Brown to MDOT employees: Vote For Me

Majority In Mississippi has a great post about Butch Brown instructing his subordniate at MDOT to send an e-mail to MDOT employess to vote for him in an online poll at The Magnolia Report. You would have thought the Executive Dictator of MDOT would have learned from his past mistakes.

Buffington v Buffington's Mouth

Larry Buffington should file suit against his own mouth for damages. Y'all Politics has three great audio files of Judge Larry Buffington admitting issuing subpoenas that didn't comply with the law; using his position as judge to appoint his friends to office; and helping a friend get a hospital contract from elected officials in Covington County.

Another call for sunshine on the Attorney General

Here is another call for sunshine on the Attorney General from the letters section of the Clarion Ledger: AG's office can use 'sunshine'

The Clarion-Ledger has been an active voice for open government in Mississippi. The Feb. 13 editorial ("Secrecy: Senate backslides on openness") criticized opponents of a sunshine bill by Sen. David Blount to decrease the waiting period on open records request.

But where is the editorial regarding Sen. Joey Fillingane's attempt to open the Mississippi attorney general's office to sunshine? The waiting period on those records is forever.

Attorney General Jim Hood has given more than 20 no-bid contracts to major campaign contributors, some amounting to millions of dollars in revenue. Who knows who else Hood is working with? Not the taxpayers, because there is no sunshine.

Where is the outrage over the attorney general's deals? The Clarion-Ledger and those seeking open government should also promote sunshine on the office of the attorney general.

Aaron Gentry
Clinton

Butch Brown needs to go

Bobby Harrison writes more about the Rutland controversy.

Probably no better example of that feud can be found than a March 2007 decision where the state Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling reinstating Shirley Rutland as an employee of the Department of Transportation.

According to the Court of Appeals decision, Rutland got caught up in the feud between Hall and Brown. Brown instructed Rutland not to identify Hall as the chairman of the commission in press releases.

Hall told Rutland she worked for him and to continue to identify him as the commission's chairman, as had been the practice of past chairmen.

According to the Court of Appeals opinion, Brown brought her in and asked for whom she worked.

"When Rutland stated that she works for Hall, Brown became enraged and according to Rutland stated, the Bible says that you can only serve one master, and around here I'm the (expletive) master. That (expletive) Hall does not run this agency. Rutland testified that Brown then informed her that he had hired her and that he alone could fire her."

Harrison looks at how Senators are leaning.

Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, who led the charge to ensure that Brown went through the confirmation process, said he had not made up his mind how he will vote.

He said he wants to listen to all the information, but added he would give deference to the fact that Brown is the person a majority of the elected Transportation Commission wants in the job.

While not saying how he would vote on Brown's confirmation, Sen. Alan Nunnelee, R-Tupelo, said Transportation officials "don't like accountability. In government we have a system of checks and balances. Everyone needs to be accountable to someone.

"Under Mr. Brown's leadership, they have tended to resist that accountability."

And the Greenwood Commonwealth makes their opinion very clear.

Brown’s eight-year tenure has been marked by repeated controversy. Questions have been raised about the Department of Transportation’s expenditures, including the frivolous purchase of a half-million-dollar helicopter, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on lobbying in the state Capitol, and the pricey renovation of the agency’s headquarters. Most recently have come revelations that Brown and Transportation Commissioner Wayne Brown (no relation) have become quite the world travelers on the taxpayers’ nickel — spending between them almost $150,000 over a four-year period on junkets out of the country.

The one person who seems trustworthy when it comes to the operation of the Transportation Department is Central District Commissioner Dick Hall. It’s enlightening that Hall has been a constant critic of Butch Brown’s, even getting Brown fired temporarily a few years ago — a move that has left Hall as the odd man out ever since.

The Transportation Department is a nest of intrigue. Senators should take the opportunity of their confirmation hearings to get to the bottom of it.

If they do that probing with diligence, they will conclude that Butch Brown needs to go.

More Sunshine

It ain't just about emails and incident reports. We could use some sunshine on the Attorney General's secret no-bid multi-million dollar contingency contracts sometimes with major campaign contributors. We're glad Helen McCarty agrees in her letter to the editor to the Clarion Ledger last week.

