Do These Mississippi Governor Candidates Spend Their Lives Running Away From Women?
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done and where the steampipes just cough.
We begin back in Mississippi again. Remember last week, when we had some fun with Robert Foster, a man who puts the goober in gubernatorial, and someone who can't trust himself in a room with a woman to whom he is not married, and, anyway, everyone else will think that woman will be overwhelmed by his mighty man-vibes whether anything happens or not? What I did not anticipate was that this would become a litmus test in Mississippi politics. But, stranger things have happened. Well, maybe not so much. From CNN:
Bill Waller Jr., the former chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, told Mississippi Today that he subscribes to what is known as the "Billy Graham rule," named after the prominent evangelist, in which a man avoids being alone with women other than his wife. "I just think it's common sense. I just think in this day and time that appearances are important ... transparency's important. And I think that people need to have the comfort of what's going on in government between employees and people. And there's a lot of social issues out there about that," Waller told the news outlet on Monday.
How far does this go in everyday life? Stepping off elevators? Running out of the Gas 'n Sip if it's just you and the lady making the Slushies? How about if you're in the hospital and a female nurse comes in at 2 a.m. to take some blood? Do you run down the hallway dragging your IV behind you? That's unseemly behavior for a governor, I'd say.
We move along to Iowa, where we will be spending a lot of time over the next year and change, and where a guy lost his state job because all eyez were on him, alas. From the AP:
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven routinely sent messages to employees lauding Shakur’s music and lyrics even after at least one complained to lawmakers. Then last month, he sent another such email to all 4,300 agency employees. He was abruptly ousted from his job the next work day. Foxhoven, 66, told employees that he had been a huge fan of the hip-hop artist for years. He hosted weekly “Tupac Fridays” to play his music in the office. He traded lyrics with employees and he marked his own 65th birthday with Shakur-themed cookies, including ones decorated with the words “Thug life.”
Seriously, how deeply into Squaresville do you have to delve to find people who would fire a 66-year old white dude because he liked Tupac? Oh, Herbert. You are stiff. Of course, there were other factors, which is a good thing because I'd hate to think that we've gone that far back into the 1950s. From The New York Times:
But, in a phone interview, Mr. Foxhoven said his frequent quoting of Tupac at work — detailed in 350 pages of internal emails first obtained by The Associated Press — was simply intended to raise morale at the troubled agency. He did not believe it led to his removal. “I think it’s a coincidence,” Mr. Foxhoven said...
The next Monday, Mr. Foxhoven said, he met with Ms. Reynolds’s chief of staff and was told that the governor wanted to take the agency in a different direction. He agreed to resign. Ms. Reynolds, a Republican, had praised Mr. Foxhoven as a “compassionate, thoughtful leader” when she appointed him in June 2017. He had previously worked as a lawyer, professor and children’s rights advocate.
He said he had been brought in to “right the ship” and raise morale during a period of turmoil at the agency, including fallout from the deaths of two teenagers who had been adopted out of foster care and major problems with the Medicaid system. “We made a lot of progress,” he said. He added that many directors do not serve long terms, and that his two-year tenure meant that he had outlasted many of his predecessors.
Mr. Foxhoven seems extremely chill. I wish him well and no beefs.
I do not wish the same for one John Merrill, who is running against Roy Moore in the Alabama Republican U.S. Senate primary. And, like the two competing candidates for governor of Mississippi, Merrill seems to be looking for room to run against Moore from the even crazier lane. From the Yellowhammer News:
He fielded a question from the group gathered about the shift in the culture and noted that some of that shift could be attributed to the changes in pop culture, including what was being shown on television. “[T]hat’s what we’ve allowed to happen,” Merrill said. “How have we allowed it to happen? There are no more good TV shows on like ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Andy Griffith,’ ‘I Love Lucy.’ We don’t have those shows anymore. We’re too interested in homosexual activities. We’re too interested in seeing how this family’s finding a way to mess on this family or to see how people are trying to date on TV, or having wife-swapping on TV. That’s what we watch. When we push back against that, and we quit allowing it to be in our homes – that’s how those changes have occurred because we’ve allowed them to slowly but surely come into our lives.”
We've also allowed one of them to slowly but surely come into the White House. Also, all those shows are still available. Just get cable, dude.
And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Wandering Minstrel, He Friedman of the Plains, brings us the tale of yet another charter-school operation that—acting, of course, only and always for The Kids—allegedly went off with a whole lot of taxpayer money. From The Oklahoman:
A state investigation alleges Epic Charter Schools, the state’s largest virtual charter school system, embezzled millions in state funds by illegally inflating enrollment counts with “ghost students.” The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation alleged Epic co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris “devised a scheme to use their positions as public officers to unlawfully derive profits from state appropriated funds.”
An OSBI agent made the allegations in a search warrant that sought evidence of embezzlement, obtaining money by false pretenses and racketeering. Investigators reported Chaney and Harris “created a system of financial gain at Epic” when they founded the virtual charter school in 2010... In its search warrant, OSBI alleged between 2013 and 2018, Chaney and Harris unlawfully received $10 million in profits from Epic Youth Services and split the total.
A virtual school attended by students who do not exist. I feel like the Rapture may well be a big old waste of time. We don't really exist anyway.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
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