Jackson Clarion-Ledger columnist Sid Salter points out that if Ronnie Musgrove had his way on free trade, there’d be no Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi.

Mike Hollihan has been repeatedly exposed to Ronnie Musgrove’s ad campaign, and notes that the Musgrove campaign is trying to tap nativist sentiments to keep him in office. Musgrove barely won in 1999 against former congressman Mike Parker, who a number of my friends (more knowledgeable than I about Mississippi politics at the time) considered a closet Klansman. Haley Barbour is going to be a stiff challenge for him.

Overall, I think Musgrove’s been a bit of a mixed bag. He’s let the legislature get away with papering over a huge budget deficit in the coming fiscal year (in no small part due to a huge increase in education spending in the election year budget), and he’s run a number of state departments like a racial spoils system for certain state legislators—most notably, the state’s health bureaucracy. On the other hand, he’s held the line on taxes and mostly behaved sensibly, although his ad campaign is becoming a giant embarassment.

I think the big strike against Barbour is that he’s never held a major office in the state. Both candidates have been spending obscene amounts of effort in this campaign courting the Christian right, so that issue (which normally would dispose me to vote for Democrats) is a wash. On the other hand, the real power’s arguably in the lieutenant governor’s office, where the race is between apparent raving lunatic Amy Tuck (R this week) and Barbara Blackmon (D). And, generally, Barbour has run a less sleazy campaign than Musgrove. So unless something changes in the next month, I’ll probably be voting for Barbour.

Not Quite Tea and Crumpets has some interesting thoughts on this year’s races too. I’d forgotten about the $50 million that Musgrove and his pals in the legislature swiped from the Department of Transportation to balance this year’s budget (so if you want to know why our state’s highway projects are behind schedule, that’s one big reason).

Today’s Memphis Commercial Appeal contains a typical rendition of one of the fundamental problems with the newspaper: it confuses the op-ed page with a forum for writing news pieces that are completely unsourced. Today’s example: its editorial on the selection of a route for Interstate 69 through the city, which somehow in 527 words manages to avoid taking a position on absolutely anything. Let’s start at the beginning:

AN ADVISORY committee’s proposed route for the extension of Interstate 69 through metropolitan Memphis offers a compromise that should provide some satisfaction to the highway’s proponents in Tennessee as well as Mississippi. The recommended route is actually two routes: one through downtown Memphis that would get the I-69 designation and an outer loop to be called I-269.

Indeed it should. Did it occur to anyone at the CA to interview these proponents so we can be sure? Or are we just engaging in wild speculation here?

Officials in Mississippi, backed by the state’s congressional delegation, say they would prefer a horseshoe-shaped loop for I-69 between Millington and Hernando to improve transportation and bring new economic activity to eastern DeSoto and Marshall counties. Memphis officials have not opposed an I-69 bypass, but have lobbied for a downtown route for the new highway, which eventually will link Canada to Mexico through eight U.S. states.

Well, the basic facts, at least, aren’t in question.

Much of the Shelby County portion of the proposed outer loop is built or under construction. The Tenn. 385 loop, which includes Paul Barret Parkway, would become I-269 at Millington, connecting to a new section of Tenn. 385 that is under construction between Arlington and Collierville.

It might have been worthwhile to clarify that part of Tenn. 385—the Nonconnah Parkway—won’t become part of I-269. That, you know, would actually be informative.

South of Collierville, a road would have to be built through the northwest corner of Marshall County and across northeast DeSoto County. The new road would cross I-55 north of Hernando. Work on the highway west of that point is under way, with grading, drainage and bridge work on the stretch that runs from U.S. 61 to Interstate 55 expected to be complete by November 2004.

Good to know our friends at the CA at least read the DeSoto Times, as a reader of the CA wouldn’t actually know this from their previous reporting on the topic. (For the record, we’re four paragraphs in, and there has yet to appear a single opinion.)

Much of its route through Memphis is paved. From Millington, a new stretch of the highway would be built to just below Frayser, following a path west of U.S. 51. From there it would use existing freeways, starting with the connector between U.S. 51 and the I-40/240 loop, merging with I-40/240 and then following I-55 South, picking up I-269 traffic north of Hernando, then heading southwest into the Mississippi Delta.

“Much of its route through Memphis is paved?” And the rest is a cowpath? Are there dirt freeways in Shelby County?

