Hi folks, this is John Leek. I thank Jeff for his kind words. I am out of active partisan politics as I pursue God's call on my life. I am glad he'll be starting this up again. There's a voice here that isn't heard elsewhere.
I did this interview (nothing special) back in 2007 and somehow lost it, finding it again after I'd stopped blogging and so I'll share it now. The focus is on Democracy For America and their endorsement of Gary Anderson and is largely lighthearted in tone and content.
In this second part I ask about how we can get folks like Representative Gene Taylor to "vote better." I'd like to state that I have always liked and respected Gene Taylor despite some disagreements. There are many reasons he is re-elected by such wide margins each year, one of which he is simply a good man.
The point Jim Dean makes about providing support once people are elected is so true. I once asked Gene Taylor who he got his mail from (as in which interest groups) and he shared that the overwhelming majority of form letters and e-mails that come in to his office come from groups like the American Family Association. We shouldn't be surprised that the loudest, most persistent voices are the ones that get the attention of our lawmakers.
Showing posts with label Exclusive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exclusive. Show all posts
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Breaking News: Ronnie Musgrove Voices His Support for Net Neutrality
“In such a short time, the internet has developed into a key tool for our free society. It has driven economic development, enabled innovation, stimulated political discussion and provided new forums for the exercise of our First Amendment right of free speech. Net Neutrality is vital to keeping the internet free and open, and protecting access to its information for all Mississippians and Americans.”
-Governor Ronnie Musgrove
-Governor Ronnie Musgrove
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Candidates' Recent Guest Posts On Cotton Mouth
We set out some rules for the posts: HERE
MS-1: Steve Holland
MS-1: Travis Childers
MS-3: Randy Eads
MS-Sen: Erik Fleming
MS-1: Steve Holland
MS-1: Travis Childers
MS-3: Randy Eads
MS-Sen: Erik Fleming
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Exclusive Video: John Edwards in Canton, MS
I hope y'all enjoy my the result of my first experiment with original web video.
(Update: I think it just hasn't worked it's way through the YouTube system so give it an hour and then try again)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Exclusive George Dale Video from Mississippi Municipal League Event
George Dale was not on the program to speak, but after a candidate didn't show up they allowed him to take their place. He spoke after Chaney and Anderson.
"I'm George Dale running for Commissioner of Insurance and I don't intend to blame anything on my predecessor." :) (Dale is the longest serving statewide elected official)
I felt his speach was the best of the three. However, his time has passed and we need new leadership on Insurance which Sen. Chaney correctly pointed out is a huge and growing expense for all Mississippians.
Update 6/29/07: Cotton Mouth contributor Ana Maria offers This Analysis of George Dale
"I'm George Dale running for Commissioner of Insurance and I don't intend to blame anything on my predecessor." :) (Dale is the longest serving statewide elected official)
I felt his speach was the best of the three. However, his time has passed and we need new leadership on Insurance which Sen. Chaney correctly pointed out is a huge and growing expense for all Mississippians.
Update 6/29/07: Cotton Mouth contributor Ana Maria offers This Analysis of George Dale
Exclusive Gary Anderson Video from Mississippi Municipal League Event
Gary Anderson is running against incumbent George Dale for the Democratic nomination for Insurance Commissioner.
In much of the video you can see George Dale in the lower right hand corner. He sat to the side of the room and listened to the Republican And Democratic candidates who are vying for his seat.
Exclusive Mike Chaney Video From Mississippi Municipal League Event
This is the second half of Mike Chaney's stump speech. (I pulled out the camera when he pulled out a monkey)
"I don't know how you can take money from a company you're regulating, as a legislator it was hard for me to do." (he was cut off at this moment by the person keeping time.
I found it interesting that in a part of the speech I didn't record (apologies) he pretty much endorsed Dale for the position of Insurance Commissioner which is the postition Chaney is running for as a Republican.
(I failed to catch video of Chaney throwing the monkey into the crowd.)
"I don't know how you can take money from a company you're regulating, as a legislator it was hard for me to do." (he was cut off at this moment by the person keeping time.
I found it interesting that in a part of the speech I didn't record (apologies) he pretty much endorsed Dale for the position of Insurance Commissioner which is the postition Chaney is running for as a Republican.
(I failed to catch video of Chaney throwing the monkey into the crowd.)
Thursday, June 7, 2007
BREAKING NEWS: MS Press Changes Format to Protect Barbour (with update)
After years of having a governors debate in the year of statewide elections, the Mississippi Press Association will NOT offer a debate as previously planned between candidates Haley Barbour and John Arthur Eaves.
I called the Mississippi Press Association and was told that the format had been changed from debate to press conference style.
The Lt. Governor's debate will still be held as planned.
No other comment was offered.
Involved parties recieved notice by letter today.
This looks suspiciously like Barbour threatened a boycott because he didn't want to be on the stage at the same time as Eaves. By doing so he robs voters and the press of the chance to see the two of them together. Haley Barbour, don't be a coward, stand and debate!
More Details will be added as they come available.
- Update 12:54am 6/8/07 - Contrary to what was recieved from at least 2 sources including a representative at the Mississippi Press Association is the following from their blog posted 30 minutes after our original post:
"The non-debate gets underway at 10:30 a.m. Friday, June 22."
As soon as we can confirm either way, a new post will be published.
I called the Mississippi Press Association and was told that the format had been changed from debate to press conference style.
The Lt. Governor's debate will still be held as planned.
No other comment was offered.
Involved parties recieved notice by letter today.
This looks suspiciously like Barbour threatened a boycott because he didn't want to be on the stage at the same time as Eaves. By doing so he robs voters and the press of the chance to see the two of them together. Haley Barbour, don't be a coward, stand and debate!
More Details will be added as they come available.
- Update 12:54am 6/8/07 - Contrary to what was recieved from at least 2 sources including a representative at the Mississippi Press Association is the following from their blog posted 30 minutes after our original post:
"The non-debate gets underway at 10:30 a.m. Friday, June 22."
As soon as we can confirm either way, a new post will be published.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
The (Black) Magic of Tort Reform *Cotton Mouth Exclusive*
By Lance Stevens, former President of the Miss. Trial Lawyers Assoc.
My friend and political adversary, Lex Taylor, wields a magical pen when he writes on his favorite subject–tort reform. “Magic” because he clearly writes with disappearing ink. You know, the kind that packs the same sincerity as those trick candles you can never blow out on a birthday cake.
Taylor, a manufacturing heir who hates the mere suggestion of justice for anyone out of his social class, pushes the envelope in the Clarion-Ledger editorial where he suggests that Mississippi’s new tort deformed legal environment has improved our economy and health care system. Heck, even his anecdotes fall on their face.
If I were a trial lawyer–and I am–I would dismantle his logic piece by piece with today’s realities and hard statistics, rather than the sweet sounds of the letters to the editor which drove the tort reform debate.
First, let’s start with the hardest sell: lawsuits and doctors. Physicians are such role models, often life savers, that their romanticized stature in the community is beyond reproach. I think the world of them, as most of my colleagues do, though they do not share my enthusiasm when us.
But they are secretly up in arms about being duped as the tort reform hit men. When financial markets hit record lows in early 2001-2002, their insurance premiums more than doubled. And now that markets have rebounded, their premiums have been reduced a mere 15%. This is so even though Lex claims medical malpractice claims are down 90% (by the way, he doesn’t tell us how many of those 90% were legitimate negligence claims where children, the elderly and homemakers suffered horribly, but the new laws make a financial recovery impossible). Premiums up 150%, claims down 90%, financial market way up, premiums only down 15%. Sort of makes you scratch your head, doesn’t it?
But doctors aren’t speaking up publicly because nobody likes to admit to being bamboozled. I’ve been there. I’ve been snookered before. It’s embarrassing. But to get used so publicly and on such a grand scale is humiliating–particularly when admitting it would mean your blood enemies (trial lawyers) were right all along: rates went up, but not because of mongo jury verdicts.
Second, you have to roll out of your chair when Taylor lists the new business recruits in the state since 2002. Can you say Bryan Foods? The furniture industry? Any number of other plant closings statewide? What my friend Taylor and his cronies are spectacularly successful at is overlooking the big picture–the fact that the state has lost more manufacturing jobs this decade than in any other time in history– and spoonfeeding their justice hating lemmings with inapplicable “success” stories. And that brings us to the whopper of all bogus stories.
When Toyota picked San Antonio over north Mississippi for it Tundra plant around 2002, a Toyota official named Dennis Cuneo broke tradition and gushed to local business journals about how Mississippi was a close second and was a superior site for industry. Then, years later, at the request of the Governor, that same Toyota official suggested in a letter that our tort system cost us the Toyota plant.
A well researched memo was then circulated around the Capitol which made Cuneo/Barbour’s claim a laughing stock. But now you even hear disingenuous candidates like Charlie Ross making the same claim. Here are the facts. I personally asked Governor Musgrove about his negotiations with Toyota and he assured me, while shaking his head and rolling his eyes, that Toyota never even mentioned our tort laws or Court system. The Capitol memo, entitled “Tall Tales from Tejas,” included numerous quotes from Cuneo outlining the reasons Toyota picked San Antonio. They are too lengthy to mention here, but let’s just say the dual rail system, the largest truck market in the country and surreal tax incentives and subsidies were high on his list, and civil justice never passed his lips.
But what makes the claim truly comical is that Texas did not enact tort reform until after the Toyota plant deal. They were ranked 46th our of 50 states in the Chamber of Commerce’s darling Harris Poll when it comes to judicial fairness to corporations. . To this day, after their tort reform disaster, Texas is ranked 47th . Civil justice had nothing to do with Toyota’s decision to pick Texas.
So what about the new Toyota plant that Northeast Mississippi local government officials heroically captured after Governor Barbour refused to assist them legislatively? Well, that same Chamber of Commerce poll to this day–five years after the monumental tort reform of 2002 and three years after the passage of wave two in 2004–ranks Mississippi 49th in the country in judicial fairness. Forty ninth! Only West Virginia gets lower marks than us.
So let’s get this picture straight. Civil justice has nothing to do with recruiting big business (if a defective car kills someone in Salt Lake City, Utah laws will apply, not Mississippi). And the Harris Poll is a bunch of obnoxious corporate lawyers who think we Mississippians are all a bunch of toothless, barefoot, uneducated, racists who are void of any culture. They hate us because we are Mississippi, not because a jury will give a dude a fair shake against a multi-national corporation.
And, finally, most legal analysts agree that the abuses of Big Insurance to our residents after Katrina are largely related to the protections that Governor Barbour, Charlie Ross and their behind-the-scenes profiteers passed to protect corporate wrongdoers from regular old Mississippians. I resent them penalizing my Coast neighbors like that. I hate them for abusing my four kids like that.
Lex Taylor, my friend, I still love ya, but you’re as wrongheaded on this issue as you have ever been. Even if you can still pull a rabbit out of a hat.
[You may obtain the full “Tall Tales from Tejas” legislative memo by writing Lance Stevens at lstevens@stevensandward.com]
- Cotton Mouth Note: - This is a guest perspective. If you believe that you have something to add to any story up for current debate please send your writing to cottonmouthblog (at) gmail (dot) com. We may even publish it.
My friend and political adversary, Lex Taylor, wields a magical pen when he writes on his favorite subject–tort reform. “Magic” because he clearly writes with disappearing ink. You know, the kind that packs the same sincerity as those trick candles you can never blow out on a birthday cake.
Taylor, a manufacturing heir who hates the mere suggestion of justice for anyone out of his social class, pushes the envelope in the Clarion-Ledger editorial where he suggests that Mississippi’s new tort deformed legal environment has improved our economy and health care system. Heck, even his anecdotes fall on their face.
If I were a trial lawyer–and I am–I would dismantle his logic piece by piece with today’s realities and hard statistics, rather than the sweet sounds of the letters to the editor which drove the tort reform debate.
First, let’s start with the hardest sell: lawsuits and doctors. Physicians are such role models, often life savers, that their romanticized stature in the community is beyond reproach. I think the world of them, as most of my colleagues do, though they do not share my enthusiasm when us.
But they are secretly up in arms about being duped as the tort reform hit men. When financial markets hit record lows in early 2001-2002, their insurance premiums more than doubled. And now that markets have rebounded, their premiums have been reduced a mere 15%. This is so even though Lex claims medical malpractice claims are down 90% (by the way, he doesn’t tell us how many of those 90% were legitimate negligence claims where children, the elderly and homemakers suffered horribly, but the new laws make a financial recovery impossible). Premiums up 150%, claims down 90%, financial market way up, premiums only down 15%. Sort of makes you scratch your head, doesn’t it?
But doctors aren’t speaking up publicly because nobody likes to admit to being bamboozled. I’ve been there. I’ve been snookered before. It’s embarrassing. But to get used so publicly and on such a grand scale is humiliating–particularly when admitting it would mean your blood enemies (trial lawyers) were right all along: rates went up, but not because of mongo jury verdicts.
Second, you have to roll out of your chair when Taylor lists the new business recruits in the state since 2002. Can you say Bryan Foods? The furniture industry? Any number of other plant closings statewide? What my friend Taylor and his cronies are spectacularly successful at is overlooking the big picture–the fact that the state has lost more manufacturing jobs this decade than in any other time in history– and spoonfeeding their justice hating lemmings with inapplicable “success” stories. And that brings us to the whopper of all bogus stories.
When Toyota picked San Antonio over north Mississippi for it Tundra plant around 2002, a Toyota official named Dennis Cuneo broke tradition and gushed to local business journals about how Mississippi was a close second and was a superior site for industry. Then, years later, at the request of the Governor, that same Toyota official suggested in a letter that our tort system cost us the Toyota plant.
A well researched memo was then circulated around the Capitol which made Cuneo/Barbour’s claim a laughing stock. But now you even hear disingenuous candidates like Charlie Ross making the same claim. Here are the facts. I personally asked Governor Musgrove about his negotiations with Toyota and he assured me, while shaking his head and rolling his eyes, that Toyota never even mentioned our tort laws or Court system. The Capitol memo, entitled “Tall Tales from Tejas,” included numerous quotes from Cuneo outlining the reasons Toyota picked San Antonio. They are too lengthy to mention here, but let’s just say the dual rail system, the largest truck market in the country and surreal tax incentives and subsidies were high on his list, and civil justice never passed his lips.
But what makes the claim truly comical is that Texas did not enact tort reform until after the Toyota plant deal. They were ranked 46th our of 50 states in the Chamber of Commerce’s darling Harris Poll when it comes to judicial fairness to corporations. . To this day, after their tort reform disaster, Texas is ranked 47th . Civil justice had nothing to do with Toyota’s decision to pick Texas.
So what about the new Toyota plant that Northeast Mississippi local government officials heroically captured after Governor Barbour refused to assist them legislatively? Well, that same Chamber of Commerce poll to this day–five years after the monumental tort reform of 2002 and three years after the passage of wave two in 2004–ranks Mississippi 49th in the country in judicial fairness. Forty ninth! Only West Virginia gets lower marks than us.
So let’s get this picture straight. Civil justice has nothing to do with recruiting big business (if a defective car kills someone in Salt Lake City, Utah laws will apply, not Mississippi). And the Harris Poll is a bunch of obnoxious corporate lawyers who think we Mississippians are all a bunch of toothless, barefoot, uneducated, racists who are void of any culture. They hate us because we are Mississippi, not because a jury will give a dude a fair shake against a multi-national corporation.
And, finally, most legal analysts agree that the abuses of Big Insurance to our residents after Katrina are largely related to the protections that Governor Barbour, Charlie Ross and their behind-the-scenes profiteers passed to protect corporate wrongdoers from regular old Mississippians. I resent them penalizing my Coast neighbors like that. I hate them for abusing my four kids like that.
