark underside of our society. Violence, harassment and an astonishing list of antisocial behavior are commonplace.” These social costs are matched by fiscal costs. In Los Angeles it was estimated that the cost of “arrests, incarcerations, emergency medical care and other crisis interventions” runs between $35,000 and $150,000 per person per year for individuals who are chronically homeless. In Reno “a chronically homeless mentally ill man . . . cost the county at least $1 million during his 10 years on the streets before he died in 2005.” Fiscal conservatives thought that they would save money by emptying state mental hospitals, but they in fact only shifted the fiscal burden from the department of mental health to departments of corrections and social services and to the courts.

2. Massive increase in severely mentally persons in jails and prisons:

The three largest de facto psychiatric institutions in the United States are the Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago’s Cook County Jail, and New York’s Riker Island Jail. We have been unable to identify a single county in the nation where the county psychiatric inpatient facility is holding as many mentally ill individuals as the county jail. And once a person is in jail, it is almost impossible to find them a bed in a psychiatric hospital. In Virginia, for example, Sheriff Paul Lanteigne of Virginia Beach “estimates that it typically takes at least six months to find an available bed for a deranged inmate.”

3. Concentration of mentally ill persons in emergency rooms, waiting for psychiatric beds to be found:

In North Carolina, for example, Doug Trantham at the Smoky Mountain Mental Health Center described “an inpatient crisis so bad that what it does is backup the entire system.” Officers there have sometimes had to drive patients across the entire state—a seven- to eight-hour drive one way—to a hospital with a bed. Emergency rooms are said to have mentally ill people waiting “four or five days in our ICU just waiting for a place to go. . . . You may have somebody in there all weekend, screaming for 12 or 18 hours,” said a nurse. It is the same in every state; in Arlington, Virginia, county officials had to call 31 hospitals before finding one that would accept a patient. The impact of overburdening the ERs with patients needing hospital beds goes far beyond psychiatric patients; rather, it interferes with all medical and surgical care in the ER.

4. Violent crime:

Because there are so few beds available, individuals with severe psychiatric disorders who need to be hospitalized are often unable to get admitted, and those who are admitted are often discharged prematurely. Fred Markowitz, in his 2006 study of 81 American cities, reported a statistically significant correlation between the number of public psychiatric beds available in that city and the prevalence of violent crimes, defined as murder, robbery, assault, and rape.11 This is not surprising, since studies have shown that between 5 to 10 percent of seriously mentally ill persons living in the community will commit a violent act each year, almost all because they are not receiving treatment. Such individual are responsible for at least 5 percent of all homicides.

Many readers will recall the death on April 18, 1993 of Matt Devenney, shot by a mentally ill man in front of the Community Stewpot where Devenney was the director. What most people did not know was that a Hinds County Chancery judge had previously found the killer to be insane and dangerous, but could not convince the powers-that-were to keep him confined at Whitfield. Each time, while the judge watched helplessly, they released him after a short stay. Eventually, he killed somebody.

It ought not to take a murder to convince a shrink that a patient is dangerous.

I suspect, however, that they did know that he was dangerous, but just didn't have a long-term bed or a cell. Now he does.

So while we may be ahead of the rest of the nation in the statistical tables, what we are doing is still inadequate.

In the poorest state in the nation, the average Mississippian is still clueless as to why his circumstances are so dire. The so-called tort-reform legislation and its sorry history give a clue. The stacking of the Mississippi Supreme Court with business-serving judges explains a great deal, as well.

Read an article in the Jackson Free Press on The Reality Of Tort Reform.

Via Daily Kos, the Houston Chronicle featured a story on October 2 recounting numerous accidents that have occurred in biological laboratories around the nation involving exposure by employes to extremely dangerous viruses and bacteria as well as the accidental release of dangerous organisms into the environment. As one would expect, the Bush administration has suppressed information about some of the most serious of the accidents on grounds of national security. According to the Chronicle:

American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons that can cause illnesses with no cure. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

The mishaps include workers bitten or scratched by infected animals, skin cuts, needle sticks and more, according to an Associated Press review of confidential reports submitted to federal regulators. They describe accidents involving anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states. More than two dozen incidents were still under investigation.

The Federal Government is now deciding whether or not to relocate the biological facility on Plum Island to a site near Flora, and state officials are trampling each other in a lemming-like rush to convince the Department of Homeland Security to put it here.