Temporarily, the new highway would be a welcome addition to the regional transportation system for suburban Memphis residents. Local commuters spent an average of 36 hours waiting in traffic in 2001, according to a report released last week by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. That’s about 15 hours less than the average urban commuter wasted, but no doubt more than the typical local commuter would prefer.

As the I-69 project encourages more development on the fringes of the metropolitan area, however, its advantages to the commuting public will wane. Particularly in Marshall and DeSoto counties, where new stretches of roadway would be built, I-269 could exacerbate the urban sprawl that has had considerable impact on the quality of life, culture and economics of Memphis and surrounding communities.

Never mind that Mississippi officials already planned to build a freeway along the I-269 route anyway, starting in 2009. Besides which, I suspect most people in Marshall and DeSoto counties prefer the “urban sprawl” to what was there before, since those counties didn’t really have much of an economy before it.

Interestingly enough, the Commercial Appeal isn’t very upset about a new stretch of roadway between Memphis and Millington, which is likely to be a larger sprawl magnet, seeing as that area will be much more accessible to downtown than southeastern DeSoto County is. One suspects they’re on better terms with Millington City Hall.

And the environmental impact of the highway has not been sufficiently explored. The road’s proponents maintain I-269 could have a positive effect on air quality, by relieving some of the congestion that a single, downtown route would create. Its effects on wetlands and farms could become sources of contention, though, before a final decision is made.

Uh, I call bullshit. The Tennessee and Mississippi departments of transportation have been studying the highway proposal in detail since December 2000. They have produced a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that discusses the “effects on wetlands and farms,” among other topics, which will be (a) very large and comprehensive and (b) available at area libraries later this fall, once it is approved by the Federal Highway Administration.

By late this year, a draft environmental impact statement must go to the Federal Highway Administration. Public hearings early next year could finally provide the information needed to determine what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.

Uh, hello? The Technical Advisory Committee has already determined “what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.” That’s why they made the decision to go with the “system alternative.” The public hearings are designed to determine whether the public agrees with that choice—there have already been two other sets of public meetings designed to find out what alternatives the public would like to see considered.

By the way, that’s where this “editorial” ends. What does the CA think? Who knows? But if you’re going to be an opinion leader, it probably helps to have an opinion in the first place.

According to last Thursday’s DeSoto Times, officials studying the planned route of Interstate 69 through the Memphis area have decided that both the loop route and the through route are needed and will recommend the construction of both routes. More at I69Info.com, of course.

Incidentally, this means the DeSoto Times has scooped the Commercial Appeal by nearly a week. In case you were keeping score at home.

Mike Hollihan had running coverage of the hostage situation at Dyersburg State Community College yesterday. Nice job, Mike!

By the way, the current scoring is: Hollihan 1, GoMemphis Blogs 0 (forfeit, they didn’t show up for the event).

Paul Krugman, in an apparent effort to rehabilitate his image in the blogosphere prior to the publication of his interview with Kevin Drum, had his research assistants write pens a ten page NYT Magazine article on tax policy. Robert Prather and Matthew Stinson have reactions, while Markus has a roundup of other reactions too. I think Prather is on to something when he writes:

That’s why I’m not bothered by the current “starve the beast” phenomenon; I know we will raise taxes in the future and am not bothered by it as long as it is accompanied by reform. The current system puts a $200 billion burden on the U.S. economy and is itself debilitating.

Matthew’s reaction concentrates on Krugman’s attempt to compare the U.S. tax situation with Alabama’s (a specious comparison at best; by all accounts, Alabama’s tax system is even more regressive than that non-income tax states like Florida and Texas, resembling Mississippi’s in its apparent progressivity coupled with absurdly generous deductions for itemizers), and notes that national conservatives’ meddling in Alabama will be counterproductive in the long run:

National conservatives attacked Riley and his tax referendum hoping this would become another Prop 13 moment of anti-tax consensus. This was wrong-headed and dare-I-say destructive to the Republican cause over the long term in Alabama. Think about it: the middle class people who voted down the tax increase, who, inexplicably, were going to have their taxes lowered by the referendum, are the same people who demand the kinds of government services that the tax increase was designed to pay for—education, law enforcement, and infrastructure. When Gov. Riley has to make cuts in these essential services, the fickle voters (Are there any other kinds?—ed. No.) will turn against Republicans in favor of moderate Democrats who will promise to restore funding.

That being said, one possible reason for Riley’s plan’s failure was that the new tax system proposed in the referendum wasn’t constrained with an effective check on the legislature’s ability to increase taxes at its whim in the future. If the root cause of a lot of middle class discontent with the plan was a (probably well-earned) distrust of the Alabama legislature, the failure to include a Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights or some other device to check tax increases was a major oversight in the plan.