About a year ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article praising Florida's attorney general for his full support of "sunshine" legislation, which serves to shed "sunlight" on the deals that are cut between the attorney general's office and outside attorneys.

All too often, an attorney general can use this vehicle to hire friends at outlandish rates to try a case that the state's paid attorneys are perfectly capable of handling. Remember Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's friend Joey Langston, who was paid several million dollars for his work on the MCI settlement?

After Gov. Haley Barbour's infamous special session in 2004, which successfully passed tort reform, a Wall Street Journal article about our state claimed that, under the direction of the governor, Mississippi has passed the most comprehensive tort reform in the country.

Wouldn't it be nice if they could write the same about Mississippi's passage of sunshine legislation? I don't foresee that happening under Hood's watch.

Helen McCarty
Harperville

Party Time With Bennie Thompson

When you're Bennie Thompson, you don't have to leave the country to have a good time.

On October 15, 2008, the world turned to Hofstra University to watch the final Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. The world, except for Bennie Thompson. Seems he had to collect some checks for his PAC, while partying down with Janet Jackson. (HatTip to PoliticalPartyTime.org).

Weekend at Bennie's II - Guest Star: Allen Stanford

Brian Perry at the Madison County Journal gives us another guest star for our ongoing "Weekend at Bennie's" marathon: Allen Stanford, the latest billionaire accused of a Ponzi scheme. You might remember we talked about Bennie Thompson's trips paid for by private groups to tropical vacation paradises here and here and here and here - all started by Kingfish's post here.

In addition to Stanford's PAC sending $2500 to Thompson, he also hosted Thompson on his yacht in the Caribbean. This put us on the search for some of this material and thanks to Talking Points Memo for the pictures and Legistorm for the documents.

In 2005, Stanford sent two corporate jets to Washington Dulles International Airport to fly several members of Congress and staff to the Caribbean for a conference hosted by Inter-American Economic Council (IAEC). The IAEC president told the Dallas Morning News the organization raises no money except from sponsors for specific events and in 2005, Stanford provided 85 percent of the council's revenue.

For the next three years, New York Carib News funded trips for Thompson to Panama (2006), Antigua and Barbuda (2007), and St. Maarten (2008). According to Washington DC's The Hill newspaper, "The trip is closely associated with the [Congressional Black Caucus]; only CBC members are invited each year."

The Stanford Financial Group, as recently as 2008, was a supporting sponsor of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (giving between $15,000 and $30,000). The foundation sponsors trips including a 2003 trip to Puerto Rico for Thompson.

On the 2005 IAEC trip, Stanford hosted a reception for lawmakers on his yacht. He hosted another yacht reception for the 2007 trip that included an appearance by Bennie Thompson who "chatted" with Stanford "about a sailing event the billionaire sponsored." Thompson's chief-of-staff told the Politico newspaper he "was not sure whether Thompson flew on Stanford's jet for the 2007 trip."

The 2007 conference agenda scheduled Thompson to speak on "National Security: A Pre-Condition for Success" sponsored by the banking firm HSBC and "Port & Airport Security" sponsored by Macy's.

The 2008 conference at the Sonesta Maho Bay Resort & Casino on the island of St. Maarten occurred about a month after Congress approved the $700 billion financial bailout package. Citigroup (who would receive $45 billion from the bailout package) sponsored the event to the tune of $100,000. Other corporate contributors included AT&T, Verizon ($35,000), Pfizer, Macy's and American Airlines who donated travel. The National Legal and Policy Center has requested an investigation of the event by the special inspector general of the financial bailout package.

Both the 2007 and 2008 trips occurred after Democrats passed new Congressional ethics rules banning corporate sponsorship of conferences like these island trips.

Bennie Thompson recently said about AIG executives, "Well, if these are the same people who fiddled while the economy was burning, then they probably need to go." I don't know if he was fiddling, but kicking it in the Caribbean isn't exactly what I call managing our nation's economic crisis.

Executive Dictator of MDOT

I was sent this email from March 2006.

