{"id":38804,"date":"2017-04-07T14:51:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T20:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=38804"},"modified":"2017-04-07T14:58:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T20:58:31","slug":"a-lesson-in-do-nothing-the-2017-legislative-session-by-jay-hughes-jay4district12-mississippi-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/a-lesson-in-do-nothing-the-2017-legislative-session-by-jay-hughes-jay4district12-mississippi-legislature\/","title":{"rendered":"“A Lesson in Do Nothing \u2013 The 2017 Legislative Session” by Jay Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2017 regular legislative session is officially in the books, yet unfinished.\u00a0 If you paid close attention, you probably noticed that nothing really happened to improve the quality of life or employment of you and your family.\u00a0 We certainly didn\u2019t bring jobs to your community.\u00a0 We also failed to give any money to the Department of Transportation and Attorney General\u2019s office. As a result, we will now spend your precious tax dollars for a \u201cSpecial Session\u201d to finish the job we were already paid to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

To understand a \u201cDo Nothing Session\u201d is to simply look at which bills passed and which bills died.<\/span><\/p>\n

What passed? Firing squads were added to the death penalty (just in case we cant find the drugs for lethal injection, the gas chamber is out of gas, and Old Sparky won\u2019t work). \u00a0Everyone in the car will now have to wear seat belts.\u00a0 Campaign finance reform finally passed, although the law is weaker than a wet Kleenex.\u00a0 Domestic violence is finally ground for divorce (the old law required proof the abuse was a \u201chabit,\u201d instead of only every now and then). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Special interests finally gave away enough wine, food and cash contributions to get a bunch of special laws passed.\u00a0 For example, we will now pay one lucky, private company, which will be paid millions of dollars to hunt down the few people who shouldn\u2019t be on Medicaid. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our \u201cEconomic Plan\u201d of corporate handouts meant major cuts this year to the Health Department, Mental Health, public libraries, wildlife and fisheries, colleges and universities and our 490,000 kids in public schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

While good bills were passed to allow improvements in Jackson, and allow the UM Medical Center to partner with private companies, the award for \u201cGood Ole Boy Bill\u201d goes to HB1092.\u00a0 This changes the qualifications for the Director of Medicaid.\u00a0 Instead of being a medical doctor with administrative experience, the Governor can now appoint someone who only has a college degree, like a politician who was on a Medicaid Committee for one term in the House of Representatives. Sound fishy?<\/span><\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at what bills died (for secret reasons known only to the wizard behind the curtain):\u00a0 Mississippians line up to buy lottery tickets in neighboring states.\u00a0 Looks like that will stay the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A lot of the money our local governments use to provide basic services, like fire and police protection, are funded by local sales tax dollars.\u00a0 This revenue is down because we are buying more over the Internet.\u00a0 Unfortunately, our Lt. Governor killed the Internet sales tax bill, which would have helped replace this lost funding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He also apparently thinks it was a bad idea to allow good people and companies to donate dollars directly to public schools for designated purposes, like we already do for universities and churches. \u00a0This would have made a huge difference in classrooms across the state.\u00a0 The bill passed the house unanimously, and then killed by a single man.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the most frustrating example of the grip special interests have on our government was the killing of Noah\u2019s Law, which unanimously passed the House. \u00a0Noah was a 17-year-old who was studying for exams when he died of cardiac arrest.\u00a0 His autopsy revealed that he had in his blood stream the caffeine equivalency of 82 cups of coffee.\u00a0 The bill would have merely prevented people under 18 from buying pure caffeine \u2013 that\u2019s it. \u00a0One elected official was convinced (with the right donation), that it would be a gateway to banning energy drinks.\u00a0 He ordered the bill killed.\u00a0 Shame.<\/span><\/p>\n

I fail to see how this session paints anything close to an agenda of helping people, jobs, industry or education.\u00a0 As you sit and wait for the Governor to call a special session so we can waste more of your tax dollars, do yourself a favor and find the name and number of your State Representative and Senator.\u00a0 Now more than ever, they need to know how you feel.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2017 regular legislative session is officially in the books, yet unfinished.\u00a0 If you paid close attention, you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":36171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[9527,7822,4117,1447,5,4],"class_list":["post-38804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-government","tag-9527","tag-district-12-representative","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-jay-hughes","tag-mississippi","tag-oxford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/jay-hughes.jpg?fit=940%2C490&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}