Elections for student body governments are, historically, very low-turnout affairs, for reasons that anyone who’s read the political science literature would predict: it is a low information environment, there are no party labels, and—to top it off—virtually nothing is at stake. With these conditions, it’s a miracle anyone votes in them at all. So the Ole Miss ASB decided to pump up the turnout a bit by adding a non-binding referendum on the future of the school’s mascot, Colonel Reb, to the ballot. And, lo and behold, there was a bump in turnout:

Almost 94 percent of the students who voted Tuesday’s non-binding special opinion poll held by the ASB want to keep Colonel Reb as the school’s athletic mascot.

Of the 1,687 student[s] who participated in the poll only 103 of them favored discarding the mascot, or one in 17 students.

The moral of the story: never underestimate the power of a mascot to get people to vote. But at least two people are taking this election seriously:

Keith Sisson, publisher of The New Standard, and his attorney spent much of Tuesday evening videotaping every move made by the ballot box from the Colonel Reb polling. Sisson also was allowed to place a signed evidence seal over the ballot box to verify to him that the box had not been tampered with.

Mr. Sisson apparently has confused Oxford with Chicago. It’s a common mistake. No word yet on whether the ACLU will be joining a suit on ballot security in this important, nay, crucial election.

Patrick Carver, posting at Southern Conservatives, has a somewhat different take on the poll.

I got a fax today from a group called Mississippians for Economic Progress (I’d like to meet the Mississippians who oppose economic progress, by the way) who want me to sign a tort reform pledge. The copy of the pledge I got calls for these state law changes (I’ve shortened some of the planks):

1. Reasonable caps on non-economic damages that may be awarded.
2. Protection for manufacturers and sellers of products from punitive damages if they have complied with specifically applicable government regulations.
3. Elimination of joint and several liability.
4. Additional protections [for retailers and distributors who] sell and distribute products manufactured by others….
5. Numerous changes… to stop the joining of numerous parties’ claims and forum-shopping.
6. Prohibition of multiple punitive damage awards for the same conduct.
7. Greater protection against liability for property owners and businesses for intentional wrongful acts of others on their property.
8. Enforcement of arbitration agreements.
   

I know some libertarians like Radley Balko don’t like tort reform proposals (although often on federalism grounds, which wouldn’t apply to a state-level tort reform bill), but some do. And I’m not generally a huge fan of candidates for public office signing “pledges” (maybe the “Contract with America” turned me off of that idea, back in my more liberal-leaning days). But none of these planks (except possibly #6) seem particularly objectionable. So I guess I’ll have to sit and ponder this one.

Steven Taylor of PoliBlog uses rational choice theory as a jumping-off point for a discussion of Tuesday’s tax reform referendum in Alabama. It’s an interesting piece, and it’s a shame that no dead-tree media picked it up for publication.

Link (now fixed) via James Joyner.

The University of Memphis football team beats Ole Miss for the first time since 1994, confounding my co-bloggers prediction, and here’s what the Memphis Commercial Appeal came up with as a headline:

Great Leap Forward

Yes, some brilliant headline writer has compared U of M’s 2-0 record (the first time they’ve been 2-0 since 1976!) with Mao Zedong’s disastrous attempt at industrialization from 1958-1960, during which some 30 million people starved to death.

Why do Virginia Postrel and Glenn Reynolds suddenly care about the two-week Memphis blackout in late July and early August? Simple: the New York Times had an op-ed about it.

(Virginia’s reaction is common. I got stares of disbelief when I told people in Ann Arbor about the Memphis power outage when the Great Northeast Blackout hit the town. “Surely we would have heard about this,” was the common refrain.)

Of course, Signifying Nothing readers knew about it at the time, even though half of SN (Brock) was offline due to the power outage and the other half (i.e. me) was 750 miles away.

Until today, I was pretty sure who I was planning to vote for in Mississippi’s governor’s race. Now, after last night’s semi-debate here at Ole Miss, I’m not so sure:

[Musgrove] also said Barbour worked vigorously in his 20 years at the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm he helped found, in support of policies that hurt Mississippi. He said the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were “terrible policy” that sent 41,000 Mississippi manufacturing jobs to Mexico. “He wasn’t here to see the devastation brought on by NAFTA and GATT,” Musgrove said.