It reads like something from the former Soviet Union. "The Director" is Butch Brown. The "10th floor" is Butch Brown's people.

The Director has issued the following directive effective immediately:

There will be no information given to Commission Dick Hall or his staff. If Commissioner Hall or his staff request information, that request is to be sent to the 10th floor for further handling.

If you are contacted by Commissioner Hall or his staff, you are instructed to inform me of the request. If I am not available, you may inform Keith Purvis. Either Keith or I will send the request to the 10th floor administration.

John B. Pickering
Roadway Design Division Engineer
Mississippi Department of Transportation
Phone: (601) 359-7257
Fax: (601) 359-7063

In 1999, 129,952 people in Mississippi's Central District voted for Dick Hall to represent their transportation needs. In 2003, 152,320 Mississippians voted for Dick Hall. In 2007, 126,145 Mississippians voted for Dick Hall.

2 people voted for Butch Brown: Wayne Brown and Bill Minor.

Thanks to their two votes, Butch Brown was able to ignore more than a hundred thousand Mississippi voters. The Mississippi Senate should remedy this and not confirm him for another term.

Regime Change at MDOTourism

Butch Brown requires reconfirmation by the Mississippi Senate to continue as Executive Director of MDOT. The Clarion Ledger has actually called for a "regime change" at MDOT, and for Brown's ouster:

"Regime change" became a popular phrase during this decade for the act of removing a person who is perceived to use his or her authority in a manner that's less than altruistic and particularly for those who rule with an iron fist.

It's time for "regime change" at the top of the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

The state Senate should withhold confirmation of Brown's reappointment. MDOT would greatly benefit from new leadership as an agency and the state's Transportation Commission would benefit from breaking up what has degenerated - for whatever reason - into an untenable but reliable 2-1 split on many vital policy matters.

Butch Brown has led MDOT on several misadventures. Brown, Brown and Minor agreed that the 10th floor of MDOT's headquarters in Jackson needed an expansion and renovation of their executive offices and their meeting room at a time when many Mississippians were living in tents on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

MDOT's present leadership also decreed that the agency needed a $530,000 helicopter - ostensibly because MDOT had an extra half million dollars to spend on law enforcement and also because its leaders said they needed the chopper to search for the elusive mystery tankers of untaxed gasoline supposedly being smuggled into the state.

To date - after what we're sure has been years of aerial surveillance - no such sinister smuggling operation has been uncovered. What a shock!

The latest? MDOT travel records show that over the last four years Director Brown spent $80,316 and Commissioner Brown spent $69,187. Hall has spent $12,638 and Minor spent $44,505. Wayne Brown and Butch Brown took trips out of the country, including Puerto Rico, Brussels, Budapest and Vienna. Wayne Brown even went to Cancun.

The commissioners from the northern and southern districts also seem to agree with Brown that none of them particularly likes working with Central District Commissioner Dick Hall. They voted to move Hall's staff out of the building and into a trailer in Rankin County.

The state Senate can bring "regime change" to MDOT and should do so.

The reasons for ousting Butch Brown go on forever. Whether it is traveling the world on the taxpayer's dollar, or the termination of Harry Lee James, or the political termination of Shirley Rutland, or his determination to bulldoze historic Church Street in Port Gibson in opposition to local wishes and those of their elected Transportation Commissioner.

The Sun Herald has called him "intoxicated by power" with inexcusable arrogance. Even the columnist Bill Minor (not the Commissioner Bill Minor) has been critical of Butch Brown in the wake of Katrina who said Coast folks were "seeing no results and a litany of excuses" and calling Brown's responses "arrogant."

The Clarion Ledger mentioned the helicopter. Consider this from The Magnolia Report:

"I have no idea why the helicopter was purchased or what it's being used for. I know that it's parked out at Hawkins Field. I know that MDOT has a pilot hired to fly it. I've been told it's been used to fly (MDOT executive director) Butch Brown back and forth to Natchez." Central District Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall on the helicopter MDOT bought from the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics

"That helicopter has never been used to fly me to Natchez and if Dick said that, then he's just a liar, a pure and simple liar." MDOT Executive Director Butch Brown’s response to Hall’s allegations.

