The people of Jackson elected an idiot!

The BBQ Pit
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sigh With an underwhelming turnout of around 41k out of a possible 120k voting age populace, the moronic voters of Jackson have re-elected the dumbest, dullest, dipshit ever to grace the halls of City Hall here in Jackson. I cannot express the loathing I have for this idiot. Here’s a guy who before the elections started, had exactly ONE accomplisment to his record, renovating the street in front of City Hall. In 4 years, that’s all he managed.

Then, when he comes to realise that the republican canadate is also black, he actually gets scared! Things put off for 4 years start getting done! I kid you not, within a week about 5 miles of downtown roads got paved and leveled out. Projects put off suddenly got the green light to go ahead. He actually had to defend his record, for once. A road project put off for 4 years because Harvey didn’t like the majority white Northeast Jackson ward, suddenly gets a start date!

Now that he’s won, I fully expect him to crawl back into his shell and hide for the next four years. After all, that’s what the democratic backers are telling him to do. Mr Leland Speed, you wanted a pliable canadate in office who wouldn’t move Jackson forward? You got your wish. Jackson is dying, slowly. The city is a disaster, people are moving out in droves, the schools here in town are a joke, the tax base is shot, crime is up, and Harvey keeps whining about “I need more time!” Well, sir, your sheep have bleated. With one whiny voice, the pathetic majority of the 1/3rd of Jackson that could come out to vote, followed the wishes of their democratic masters and voted you back in office. Your little lemmings have voted this city off the edge of a cliff, and straight into a disaster.

I hope you are happy, asshole. If I run against you in 2005, I will promise you I will not let you off the hook so easy. I know how to make the media pay attention. I’m not scared to start a fight. I will force people to notice you have not, and will not do a damn thing to make the city I’ve lived in all my life better.

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Wait. Are you trying to tell me that someone actually paved a section of road in Jackson, Mississippi?!? I blame my nearly-irrepairable alignment to living in that city for a year. Have an order of fried pickles at Que Sera for me, will ya?

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YOU could run for office.

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Ahem.

:slight_smile:

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Saint Zero - you don’t happen to work in Clinton, in a big glass building right by Pizza Hut, Applebee’s, and a UA movie theater, do you?

I’ve only been in Ridgeland 6 months, so I don’t know all the ins & outs of Jackson politics. The worst I’ve heard is that supposedly, a couple years back, Jackson could have had the WorldCom HQ built in town. The story is that the Jackson politicos screwed the pooch and drove Bernie Ebbers to build the HQ in Clinton.

I came here from New Orleans, Zero – talk about culture shock!

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Oh yeah. It’s all because of the elections, ya know. :slight_smile: We got some great roads paved here in Downtown Jackson. I doubt seriously the Majority White areas have seen a Jackson Public Works truck in years. Seriously.

That’s another screwup of Harvey’s. I wish I did work there, but I don’t. :slight_smile: I do live in Jackson though. We’re getting closer to a Mississippi Doper Party, you realise.

And yeah, you’re right. Harvey and the boyz did fuckup the Worldcom HQ thing. They held out too long for concessions from Worldcom, and Bernie gave them the metaphorical finger and moved in out in Clinton.

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Saint Zero, meet me in MPMIMS. A serious Mississippi Dopefest would be sweet.

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So he was re-elected just recently, right? Which means that he was first elected in 1997 or so?
whew I had nothing to do with his original election(I was still in Nashville then) or his re-election(since I’ve been gone from there for a year and a half).

I was worried for a bit, but you can’t blame me. :stuck_out_tongue:

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**

And then from the OP…

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that you’re accusing him, all at the same time, of not doing anything and of only doing things for black neighborhoods. I mean, in the OP, you say that only one place has been paved, and then in the other you say that the “majority white” neighborhoods are ignored.

I’m not accusing you of anything, but this juxtaposition doesn’t look good.

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Probably because it’s unclear. :slight_smile:

Lemme back up and rewrite that. Harvey has initated exactly one project that he saw to completion: The rennovation (unneeded) of South Congress Street from the Capital to in front of the City Hall. That’s it.