Now it’s true that the governor’s office has next to nothing to do with free trade. However, backwards, protectionist thinking on trade is about the last thing Mississippi needs in the governor’s office—especially since, without GATT (which actually predates Haley Barbour by several decades) and the WTO, we probably wouldn’t have the Nissan plant near Canton that Musgrove regularly touts on the campaign trail.

Granted, I haven’t been very impressed by Barbour either so far, but coupled with both candidates’ absurd posturing over the Ten Commandments monument (apparently, in their world, Montgomery is now in Mississippi)—silliness I would have thought Musgrove would be above—I’m going to have to move firmly back into the “undecided” column.

One of the things I’ve promised myself to do this fall is to blog a bit about Mississippi’s off-year elections, particularly the down-ballot races that aren’t attracting much attention—in or out of the state.

However, one of the more fascinating races—and one that promises to have a high profile—is the Lieutenant Governor’s race, featuring Democrat-turned-Republican Amy Tuck and Democrat Barbara Blackmon. Blackmon, if elected, would be the first black woman elected to a statewide office in Mississippi history.

As for Tuck, she’s quite the polarizing figure. You can tell you’re not a very popular Democrat when the teacher’s union endorses your Republican opponent (as happened in the 1999 race, when then-Democrat Tuck was running against Bill Hawes). And you’re not a very popular Republican when the nicest thing that Scipio, a self-confessed member of the VRWC, writes about you reads as follows:

This woman is a menace. She should not be in public office, much less free on the streets. She’s a party-jumping hack, a publicity hound and morally bankrupt imbecile, which I suppose makes her no different than most Mississippi politicians, but entirely different from the average Mississippi voter. Why, dear God, do we keep electing the same damn poster children for forced infant exposure year after year?

Well, when our choice is between Democrats and warmed-over Democrat-leftovers, what can you expect voters to do?

Link via Patrick Carver.

Last month, I made some snarky remarks about Amber’s Army, an activist group started by the Commercial Appeal after the tragic death of Amber Cox-Cody, who was left in a day care van in the blazing heat of the Memphis summer.

Veronica Coleman-Davis, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennnessee, has written an excellent editorial on Amber’s Army. Coleman-Davis questions whether it is appropriate for the media to be engaged in this kind of activist organization. She writes, "Calling for community action under the heading of Amber’s Army is a risky entrance into the realm of shaping, not reporting, the news."

In other news, the day care workers whose negligence resulted in Amber Cox-Cody’s death, have been charged with first-degree murder. This surprised a lot of people in the community, including me, who thought that first-degree murder required premeditation. But according to Tennessee State Code 39-15-202 (2), first-degree murder includes any “the killing of another committed in the perpetration of … any first-degree murder, act of terrorism, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, theft, kidnapping, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect or aircraft piracy.” (Note the interesting recursion in the definition. The recursion bottoms out in paragraph (1), which gives the usual “premeditated or intentional” definition.)

When you look at the definitions of “child abuse” and “aggravated child abuse” in 39-13-401 and 39-13-402, however, it seems that almost any action that results in the death of a minor may well fall under the classification of first-degree murder. Shouldn’t we be drawing some distinctions?

Last Tuesday morning, high winds knocked out power to over 200,000 customers of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. As of 10 a.m. today—a week after the storm—around a third of those customers still have no power.

It amazes me that nobody is talking about this in the blogosphere, or in the wider media, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it puts events in Iraq in perspective: if a few minutes of wind can knock out power for an entire county in the industrialized world, with it taking weeks to restore power to some customers, should we be surprised that it’s taking longer to get things sorted out in Iraq?

For another thing, when this happens due to hurricanes, ice storms, or tornados, crews come from utilities that are hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away to help. But not in Memphis for this situation. Where’s the help from Little Rock and Nashville, St. Louis and New Orleans? Seven people have died already, and more will probably die due to heat exhaustion (daytime temperatures uniformly exceed 90 degrees Farenheit, with very high humidity) and combustion-related accidents (carbon monoxide poisoning, fires, etc.).

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact I can’t sleep, or the fact that the meteorologist currently on The Weather Channel, a reasonably attractive woman named Jen Carfagno, has a fan site. Actually, multiple fan sites. And a Yahoo! discussion group, with no fewer than 319 members, that describes her as “terminally cute.”

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t poke fun, considering I have a website full of photos of pavement. Glass houses and all…

Those of a more serious bent may want to know about the progress MLG&W is making restoring power in Memphis. In addition to Brock, my mom and grandparents are still without power as well; their neighborhood has started a betting pool on when their power will be restored.