So then, why did Butch buy the helicopter? To find that illusive gas tanker on the Mississippi River that was bypassing state gas taxes? Yeah, right. They should ask him about that at his confirmation hearing!

Spend, Tax, Borrow, Repeat

From a recent fundraising email from Michael Steele for the RNC. He nails it.

There is just one page in the Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid instruction manual for running the government.

It reads like this:

Step 1: Spend
Step 2: Tax
Step 3: Borrow
Step 4: Repeat Steps 1 through 3

In the first 50 days of the Obama Administration, the Pelosi-Reid Democrat-controlled Congress voted for $1.2 trillion in new government spending.

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had the best take on the Democrats' runaway spending, "To put that in perspective, that's about $24 billion a day, or about $1 billion an hour -- most of it borrowed."

And exactly how do the liberal Democrats propose to pay for all this new spending? Higher taxes and borrowing, of course.

Obama's budget proposal calls for a massive tax increase of $1.4 trillion and at least $646 billion in new energy taxes that will be paid by every American family as companies pass on the cost to consumers.

Since tax hikes won't cover the entire cost of this boondoggle, our government will have to borrow more from foreign governments and creditors. This will lead to our national debt tripling over the next ten years to $23.1 trillion and gives our foreign creditors like China a greater say in the America we leave for our children and grandchildren.

Stimulus Irony

The Clarion Ledger reports

Ethel Mayor Ophelia Mitchell took off work from Mississippi State University on Monday and drove more than an hour to ask Thompson what small towns - ones with fewer than 500 people - will gain.

Ethel, which is located in Attala County about 10 miles from Kosciusko, has about 450 residents, according to the most recent census figures.

Like Mitchell, officials from small, rural towns across the country have expressed concern they may not be able to compete with larger cities for their share of the federal money, although their needs may be just as dire.

"We don't have that kind of money saved up," Mitchell said. "We're still paying for things that our town fathers bought years ago."

Thanks to this stimulus, so will your great-grandchildren.

Jim Hood's Entergy Motivation? Follow the Money

I don't mean this to become the Jim Hood blog. But he has been giving us such great material lately. If I had a silver dollar for every thing I could post about Jim Hood, I could glue them to my car and drive around like Conway Twitty. Yes, I know the Conway reference belongs to the bloggers at The Great Red Spot and Right of Mississippi, but we couldn't resist.



Following Charlie Mitchell's recent column in which Attorney General Jim Hood disclosed (oops) he has a contingency fee contract with Mobile lawyer Vincent Kilborn, Y'all Politics acquired and posted the full contract disclosure.

In it, we discover that if what Hood says is true, that he is seeking "hundreds of millions" of dollars from Entergy Mississippi, then these lawyers stand to make tens of millions of dollars. That is a whole lot more than customers of Entergy Mississippi would ever see, which could be as little as zero (if you look at Hood's contract), or might even make it up as high as ten whole dollars over a period a months (if you look at what happened in Louisiana). So quick math. Jim Hood's lawyers could get one-million times more money than an Entergy customer. Nice deal if you can get it. (You can get it from Jim Hood.)

Two of the partners of the firm Kilborn, Roebuck & McDonald of Mobile, Alabama, are now Special Assistant Attorneys General: Vincent Kilborn and David McDonald. There may be a special bonus to being a special assistant attorney general.

Joey Langston and Timothy Balducci had that title and now, despite having plead guilty in unrelated judicial corruption schemes, and Balducci suggesting he and Steve Patterson had been paid $500,000 to convince Jim Hood to cooperate with them in their State Farm lawsuit, Hood won't touch them. They're like family. AND Jim Hood is helping Langston and Balducci try to get their $14 million as a result of working for Hood during the MCI/WorldCom case (in which, as the Y'all Politics post reminds us, Mike Moore represented the other side).