According to the Government Accountability Office publication, High-Containment Biosafety Laboratories: Preliminary Observations on the Oversight of the Proliferation of BSL-3 and BSL-4 Laboratories in the United States, the risks created by such labs are significant:

According to the experts, there is a baseline risk associated with any high- containment. With expansion, the aggregate risks will increase. However, the associated safety and security risks will be greater for new labs with less experience. In addition, high-containment labs have health risks for individual lab workers as well as the surrounding community. According to a CDC official, the risks due to accidental exposure or release can never be completely eliminated, and even labs within sophisticated biological research programs—including those most extensively regulated—have had and will continue to have safety failures. In addition, while some of the most dangerous agents are regulated under the CDC-USDA’s Select Agent Program, many high-containment labs work with agents not covered under this program. Labs outside the Select Agent Program also pose risks, given that many unregulated agents can cause severe illness or even death (see appendix IV for a list of some agents, but not select agents, recommended to be worked on in high-containment labs). These labs also have associated risks because of their potential as targets for terrorism or theft from either external or internal sources. Even labs outside the Select Agent Program can pose security risks in that such labs represent a capability that can be paired with the necessary agents to become a threat. While the United States has regulations governing select agents, many nations do not have any regulations governing the transfer or possession of dangerous biological agents.

Putting the facility in Flora is a bad idea. We don't need dangerous microorganisms cultured and kept here. One nasty accident (and human beings and institutions are prone to accidents by their very nature) and we could be faced with a Katrina-sized health disaster. And we know by experience how much help Mississippi will be getting from the Bush administration (or any other Republican administration) if that disaster comes about. The facility should be located on an island away from the mainland U.S.

Houston Chronicle: Accidents rise at labs handling deadliest germs

Previous posts in the JPBlog:

What is a "National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility"?

Update: "National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility"?

According to the Clarion-Ledger, Flora is a finalist for a new federal laboratory whose purpose is ostensibly (according to the Department of Homeland Security website):

- to integrate those aspects of public and animal health research that have been determined to be central to national security;
- to assess and research evolving bioterrorism threats over the next five decades; and;
- to enable the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture (USDA), and Health and Human Services (HHS) to fulfill their related homeland defense research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) responsibilities.

The current facility is the Plum Island Animal Disease Center at Plum Island, New York. Display map of Plum Island facility in another window.

The facility was originally—and logically—a part of the Departments of Agriculture until June 2003, when it was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. Now that it is part of the same agency that gave you the Katrina recovery, there is some reason to be concerned about the safety of a facility that will be dealing with highly infectious organisms that can infect humans as well as animals. Up to now, the federal government saw fit to at least partially isolate the lab on an offshore island. 21 USC § 113a prohibits live foot-and-mouth disease virus on the mainland U.S. except under very special circumstances. Now Homeland Security wants to plunk it down near a small town in the most impoverished state in the nation, where it will be warmly welcomed as source of jobs. Whenever this administration tries to justify a questionable policy or activity, it has invariably used the term "terrorism," just as it is doing now.

I am suspicious.

Let's ask some hard questions before this project gets too far along:

1. What is this lab doing under the Department of Homeland Security instead of Agriculture? Is this grounds for confidence in the safety of the lab?

2. Why was the phrase "Animal Disease" taken out of the title and "defense" inserted?

3. Why isn't it cheaper and less disruptive to the employees of the present facility to build a replacement on Plum Island?

4. Will this facility be culturing virulent and dangerous organisms?

5. Is this facility involved with any phase of chemical or biological warfare?

6. Was there local opposition to rebuilding the facility on Plum Island, and if so, was it because the locals believed that with its expanded mission it poses a threat to health?

Sometimes I think that the politicians in this state would welcome a branch facility of Hell, so long as they could brag that it created jobs and made money for real estate developers.

Update 7/21/2007: Question 7 should be "Will security be contracted to a private corporation, such as Wackenhut?" TPM Muckraker is running an article today on Wackenhut's lax security practices:

Wackenhut has the contract to secure the Army's Holston Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. Last year, guards at the plant told lawmakers that boaters were easily able to float into restricted areas at the riverfront facility, and that Wackenhut only bolstered patrols when it knew that Army inspectors were up for a visit. Wackenhut has contracts to secure 31 nuclear power plants around the country. Last year, the Project on Government Oversight reported that Wackenhut nearly got employees killed by not stopping a mock terrorism-response exercise at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in time. Perhaps most egregiously, the Department of Homeland security opted last year not to renew Wackenhut's contract to protect DHS's Washington headquarters after guards told the AP about numerous security breaches -- including a botched anthrax scare. (Wackenhut security officials actually took the "suspicious white powder" into the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff and sprinkled it out of his window into the area below.)

For years, I've asked candidates  "If you are elected governor, how do you expect the State of Mississippi to be different when you leave the office four or eight years from now?" Having never received a satisfactory answer, I've attempted in the Jackson Progressive to answer the question myself as though I were a candidate.