The roads thing is a little dicey. Could I go in court and claim that the city council is ignoring the remaining white areas of Jackson in favor of everyplace else? No, simply because there’s no public evidence. A few things play in here, however. One is that street pavings are still pretty much politically motivated and controlled by the Council. They tried to institute a computerized system that would rate roads based on complaints from the public and Public Works surveys, but left themselves and out by being able to override the system anytime. So really, the same old patronage system applies.
Harvey could, and seemingly has, overridden the wishes of the council and simply ordered miles and miles of downtown repaved right before elections. Darryl Neely, his opponent, had fun with this. He’d say something needed to be done, and suddenly it’d get done. Neely claimed that the only reason things were getting done was because he was talking about them. And from the looks of Television and Newspaper reports, he’d be right. Harvey was watching what his opponent talked about, then tried to get something done about it quick.

The other thing that makes Harvey so repulsive is the fact that he’s pretty much for sale. My Dad reported a conversation he had with someone close to Leland Speed, a major contributor to local Colleges, longtime Democrat, and one of the first people to back Harvey when he ran in 97. His one mandate for Harvey? Do nothing for Jackson. Let it rot. If this is true, and I wish I could prove it, it would make Harvey a real sleazebag.

Like I say, I wish I could prove some of this. It would make things so much easier. All I have is secondhand information (from people I trust, but still…) and results of four years of Harvey being in office. The two add up, but I can’t prove the equation.

Here’s my real beef with Harvey If you’re elected to office, you should serve everyone, not just the part of the population that elected you.

[sub]Yeah, don’t get me started on Sen Lott, I’ve got beefs with him as well.[/sub] :smiley:

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So, is downtown in Jackson a business district, or a “black” residential area? Even with your clarification, this whole thing sounds pretty racist and segregationalist. I live in the South (have to capitalize it, don’t we?) too, in a state with a growing black population–in particular, a state which has recently had a bit of a Confederate flag controversy that separated the sheep from the sheep-fuckers–but I think that the growing political power of blacks is a kind of a “high time for payback” thing around here. How many “black neighborhoods” have had to deal with no road work at all, and for how long? How many people in the “white neighborhoods” have taken their good roads for granted and ignored the fact that the others have been left twisting in the wind? And considering limited municipal budgets, it may just be that it’ll take some time to get the “black neighborhoods” in shape before the “white neighborhoods” get into balance.

May I just state here that I truly hope that there comes a day when we don’t use these phrases designating neighborhoods as racial. Honestly, where’s the roadwork needed the most, considering budget, potholes, etc.?

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Yurrrk, St. Z, I hear ya. I’m a MSPI ex-pat, and I know how steamy that small pond, especially Jacktown, is. On a brighter note, in the same election cycle, Oxford, MS, just elected the owner of the fine local bookstore, Richard Howorth, as mayor. I’m biased, 'cause he’s a friend, but how many towns elect the local literary maven (previous president of the American Booksellers Association) as a political leader? That might could be a first! More about him here.

Just to help dispel any yaya “oh YEAH, Mississippi stereotypes”…

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Downtown Jackson is business district. It’s totally empty by 6pm weekdays and on weekends, unless something is happening downtown. The residential areas “ring” the downtown area. Let me guess, Carolina? :slight_smile: I’m beyond ticked we kept our flag as it is. I’m all for removing the symbol of a war we lost, and was possibly the most pointless endavour in human history. Anyway, the point is over here tapping it’s foot, I’d better get back to it. :smiley:

I’m waiting for the day when we can get past this “black” and “white” thing. I’m tired of racial politics. I count it as progress that Jesse Jackson isn’t welcome here anymore. We are slowly moving forward. But I don’t see total fairness towards all anytime soon.

Truth be told, as of the last Census, Jackson is dying. The population of Jackson is down again. A bit of it is the dreaded “White Flight”, but most of it is “Get out while you can” by anyone who’s got the resources. People have no faith that anyone can fix Jackson.

Uh, in Jackson? Everywhere! :slight_smile: The geniuses who put the city here had no idea it was the worlds largest underground deposits of Yazoo Clay. When it rains, you can almost watch the roads move and crack.

elelle: Did you see the Vicksburg results? They threw out the previous mayor in favor of a non-native, but now local business man. Progress, from there :slight_smile:

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So did the People of the USA. Where does the line stop? 'Tis Politics, my friend.

:wink: