Republicans Determined To Steal Hancock County Senate Seat

The following e-mail was sent to a who's who of Mississippi industry PACs and Republican donors.

Subject: Scottie Cuevas - It's Not Over

Dear Friends,

You may have wondered about the final outcome of the election in Senate District 46 involving incumbent Scottie Cuevas and David Baria, former head of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association. It's not over, and Scottie needs your assistance. The contested election, where there were numerous irregularities, is in court and Scottie has hired an attorney. He needs your contributions to help pay legal fees. If you made a contribution to Scottie's campaign, now is the time to follow through and get him across the finish line.

Please contact Dick Wilcox at BIPEC 601-000-0000 or 0000000@bipec.org: about contributing to the effort to assist Sen. Cuevas with this election challenge.

Steve Simmons
Director of Government Affairs
Mississippi State Medical Association
601.000.0000 Office
601.000.0000 Cell
601.000.0000 Fax

Yep, these are major REPUBLICAN groups raising money for supposedly Democratic Senator Scottie Cuevas. This is why I supported Baria in the primary. Cuevas doesn't vote like a Democrat AND this seems to confirm the rumor that he was intending to switch to the Republican party had he won re-election.

You may have noticed that I redacted most contact info. Many people treat that as private so I will rarely print anything other than official office numbers or official e-mails as I would hope others would do for me.

Also if you are interested in helping the true Democrat and primary victor David Baria you can contact me for more information.

Finding Katrina Trailers For What?

From the Sun Herald:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says its still has travel trailers at 1,200 addresses in Pearl River County. County building inspectors are tracking them down.

They lost them?

Pichon said so far he has received no instructions other than to locate all the travel trailers and report on the status of them.

"They told us to go out and find these travel trailers and see how many are occupied and how many have pulled permits and are making progress," Pichon said in a http://www.picayuneitem.com article.

So once they find them they are just going to catalog them?

"FEMA gave us a list and asked us to help out, but we don't know where it's going to lead. FEMA asked the county to see if people are building or if they (the travel trailers) are just sitting there vacant," Lumpkin said.

Well I hope FEMA knows what it is doing besides buying back poisoned trailers. Transparency is a necessity. It's unfortunate we don't have it.

The Sun Herald Article

Republican Pete Perry Examines DEMOCRATIC Primary In HANCOCK County?

Look who's surfaced in Hancock County -- Pete Perry the Hinds County Republican Chair who had to defend his complete failure as an elections official in the August 7 primary on every news outlet in Central Mississippi. What's he doing in Hancock? He is examining the ballot boxes in the DEMOCRATIC primary where David Baria beat Scottie Cuevas by about 30 votes.

That's right -- the father of Haley Barbour's policy director Jim Perry is down on the Coast representing a Democratic candidate!

It definitely looks like the Barbour machine had different plans for Senate District 46. Rumors were that Cuevas had promised a party switch to match his voting patterns after he won. Only he didn't win. Now Barbour has sent one of his henchmen down there to screw things up as bad as he did in Hinds County.

Word from the Coast is that nothing untoward has been found, although Perry has behaved badly.

David Baria is a fine, smart and strong man who conducted an honorable campaign. It's no wonder that Barbour and friends don't want him in the Senate and will pull every hat trick they can to keep him away from the capitol.

Hancock County's Stalled Recovery

Facing South brings attention to a Reuters article highlighting trouble in Pass Christian and Pearlington.

Pass Christian House Member Diane Peranich is quoted expressing concern with possible condo development. Some of the communities lost much of their tax base and are less likely to oppose development that doesn't go with the historical nature of their community due to the possible revenue that that development could generate.

"What we don't want is miles of high-rises on the Gulf of Mexico white sands and no access to our citizens," said Diane Peranich, a state representative who grew up in the area.

"Those of us who have been here as long as the mosquitoes are not going anyplace. You are welcome to come join us but you are not going to replace us," she said.

The slow progress of Pearlington is also highlighted in the article.

The local school and post office remain closed, few businesses have reopened and only a quarter of its 800 homes have been rebuilt, according to Glenn Locklin of the charity One House at a Time.

Volunteers are key to reconstruction but their numbers have dwindled as other natural disasters, such as a tornado in May that ravaged a town in Kansas, have drawn the focus of concern away from the aftermath of Katrina, he said.

"You don't hear about us anymore. They say we're not news," Locklin said. "The one thing people don't realize is that we are just as bad as we were."

All this is infuriating when I think about how much money has flowed into this state. Barbour farmed it out in sweetheart contracts to his friends and allies and Republican office holders (like Sen. Moffatt) and now South Mississippians are paying the price.

Post Katrina State Funds Windfall Not Going To Best Use

Salon magazine looks deeper than the Governor's press releases and finds basic needs unfilled on the Mississippi Gulf Coast:

In Hancock County, Rocky Pullman paints a bleak picture. The recovery is proceeding so slowly that, almost two years after the storm, most of his neighbors still can't get mail. Before Katrina, the majority of Pearlington residents used post-office boxes; but since no post offices -- or any other major city, county or school buildings in Hancock County -- have been rebuilt, they have to drive an hour round-trip to Bay St. Louis to pick up a letter.

"We've been asking for three post offices to be erected in Hancock County for well over a year now and have got no response whatsoever," Pullman says. "Those are the kind of things that really bother you. It's hard to get people to feel good when they have to spend the amount of money they do with the price of gasoline just to get their mail."
...
President Bush waived the match requirements entirely for New York following the 9/11 attacks, but he has said he opposes any further waiver for Katrina funds. The Iraq/Katrina supplemental appropriations bill passed by Congress last month would have completely waived the match, but the president vetoed it. The new House bill approved last week also waives the match, but the president has not signaled his willingness to compromise on the issue.

If President Bush could someone use Katrina to justify another war, you know he would gladly spare no expense. Republicans had the choice to bring accountiblility to this war and help our struggling cities, but instead they chose to suport partisanship and their President above all else.

But under Barbour's leadership, the state has been unwilling to use its good fortune to help debt-ridden towns -- and some are at risk of going under.

...
"One thing you continually hear from officials from FEMA to the state level is that -- and they love this phrase -- they've 'never seen a city go under because of a natural disaster,'" Longo says. "But there have been so many firsts in Katrina."