If I'm Elected Governor Here's How I Would Like Things to be Different When I Leave Office

Prior to the breakup of AT&T, Bell Labs was one of the most creative institutions in the world. So many inventions and discoveries came out of an institution that hired geniuses and told them to do what they wanted to do, that it can honestly be said that had Bell Labs not existed, the World would be a vastly different place and much the worser. Because of the unique exemption the government gave AT&T for many years, it had to license its discoveries very expensively. Unix, for instance, was practically given to colleges and universities, which explains why Unix and its descendants like BDS and Linux are pervasive in the computer world.

Bell Labs is now owned by Alcatel-Lucent, and although its mission is similar to that of AT&T Bell Labs, the unique circumstances that made it such a national treasure no longer exist and it resembles a large corporate research organization more and more. This is clearly one of those instances where the application of market principles resulted in a monumental loss for us all.

Would it be possible for the State of Mississippi to establish such an independent laboratory? Is it desirable? Would it be a good investment of the admittedly scarce resources of this poverty-stricken state? Could the legislature and the executive branches be trusted to keep their political hands off the lab and simply let geniuses do what they do so well? Could the Department of Economic Development and the state universities be dissuaded from regarding it as a competitor? Big questions. Previous attempts have not turned out well:



Summaries of PEER Reports Vol. 1 1973-79

Summaries of PEER Reports 1973-2002

There could be some big benefits, though. The state would own a collection of valuable patents it could license to Mississippi businesses or businesses that are willing to move here for the long run as a condition of licensing. The people of Mississippi would gain both from job opportunities and from the licensing income that would help finance state government. And although the geniuses in the lab would be given freedom to work on whatever projects they wished, there would always be the understanding that they would be expected to direct some of that intelligence and creativity toward solving the manifold problems we experience in this poorest state.

The biggest problem with such an institution would be the demand for immediate concrete achievements. ITD was founded with great expectations of high-tech employment in the state and it didn't work out. A Mississippi "Bell" Labs would have to be established in the faith that something good will eventually come out of it and with a minimum guarantee of ten years' full funding.

There are many more problems that would have to be dealt with before something like this would have a chance to succeed. The composition of the board of trustees would be a huge problem. Many of the logical choices for the board would have sharp axes to grind, like representatives of higher education. Who gets to pick the geniuses to initially populate the labs? Once the lab gets up and started, the employed geniuses themselves could suggest new colleagues. Where to put the labs? Not on a university campus, but not too far away, either.

In spite of the obstacles, a successful Mississippi Labs would represent a coup. We should at least be discussing the possibilities.

The tax swap to lower the sales tax on groceries and raise it on tobacco pretty much died this week in the legislature. With the governer's opposition, it had little chance in the Republican-dominated Senate.

Why did the governor oppose the revenue-swap? Two reasons:

First, as a right-wing Republican, he is philosophically opposed to tax relief for anyone but the wealthy. A sales tax reduction would benefit all the people of this state, but it would benefit the people at the bottom the most. That's a no-no.

Second is his long-term lobbying relationship with the tobacco industry. Clearly this is more important to Governor Tobacco than the welfare of Mississippi youth who are the most vulnerable to the blandishments of this industry of death.

In the linked article, Governor Tobacco mentioned that as soon as the state budget improves he has some major tax cuts in mind. You can be virtually certain that his proposed tax cuts will not include the sales tax, one of the most regressive taxes levied in this state, but you can be sure that he will propose cutting income and estate taxes, small as they may be, because the benefits of those cuts would go to the wealthy.

Of course, there must be spending cuts to balance the budget (unlike the federal government). Guess where they will come from? You guessed it: programs intended to benefit the public and for which there is no immediate payoff. Fortunately, the likelyhood of the tax cuts is slim, because the legislature must match revenue and expenditures and those are parts of the budget that will be almost impossible to cut, practically or politically.

The total state tax burden on Mississippi's citizens is regressive. A person earning less than $11,000/year pays the State of Mississippi an average of 10% of his income. Persons making between $53,000 and $96.000 pay 8% of their income, and persons in the top one percentile (annual income $509,200.00 and over) pay only 5.3%. Who needs tax relief, then? Who can afford to pay more taxes? The answer is obvious.

Even an absolutely flat tax—where all state taxes combined extract the same percentage of income from everyone—would be preferable to what we have now. That 10% literally takes food off the table of the folks at the bottom. It would be pocket change for persons in the top 1%.

But Governor Tobacco will have none of that.

A diary on the Daily Kos paints a dismal and outraging picture of the Republican approach to hurricane relief:

This is a multi-pronged issue, but in a nutshell, it's this: Big industry is getting free rein to buy up anything it can get its hands on, with encouragement and aid from the government at several levels.

Even Haley Barbour is playing his part. Read and heed.

Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit--LOTS of Profit

Mississippi is always near the bottom in income and quality of education. It looks as though the Democratic House and the Republican Senate are once again at loggerheads, this time over money for schools, and won't be able to agree on a budget before the legislature meets in January.

The state is faced with a double-bind: Without a better-educated populace, things are not going to get better for most Mississippians, but without ways to put that education into use, either as employees or entrepreneurs, our best and brightest will go elsewhere to find opportunity. Conversely, students without prospects of earning a decent living have no incentive to take advantage of educational opportunities. If getting a high school diploma in Mississippi led to a livable income, people would get a high school education. The same goes with higher education. In economic terms, if the opportunity cost of not going to school is very low, people will be much less inclined to take advantage of school.

Look at it this way: if suddenly every adult Mississippian acquired a PhD, would the state become prosperous? Hardly.

The problem is that the economy of this state is structurally incapable of generating general prosperity. Mississippi's ruling class has always assumed, either consciously or unconsciously, that the hope of the state lies in low wages, weak unions, tourism, agriculture, and natural resources. How a highly-educated citizenry fits in with that vision has not been addressed, since that kind of economy can easily function with a small, well-paid elite and a minimum-wage workforce.

Admittedly, this is a vast oversimplification of the problem, but unless we start addressing it, we will never receive the benefit from the billions we spend on education, both from our tax money and the money transferred to us from the more prosperous states by the federal government. We will never achieve prosperity by electing to Congress men who have brought us massive tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful, NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, the Bankruptcy "Reform" bill, and who have invariably opposed over their entire political careers every proposal to increase the minimum wage or any other measure to help the non-affluent.:

There was a time when the following poem was meaningless to me. Now it speaks as if it were written today:

Consider these, for we have condemned them;
Leaders to no sure land, guides their bearings lost
Or in league with robbers have reversed the signposts,
Disrespectful to ancestors, irresponsible to heirs,
Born barren , a freak growth, root in rubble,
Fruitlessly blossoming, whose foliage suffocates,
Their sap is sluggish, they reject the sun.

The man with his tongue in his cheek, the woman
With her heart in the wrong place, unhandsome, unwholesome;
Have exposed the new-born to worse than weather,
Exiled the honest and sacked the seer.
These drowned the farms to form a pleasure-lake,
In time of drought they drain the reservoir
Through private pipes for baths and sprinklers.

Getters not begetters; gainers not beginners;
Whiners, no winners; no triers, betrayers;
Who steer by no star, whose moon means nothing.
Daily denying, unable to dig:
At bay in villas from blood relations,
Counters of spoons and content with cushions
They pray for peace, they hand down disaster.

They that take the bribe shall perish by the bribe,
Dying of dry rot, ending in asylums,
A curse to children, a charge on the state.
But still their fears and frenzies infect us;
Drug nor isolation will cure this cancer;
It is now or never, the hour of the knife,
The break with the past, the major operation.

--C. Day Lewis (1904-1972)

Occasionally, I tell myself that I ought to subscribe to the Clarion-Ledger. Who knows? After all, it is the paper of record for central Mississippi. I might be losing out on a nugget of news that could change my life.

When these thoughts appear, the C-L invariably pulls something that makes me realize that it, and the Gannet chain of which it is a part, is interested only in maximizing its profits and consequently must, in servicing that prime directive, strive to dominate the printed news media in the Jackson metro area. Its recent scheme to drive independent publications out of business with its exclusive plastic boxes merely reinforces my conviction that the state would be better off without the Clarion-Ledger.

The Jackson Free Press, one of the publications targeted by the C-L, is running a blog on the scam.

So once again, I'll read someone else's copy and hold my nose.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour brags that he has saved Mississippi Medicaid $275 million in prescription costs.

The JP is unimpressed. Saving on prescription costs is easy: just order Medicaid to stop paying for prescriptions.

If you're depending on those Medicaid prescriptions to keep you alive, the solution is easy: Go without food or electricity or gas.

Any fool ought to be able to figure that one out.

The 2005 Annual Drinking Water quality Report arrived in the mail today. The heart of the 2-page report is contained in a table that sets out the concentrations of twenty different contaminants in Jackson's drinking water. For the technical non-experts among us, including this writer, the significant columns are Violation (Y/N), Date Collected, Level Detected and the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL).

The only contaminant showing a violation is Total Organic Carbon (TOC), the most likely source of contamination of which is said to be "Naturally Present in the Environment." The Water Department believes that this violation was due to errors in sampling and analysis, and TOC poses no health problem, anyway, except that "total organic carbon provides a medium for the formation of disinfection byproducts." That means that too high a TOC level may produce some nasty contaminants such as trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids when the water is chlorinated at the water plant. At the bottom of the table you will find HAA5 (sum of 5 Haloacetic acids) and TTHM (total trihalomethanes) concentrations, which are not not comforting. The level of HAA5 is 55.25 ppb, very close to the MCL, which is 60. The level of TTHM is 70.66 ppb, very close to the MCL, which is 80. (Whether the MCL is reliable is another question. Setting maximum concentration levels of contaminants is not only a scientific or medical matter; it has recently become political, with the appointment by the Bush administration of political operatives to positions of authority in scientific agencies like the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Having a clean and healthy environment can be costly to the corporate backers of the Republican party, so instead of forcing them to comply with environmental regulations, Bush has either put people in charge who have no intention of enforcing inconvenient regulations or he has simply rewritten the regulations to exempt his political sponsors. It is hard to trust public health agencies run by political hacks.)

Whenever we have a disturbance in the water supply, such as the pump failure last month, the water contains so much chlorine that it burns my nostrils when I wash my hands. At some point the chlorine becomes a greater health hazard than the possible bacterial contamination, and we can only hope that the authorities know what that point is and are appropriately cautious.

The only other disturbing information in the report is the age of some of the tests. Copper and lead tests were last run six years ago, hexacholorocyclo-pentadiene seven years ago and Beta/Photon emitters three years ago. Things change so fast in a capitalistic/technological/industrial world that relying on a six-year old test for contaminants could amount to gross negligence, although it probably isn't. It would be reassuring if the next report explains why a yearly (or even more frequent) test is not necessary for these substances.

Finally, the water that comes out of my north Jackson faucet tastes and smells foul. I don't recall that Jackson water was that bad when I grew up. In the '50s and '60s, bottled water was what you bought in Europe, not here. Now the tap water in Europe is as good as it gets and those of us who can do so either use filters or buy bottled water at a price higher than the price of gasoline.

What kind of investment would it take to make our city water sweet again?

American Radio Works has performed a valuable service by making available online a database of free travel taken by our legislators and their staffs and paid for mostly by lobbyists between January 2000 and December 2005.

Out of curiosity, I looked up my congressman, Chip Pickering, and came away with a much deeper understanding of why he votes the way he does. He's vice chairman of the house Energy and Commerce Committee and a member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. That's the committee and subcommittee that defeated net neutrality amendments and gave the phone companies almost everything they wanted. Pickering was with them all the way.

So let's look into where he's traveling and who's paying his travel. Our Mississippi legislators are here. Pickering's page is here.

His office reported 38 office trips furnished by outside parties, amounting to $39,078.90 in value. Pickering's share was $14,850.99. Of the 14 trips he reported, 5 were paid for by telecoms: 3 by CTIA-The Wireless Association, 1by AT&T, and one by BellSouth. Four trips were paid for by defense contractors.

His staff took a lot of trips that were paid for by the telecoms. I haven't counted them up, but the great thing about the Internet is that you can look at the information yourself with a couple of clicks. (By the way, do you think you would be able to access that information if the telecoms had the power to control the content coming into your home or business? Pickering's vote against net neutrality would give them that power.)

Pickering, who serves on a committee with jurisdiction over telecommunications and the Internet, seems to be awfully popular with the big telecommunication companies. For a little more insight into his friends, click over to OpenSecrets and look at where his campaign contributions are coming from. In 2005-2006, the communication/electronics sector gave him $171,211, far outstripping the next sector, health, with $105,454.

Now look who his biggest donors are: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Together, these five corporations gave $62,000 and Pickering is running unopposed. Every one of these corporations has a direct interest in controlling access and usage of the Internet. Every one of them fought net neutrality bills in Congress with swarms of lobbyists and millions of dollars spent on slick, misleading commercials.

Now you can understand why Pickering doesn't care a fig about the Internet empowering citizens; he knows on which side his bread is buttered and votes accordingly.

Unfortunately, he has no Democratic opponent in November. It's hard to believe that Mississippians, if they were really informed, would return him to Congress given his record of voting against his constituents' interests. Then again, it just may be that he doesn't regard the people of his congressional district as his constituents, but just chumps to be thrown a bone now and then while he cuts taxes and doles out pork for his real constituents. You judge.

The opening ceremony for the Jackson International Ballet Competition (IBC) was a hit, with a sellout crowd and a some fine dancers who set the bar very, very high. This is an artistic event that is worth taking a great deal of trouble to see.

The competition will run for two weeks, with the final performances of the winners on July 1 & 2 in Thalia Mara Hall. Jackson hosts the IBC only once every four years (alternating with Varna, Bulgaria, Moscow and Tokyo), so go whenever you can. There are precious few opportunities in this area to see live, world-class performances and this is one of them. For ticket information, call 601-973-9249 or emai Aislynn Thomas, the box office manager.

According to a report by Global Insight, the Jackson housing market is 3.6% undervalued in contrast to the overvaluation in many other metropolitan areas. The good news is that homes in Jackson are likely be less affected by a bursting of the national real estate bubble predicted by many economists. This is in stark contrast to the overvaluation of homes in more "popular cities" like Naples, Florida (102.6%), Salinas, California (79.1%) or Medford, Oregon (66.4%), where homeowners could face a catastrophic adjustment.

House Prices in America (Updated for the 1st Quarter of 2006)

Boston Police can alert local residents while a crime is in progress with a computerized system that automatically sends text messages and emails and receives anonymous reports of crimes. According to the Boston Globe, the cost to get started was only $1,475.00 for a single PC. If the mayor wants to control crime here in Jackson, this might be a good start.

City police to send residents electronic crime alerts

One of the less attractive characteristics of our capitalistic system is the modern corporation's obsession with capturing every niche it can without regard for the folks occupying the niche and irrespective of whether it makes much of a difference to the bottom line. I've watched it over and over again with a number of friends being nudged out of a business when a large corporation took an interest.

The Clarion-Ledger is now trying to run free publications in Jackson out of business by offering merchants a stand holding a number of free publications, most of them published by the Clarion-Ledger. The catch: the merchant has to sign a contract not to allow any other magazine stands on his premises for the duration of the contract (1 year) and anyone wanting permission to put their magazine in the rack has to pay the Clarion-Ledger $8.00 per location, either per issue or per month, a prohibitive sum.

It's unethical and probably illegal, but the small publishers could be out of business before the matter could be resolved in the courts.

Here's an article in the Jackson Free Press on what's happening.

Mississippi families making $18,000 or less pay 12.1% of their income in state and local sales, property and income taxes, while those making more than $224,000 pay only 5.4%. The two main factors responsible for the inequity in tax burden are the sales tax and the federal deduction offset, which allows taxpayers to deduct state income tax on their federal income tax returns. While the Mississippi income tax is somewhat progressive, that progressivity is more than made up for by the other taxes.

The legislature attempted to remedy the gross disparity this year by reducing sales tax on groceries and raising them on tobacco, but the governor, steadfast in his loyalty towards his former lobbying clients in the tobacco industry, vetoed the bill. This is consistent with the Republican philosophy that the wealthy should pay as few taxes as possible, and preferably no taxes. It also fits with Mississippi's resort to regressive taxes since the 1930s.

So for the flat taxers in the audience: What would we have to change in order to have a reasonably flat tax? Keep in mind that the state is already reducing public services, including Medicaid, because of shortfalls in tax revenue, and we probably have all the casinos that we we should have. How about a lottery?

A Lottery is a Taxation,

Upon all the Fools in Creation;

And Heav’n be prais’d,

It is easily rais’d,

Credulity’s always in Fashion;

For, Folly’s a Fund,

Will never lose Ground;

While Fools are so rife in the Nation.

Henry Fielding (1732)

Here's a radical idea: how about making the tax system fair? Every dollar paid in taxes by a family making $18,000 a year is a gouge out of their ability to lead a decent life. Every dollar of taxes paid by a family making more than $224,000 a year is no more significant than a flyspeck on the hood of their Mercedes. Maybe they will have to buy Dewar's instead of Balvaney. A truly flat tax would improve the finances of the state tremendously, but any tax system that forces a family at the bottom of the economic ladder to pay 12.1% of their income is a moral outrage. Under the current system, those unfortunate families making less than $18,000 may have to choose, not between two brands of scotch whiskey, but between food and medicine.


Mississippi State & Local Taxes in 1995: Shares of family income for non-elderly married couples. (.pdf)
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Compare different states' taxation burdens

Citizens for Tax Justice

Today the same bucket of bolts ran the #11 morning route. Only 2 passengers. I sat behind the driver to feel what it is like at the front. It's a little better but not much.

Since I couldn't read or listen to the iPod, I watched the scenery and brainstormed some ideas to implement if I ran the bus system:

1. Feature a large, high resolution map of Jackson on the web site with the routes and each bus stop marked. Click on a bus stop and the schedule for that bus stop pops up. There's a city map on the web site now, but it's low resolution and virtually useless. This would be simple and inexpensive.

2. Set up an interactive voice response system that allows customers to call in, key in the bus route, and get the location of buses and whether they are late or broken down. This would be simple and inexpensive. I've programmed systems like that and it's not very difficult at all.

3. Make it possible for customers to register for special bulletins to be sent via text messages to their cellphones. They could restrict it to certain routes and times. That way, the customer will get a message only if the bus is late or if there is something else the customers needs to know. This would be simple and inexpensive.

4. Put wireless Internet access on buses. Combined with buses that are reasonably stable, quiet and comfortable, this would be a huge draw for the downtown commuter crowd. Ideally it would be free, paid for by an ad that would come up on the initial splash screen when the user logged on. This seems simple enough and should pay for itself, but if it doesn't there could always be a small monthly fee. One other caveat: the seats would have to be far enough apart to allow a laptop to be opened. It's hard to use a laptop in tourist class on some airlines because the seats are jammed too closely together to open the screen all the way. Some travelers I know always request an exit aisle seat for that very reason.