It’s been three days now since “Summer Storm 2003”, as the local media have christened it, and like 175,000 other Memphians, I’m still without power. I’m guessing I’ll be among the last to get power back, since my power line is lying in the middle of my back yard, having been downed by a neighbor's falling tree.

I discovered an interesting fact about homeowner’s insurance: if your neighbor’s tree falls and does damage to your property, your neighbor (or his insurance company) is only liable if the tree was damaged or diseased. Falling tree damage is handled by a negligence rule, not a strict liability rule.

I’m wondering whether this is the correct rule, from the perspective of economic efficiency. Generally, a rule that places liability with the party most likely to prevent an economic harm is the more efficient one. The negligence rule for tree damage shifts some of the economic risk from the tree owner, who could easily trim his trees, to potential neighbor, who can at best choose not to buy property next to people with towering trees.

The negligence rule will be more efficicient, economically, only if there are sufficient positive externalities to having towering trees in residential neighborhoods. There are some externalities, of course. I like living in neighborhood with tall trees, and I get to enjoy this even though there aren’t any tall trees on my property. If enough other people enjoy this as well, this will be reflected in the market value of the property. But are these externalities sufficient to overcome the problem of property owners ignoring tree maintenance, and letting trees grow to the point where they could easily damage the property of others?

Just in case you were wondering, I haven’t driven off Brock. As I’m sure almost nobody outside the city knows (especially if you get your news from the blogosphere), most of Memphis has been without power since early Tuesday morning. Hopefully Brock will be back in the next few days as power there gets restored.

There will be a meeting Wednesday of Amber’s Army, a group founded after the June 25 death of Amber Cox-Cody, who was left for eight hours in a day-care van in the Memphis summer. This was the fourth such death in Memphis since 1996.

Now I don’t want to sound callous. There’s a real problem here. But “Amber’s Army”? I can’t think of any less appropriate use of the military metaphor. At least with the “War on Drugs”, there are men with guns out there kicking down doors, so it’s at least it’s something like a war. I’m envisioning armed men in fatigues outside day care centers, inspecting vans to make sure there aren’t any kids left inside.

I don’t have any good ideas for solving the problem of incompetent day care workers letting kids die in hot vehicles in the summer. And don’t know anything about the particulars of any of the cases, of why the kid was going to day care instead of being cared for, at home, by a family member. But the liberal in me suspects that welfare reform is partly to blame. I wonder whether it just might be a little more cost effective to take the money the state is spending on providing day care for poor children, and just pay one parent to stay at home and take care of the kids.

The amateur economist in me recognizes that the incentives need to be done right. For example, it should be the same payment, no matter how many kids you have in your care. And it shouldn’t matter whether it’s the mother or the father who stays home to care for the kids. And maybe you should only get paid to stay home and take care of the first two children. After that, you’re on your own.

I’m not a child welfare expert, but seems to me that pre-school children are almost always better off at home. And any system that provides perverse incentives to take them out of the home is broken.

Now back to sounding callous again. That logo of the crying teddy bear makes me want to retch. And if the Commercial Appeal is going to advertise the URL www.ambersarmy.com, they should make sure it works.

Via Technorati, I found that J. at Silver Rights (who may or may not be the same person as “Mac Diva”) apparently thinks I’m being an apologist for Charles Pickering, on the basis of a Washington Post article that reveals absolutely nothing new about the controversial 1994 case in which Pickering quite rightly objected to giving the (arguably) least responsible perpetrator of an admittedly vile act the harshest sentence of the three young men involved.

I stand by my position that Pickering is being unjustly pilloried. If the Democrats dislike him for his politics or his overall jurisprudence, that is a fair objection; however, I don’t think this particular case is in any way emblematic of either, but instead has been blown out of proportion because screaming “racist” is easier than articulating philosophical objections to the appointment of a sitting district judge to a higher court.

If Democrats (and “J.”) genuinely believe he is a bad judge and the racist they claim him to be, they should be calling for his impeachment and removal from office, not pretending he’d be objectionable if sitting on an appeals court in New Orleans but O.K. to keep in office so long as he can only affect peoples’ lives as a trial court judge in Mississippi.

Victor at “Balasubramania’s Mania” somehow interprets this post as me “stand[ing] behind Pickering.” To the extent I agree with Pickering’s position that the sentencing “guidelines” (and anything that’s mandatory fails to meet any reasonable definition of the word guideline) are idiotic and lead to perverse outcomes, including in the particular case that these dustups are over, I suppose I am.