That is the key. Follow the money. That MCI fees dispute case could have a lot to say on how many lawyers, like these fellows from Mobile, shop lawsuits to Jim Hood. If they don't think they can get millions, I doubt they'd put the time in out of the graciousness of their own hearts. People suggest that Langston/Balducci/Hood will win before Judge Winston Kidd in Hinds County Circuit Court. But things don't look good once the Supreme Court hears an expected appeal. With Entergy Mississippi and Jim Hood in federal court, which could stretch out for years, we likely would see a Mississippi Supreme Court decision on the MCI/WorldCom appeal before a resolution with Entergy. I'd hate to be lawyers with a contract with Hood who after years of work and expense discovered, I don't get anything.

I mean, it isn't exactly the tightest contract. Page 3 of the contract reads, "WHEREAS, the Attorney General has determined that the Claims may include additional penalties, fines and/or restitution payable to the Attorney General, the State of Mississippi general fund, or any other entity;".

Ask the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi how awarding funds to "any other entity" has been going lately. Or perhaps Jim Hood should ask the Supreme Court. Or perhaps Vincent and McDonald should ask Jim Hood.

"Trial Lawers Wrong" - Tort Reform Works

The Greenwood Commonwealth had this to say in a recent editorial:

A half-dozen years ago, doctors were up in arms, leaving the state, retiring early or scaling back their practices because of the onslaught they were facing from trial lawyers. The only thing standing between them and insolvency was malpractice insurance, and its cost had soared -- that’s if they could find an insurer.

Thanks to a couple of rounds of tort reform, the situation appears to be largely resolved.

Last week, the state’s largest provider of malpractice insurance announced it was cutting its rates by another 20 percent. It was the fourth consecutive annual rate reduction by Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi. Cumulatively, the premiums that health providers are paying for malpractice insurance are almost 60 percent less than they were shelling out during the peak of the crisis.

It should be remembered that when lawmakers were battling over putting sensible limits on civil damage awards and curbing venue shopping, the opponents -- mostly friends of the trial bar -- scoffed at the notion that the changes would impact insurance rates. They claimed that the rise in malpractice insurance premiums was a result of poor investment returns, not the legal climate.

The stock market has tanked in the past year, and yet malpractice premiums are falling significantly anyway. It goes to further show that the reformers were right, and the trial lawyers wrong.

The editorial follows a press release from Governor Haley Barbour who had announced that Mississippi's largest provider of medical malpractice insurance had lowered it rates, once again, following the trend since the passage of comprehensive tort reform.

Ridgeland-based Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi (MACM) reduced its medical liability insurance rates across the board by 20 percent for 2009. This is the fourth consecutive annual rate reduction and returns the premiums that Mississippi physicians pay for malpractice insurance to rates comparable to those paid in 2002.

In addition to a reduction in rates, tort reform has opened the door for better accessibility to healthcare through an increase in the number of physicians insured by MACM.

“MACM saw a five percent increase in the number of physicians insured by the company between the end of 2002 and the end of 2008,” Governor Barbour said. “These additional physicians are now living and practicing in Mississippi and helping provide the health care that is so essential to a better quality of life for all Mississippians."

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney praised the rate reduction.

“Mississippi physicians are now paying 42.2 percent less in premium for their professional liability insurance than they did in 2004, after tort reform was enacted through special sessions of the Mississippi Legislature,” Commissioner Chaney said.

“Additional, and much stronger, tort reform was passed during a special session in the spring of 2004. As a result of this combined legislation, Mississippi healthcare has benefited. As an example, if a physician paid $10,000 in premium in 2004, that same physician would pay just $5,780 today as a result of fours years of rate reductions by MACM. In addition, this physician would have received refunds of premium totaling almost $7,000 during this same time period.”

When tort reform was first considered, MACM promised that if the legislation were passed, the company would respond by passing monetary savings to its customers. Through rate reductions and premium refunds for the past four years, MACM has honored this commitment.

I got this nifty chart from a comment over at Mississippi Perspective.

2002 –Musgrove Tort Legislation Passed
2003 – 54% premium increase in premiums
2004 – 19.4% premium increase in premiums
2004 – (Sept) Barbour Tort Legislation Passed
2005 – No change in premium (In December, 15% of premium paid was refunded)
2006 – 5% premium decrease
2007 – 10% premium decrease
2008 – 15.5% premium decrease
2009 – 20.0% premium decrease