5. Thinking very expansively: A web-based ride request system that would allow customers to enter in advance—say 12 hours— where they live, and where they want to go and when they have to be there. The computer thereupon creates routes and schedules to minimize distance and fuel expenditure as well as the walk from the house to the bus stop and then either emails the customer or calls him on the phone with a recorded message, telling him when and where the bus will stop nearest him. Customers who take the bus every day could put in a standing order. To do it right, each bus would be equipped with a GPS device that would direct the driver along the calculated route, which could change each day depending upon demand. The GPS information and the routes could be displayed on the web site to create a dynamic snapshot of the entire transportation system.

An automated dispatching system such as the one I have imagined might make it possible for buses to handle special events, like concerts and entertainments downtown in the evenings, provided that sufficient personnel were available to drive.

The afternoon trip: Instead of the bus we got a City of Jackson minivan with the #11 sign in the window. Hallelujah!! 6 passengers. Smooth and quiet. I could get real used to this.

The trial week is over and according to my intentions I am now to decide whether to ride the bus almost every morning. It's a hard choice. If the buses were smooth and quiet it would be a no-brainer because, setting aside any cost savings, I love not having to drive to work. There is no enjoyment negotiating I-55 between Meadowbrook Road and Pearl Street at 7:45 AM or shortly after 5 PM. My wife tells me that I am in a far better mood when I arrive home by bus rather than automobile. The city is replacing the old buses, so the ride should become a lot more comfortable in a few months, although I suspect that this route will be one of the last to get the new buses, since so few persons ride.

My inclination is to ride the bus, rattles and all. I'll have to drive the car one day a week on the average, especially when I have an appointment during the day or after work. If anyone reading this lives in north Jackson and works downtown, consider taking the bus. With more demand for bus service, the city will be more inclined to upgrade the buses and the frequency of runs.

And for each rider that leaves the car at home, that's one less car polluting the atmosphere, burning up gasoline, and clogging the streets. And you can't even park for ten dollars a week.

Haley Barbour has declared that he doesn't believe in pardons. I haven't heard his reasons, but whatever they may be they can't possibly be morally squared with some incontrovertible facts:

1. Sometimes innocent persons are convicted and sent to prison or execution. No system of justice is perfect. Even a fair system makes mistakes. That's what pardons are intended for. If Barbour truly believes this doesn't happen he is a fool and shouldn't be governor. Apparently he does believe this happens because he joined in the petition to set aside Clyde Kenner's conviction. If he believes that the innocent should rot in prison, then he is morally blind and shouldn't be governor.

2. The strict application of the criminal law often leads to a sentence grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime or the injury. Recidivist sentencing often puts a person in prison for many years for relatively minor crimes, all on the basis of crimes committed many years before. The pardon power was created to correct these mistakes in the interest of justice.

3. Some prisoners deserve mercy, either because of ill health or some extraordinary service rendered either before or during imprisonment.

There are other grounds for pardon, but the point is that the power to pardon was established for the purpose of remedying these injustices. To refuse to pardon for any reason at all is inexcusable. The Good Book has much to say about mercy and how only the merciful are fit to receive mercy. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. " Matt. 5:7 In fact, the Good Book has very little good to say about imprisonment: "... he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;" Isa. 61:1. For such a Christian state, we sure seem to be stingy with mercy and generous with the prison industry.

One last possibility: Barbour himself strongly supports private, for-profit prisons in the state. Pardoning is obviously bad for the prison business.

I arrived at the bus stop too late, so I had to walk home and take the car. Ultimately, it was a good thing, because I had forgotten that I had made an appointment on Lakeland near Airport Road at 5:30 and the bus doesn't go there. The bad thing was that it took thirty minutes in standstill traffic to get from Ridgewood Road to Airport Road, about 3 miles. The entire time I was sitting there, waiting for the traffic to move, I kept asking myself "are we fighting in Iraq for the privilege of doing this?"

Surely the Flowood city fathers don't like a four-mile traffic jam the length of their city. Nobody's buying anything and it pollutes the air. The timing of the traffic lights is abominable. Don't they ever drive on their own streets?

Same bus as yesterday morning, different driver. There were four passengers today. The floor was clean but there was a cardboard box and a plastic bucket behind the passenger seats in the handicapped area, both full of trash.

I had not fully appreciated the dilapidated state of the bus yesterday morning. The aisle seat I first sat on sagged sideways and I had to relocate. The windows clattered as before and the two-way radio seemed to be turned up twice as loud. If I continue having to ride this bus, I'll have to use earplugs or sound-cancelling earbuds.

