You may remember the white Republicans who run Mississippi stole nearly $100 million of federal TANF funds intended for the state’s poor, many of whom are black.
Two million dollars was paid to retired NFL player Brett Favre as “speaking fees” for talks he never gave, which he refunded under the glare of publicity, but has balked at paying interest. TANF money also was used to build an indoor volleyball facility at his daughter’s college. (Favre is suing anyone who calls him a “thief,” see story here. That’s unfair to him. He’s only a recipient of welfare money, which he repaid when it was determined to be an overpayment.)
You may also recall that Jackson, Mississippi’s decrepit municipal water supply was unfit for drinking, bathing, or washing clothes with; and that for a time Jackson residents didn’t have water at all, except trucked-in bottled water. Biden’s infrastructure bill, signed in December 2021, allocated $600 million to fix Jackson’s water supply (details here). Given that Jackson’s population is 78.5% black, this spending would mostly benefit black people.
The House GOP majority that took office in January 2023 would repeal that infrastructure spending if they could. In a shocking display of hypocrisy, many Republicans who voted against it took credit for projects funded by it in their 2022 re-election campaigns (see story here). But I digress.
Here’s today story: The white Republicans who run Mississippi are now moving to seize control of the federal infrastructure money designated for repairing Jackson’s water system and divert it to the white suburbs. In the process, they’re also taking over Jackson’s police and courts, shutting out the city’s black voters from control over law enforcement in their neighborhoods. It isn’t hard to visualize what that will lead to. Read story here.
This is starting to look like genocide.
Photo below: Water coming out of a Jackson, Mississippi, household tap (see story here)