Lex Taylor, my friend, I still love ya, but you’re as wrongheaded on this issue as you have ever been. Even if you can still pull a rabbit out of a hat.
[You may obtain the full “Tall Tales from Tejas” legislative memo by writing Lance Stevens at lstevens@stevensandward.com]
- Cotton Mouth Note: - This is a guest perspective. If you believe that you have something to add to any story up for current debate please send your writing to cottonmouthblog (at) gmail (dot) com. We may even publish it.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Freedom Chorus at the Sounds by the Sea Memorial Day Weekend Concert
The Freedom Chorus sings before the Gulf Coast Symphony begins. I meant to bring you video of that, but the wind picked up and the audio was no good. Enjoy your evening.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Exclusive Congressman Gene Taylor Video on Iraq
Strong Words from Congressman Taylor on Iraq
"How do win a counterinsurgency when 80% of the people don't want you there? It's a complete flip-flop from September of '03 the first time I heard that number in the exact same place and exact same room. It got worse, it said about 60% of the Iraqis said it was okay to kill an American."
...
"How do you turn that around? Because unless you turn that around, nothing else is going to work. If we don't have the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people telling us where the IEDs are, telling us who's shooting at us, making bombs, if we can't count on their help, we don't speak their language, we can't turn this around. And no one (at the Pentagon) ever gave me a good answer."
...
"As people are searching for what to do, I'm going to recommend to the President that we ask the Iraqi's to hold an election and that's the question, 'Do you want the Americans to stay?' and you know as it takes in Mississippi it takes a 3/5 vote to raise taxes and that's the percentage I put on it. I don't want just 51% saying we want you guys to stay. Unless 60% of the Iraqis are willing to say 'Yes we want you guys to stay and yes we are going to cooperate with you and we want to tell you where the IEDs are and yes we're going to tell you who's making those mines and yes we're going to tell you who's kidnapping people at night.' If they're not in it with us then I'm at the point of saying to heck with them." (applause)
It may be hard to hear the first minute, but the main quotes follow that section.
"How do win a counterinsurgency when 80% of the people don't want you there? It's a complete flip-flop from September of '03 the first time I heard that number in the exact same place and exact same room. It got worse, it said about 60% of the Iraqis said it was okay to kill an American."
...
"How do you turn that around? Because unless you turn that around, nothing else is going to work. If we don't have the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people telling us where the IEDs are, telling us who's shooting at us, making bombs, if we can't count on their help, we don't speak their language, we can't turn this around. And no one (at the Pentagon) ever gave me a good answer."
...
"As people are searching for what to do, I'm going to recommend to the President that we ask the Iraqi's to hold an election and that's the question, 'Do you want the Americans to stay?' and you know as it takes in Mississippi it takes a 3/5 vote to raise taxes and that's the percentage I put on it. I don't want just 51% saying we want you guys to stay. Unless 60% of the Iraqis are willing to say 'Yes we want you guys to stay and yes we are going to cooperate with you and we want to tell you where the IEDs are and yes we're going to tell you who's making those mines and yes we're going to tell you who's kidnapping people at night.' If they're not in it with us then I'm at the point of saying to heck with them." (applause)
It may be hard to hear the first minute, but the main quotes follow that section.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Ministers and Pastors Organize Against Proposed Choctaw Casino in Prayer Rally
This CottonMouthBlog EXCLUSIVE Video is provided by John Leek. It features Carl King (Senior Pastor of the Crossroads Church of the Nazarene) as the last speaker at the prayer rally.
The event which happened today at 3pm today (5-20-07) had an attendance of 60 to 70 people and a sizable number of local pastors. They stand in opposition to the building of a casino in Jackson County which currently has none and has never voted to approve them. They fear that if the Mississippi Choctaw are able to build, nothing will stop others from following.
Pascagoula Mississippi Press
Jackson Clarion Ledger
The Sun Herald
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