The afternoon bus was the same type as the morning bus but only two years old according to the driver. The air conditioning was almost too cold, but otherwise the bus was up to snuff. Some of the equipment in the rear for the handicapped was loose and rattled, but overall the noise level was acceptable. It 's hard to understand why they can't fix the noise when all they have to do is tie up some loose belts and fasteners.

The ride was tolerable but not smooth by any measure, especially when we drove over the potholes in front of UMC. A chiropractor's delight.

Impression for day II: It is simply incredible that bus manufacturers have not been able or willing to make urban buses with decent suspension systems. Or is it just that the City of Jackson is too cheap to buy them? A technology that can land a spaceship on Mars and broadcast high-quality pictures back to Earth for months can, if it wishes to, build a comfortable public minibus. If not, it's a great opening for somebody, because the demand for public transit will mushroom in a few years.

The folks in Curitiba, Brazil have done some great things with far less than what we have here in Jackson (.pdf).

I rode the bus to work and back today, the first time in 25 years, partly to see what it was like and partly to see if it was a viable alternative to driving. There is something to be said for public transportation: it's a lot safer and less stressful than negotiating the I-55 grand prix each morning and afternoon. It also gives one time to read, meditate or even socialize with one's fellow passengers, all for a senior fare of fifty cents one-way. At least, that's how I remembered it from the early '80s, when I practiced law downtown. There were usually three or four young lawyers on the bus, along with several clerks from the bankruptcy court and a scattering of office workers from the banks and insurance companies. It made a pleasant crowd. You could talk or you could read, or both. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the way to work and back.

Eventually the law practice required more mobility during the day than public transit offered, so I reluctantly began driving to work and paying for parking (and parking tickets). At one time the city provided a free downtown connector bus with a circular route around the center of town, which I occasionally took if I had the time. On a particularly hot summer day, I remember boarding the bus to find that it had no air conditioning and must have been 105°. How the driver lived through the day is still a mystery.

Today's bus ride would be an exercise in nostalgia. I walked to Ridgewood Road and hailed the Number 11 bus just south of Northside Drive. It was a small bus, the kind one sees carrying seniors around with a lift in the rear for wheelchairs. There were 16 regular seats and 4 more that were folded down but looked as though they could be used. The passenger seats had safety belts. There were only two passengers the whole trip, one of which was myself.

The bus itself had seen better days. It was acceptably clean, however, but the windows needed washing on the outside. A front panel over the window containing a two-way radio and electrical switches was hanging loose and looked as though it might fall off anytime. The fasteners for the windows were broken and the windows rattled whenever the road was bumpy, which, thanks to our shifting soil and the ravages of the climate, was nearly continuous. The shock absorbers had obviously worn out years ago, and the bus pitched and rolled whenever the driver took it over twenty-five. He was a pleasant soul, by the way.

Reading was out of the question because of the pitching and rolling and conversation was impossible because of the noise. I found that I could listen to an audio book on my iPod by turning up the volume.

The bus arrived at the corner of Amite and Lamar at the scheduled time, 7:45, time to walk to the office and make a pot of coffee before anyone else made it in.

Promptly at 5:15, the Number 11 bus crossed Lamar Street going east on Capitol. I had to wave it down; apparently the driver didn't expect many passengers.

It was a larger bus, with about 25 seats. I sat just behind the side door over one of the rear wheels, mainly to inspect the bus and its passengers during the trip. Normally, the closer to the front, the smoother and quieter the ride, since the diesel engine that powers the bus is under the rear seat. This bus was not as clean and spiffy as the morning bus, but I attribute that to the time of day, since this was the last outward run for this route. The floors had accumulated quite a bit of litter and, like the morning bus, the windows needed washing. The air conditioning was on and the bus was comfortably cool, but I could smell the familiar faint odor of diesel exhaust where I was sitting.

The ride was smoother than the morning ride, probably because it was a larger bus. There were five passengers, including me. One of them boarded at UMC.

In spite of the smoother ride the afternoon bus was far worse than the morning ride because of the noise. The roar of the motor was bad enough, but the really obnoxious sounds were coming from the two-way radio in the front that the bus system uses for communications. It screeched incessantly and unintelligibly the entire trip. The iPod was useless, because it hurt my ears if I turned it up enough to hear over the ambient noise.

My initial impression of the JATRAN is not favorable, as you can see, but many of the unpleasantries I encountered could be solved by adequate maintenance. I suspect that the city has been reluctant to properly fund a bus system with as little passenger traffic as I saw today. Without more comfortable buses, however, it will be hard to attract passengers even if gas sells for $10.00 a gallon. I live about six miles from work, so walking to work every day is out of the question, but the commute would take less than half an hour by bicycle.

What to do? The first step would be for the mayor and members of the city council to ride the buses themselves to see just what a sorry system we now have. Of course, the ideal measure would be to require council members to ride the bus from their homes to all city council meetings and the mayor to ride the bus every day to his office. That would lea