But I also think there are valid objections that can be made to Pickering’s appointment, and I stand by my position that if Pickering is as bad a judge as the Democrats think he is, then they should be arguing that he has no business sitting on a district court either, where he is in a position much more likely to harm minorities on a day-to-day basis (in sentencing and in the conduct of trials, for example) than on an appellate court. That they haven’t suggests that they don’t really take the racism charges against Pickering seriously, but instead find them a convenient way to object to his nomination without making the same objections they would have to make against every other Bush nominee and pretending that there is a substantive difference between Pickering and the others on those grounds alone. In short, I’d like to see more intellectual consistency here. (And surely if Pickering were a racist, there would be more than one case out of the thousands he’s presided over that would provide evidence of that.)

So, my message to Democrats remains the same: if you believe he’s unfit to serve on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, by definition he’s also unfit to serve as a district court judge. Be consistent, call for his impeachment and removal from office, and find some additional evidence, and then I might take your objections seriously. Until then, the whole situation reeks of inside-the-beltway politics and “easy,” gratuitous Mississippi bashing.

Ok, now this is just completely lame.

Buried in a Commercial Appeal article on the likely impact of the black vote in the 2003 Mississippi governor’s race is a choice quote from my good pal Larry Sabato:

Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he has a goal to get 20 percent of the black vote. To do that, Sabato said Barbour needs to reach out in two ways—substantively and symbolically.

“He has to find proposals that do not alienate his conservative base and yet have attraction for his [sic] African Americans. An example would be school vouchers,” Sabato said.

“The symbolic is to reach out and secure as many prominent endorsements from African Americans as possible.”

Yes, I’m sure vouchers are going to be a big vote-winner with Mississippi’s black voters, because the only reason why their kids aren’t enrolled at your local whites-only academy is because they can’t afford the tuition.

It seems to me this would be a case where the substantive proposal would undermine the symbolic. But then again, I’m not Larry Sabato; I just know something about the state I’m talking about, so I could be wrong.

Sid Salter writes in today’s Clarion-Ledger about the heat State Rep. Phillip West is taking from his fellow legislative black caucus members for daring to break with the party line on the Charles Pickering nomination. Salter draws a damning parallel between the state’s current civil rights establishment and the segregationists who attacked Pickering when he testified against Klan leaders in the 1960s:

Pickering’s courage, integrity and morality were questioned publicly by the radical fringe of white Mississippians — just as West’s courage, integrity and morality are now being questioned by the radical fringe of black Mississippians.

Why? Same reason.

Both West and Pickering had the courage to do and say what was right on a controversial topic.

The SCLC and Black Caucus ought to be ashamed of themselves for continuing to spread lies about Pickering’s record. If they don’t like his judicial philosophy, that’s what they should say, and leave the invented racism charges out of it.

I accidentally linked to the wrong opinion article before; however, it’s also worth reading.

In a bid to avoid an impact fee on new development in Shelby County, the county’s politically-connected noble property development cum land speculation industry has come up with an alternative, according to Wednesday’s Memphis birdcage liner Commercial Appeal: a local 1% income payroll tax that allegedly would be deductable from property taxes by county residents.

No word in the article on how the county residents who don’t own their own property (a group that’s disproportionately African-American) would be completely screwed over get their income payroll tax back. Tuesday’s CA carried a longer piece that describes the blatantly unconstitutional scam idea in more detail, including the risible provocative assertion that renters will be able to credit their payroll tax against rent (or something, as it’s written in typical CA gobbledygook).

Particularly hard-hit by this monstrosity brilliant plan would be Shelby County residents who work in Mississippi, who not only will have to continue to pay Mississippi income tax but also will likely see their base property tax jacked up to compensate for the shell game redistribution of revenues.

Among the other loathsome brilliant ideas being considered by the scum of the county property developers is a poll tax that Maggie Thatcher would love per household fee for police services for county residents.

Geitner Simmons at Regions of Mind links to an interesting Clarion-Ledger article on a perceived opening for black candidates in statewide races in Mississippi in 2003. (Obligatory Merle Black quotes included.)

My gut feeling since the Lottroversy went down has been that 2003 would be a bad year for Democrats, particularly black Democrats, in the state. It’s early days yet, but if the GOP doesn’t successfully mobilize the latent feeling among many whites in Mississippi that Lott was unjustly pilloried (as they’ve failed to do so far), this election season could turn out to be a bonanza for the Democrats.