Columbus Dispatch. February 21, 2023.
Editorial: Charity requires conscience
Mississippi is a charitable state. Or is it?
Every year, reports are made rating states on their generosity, but how a state ranks often relies on what data is used to make those calculations. For example, if charity is ranked by the volunteer rate of the population, the average number of volunteer hours performed and the percentage of people who are directly involved in distributing food and money to the poor, Mississippi ranks 48th.
Yet if charity is based on tax return information (donations to tax-deductible contributions), our state ranks 10th. When ranked by the percentage of discretionary income that goes to charitable causes, Mississippi soars to No. 2 on the list.
Yet, even if you could collect data that includes every measurable aspect of charitable giving and generate rankings on that basis, there can be no truly objective measurement.
Why? Because the every-day charity that doesn’t show up on an income tax return or some sort of official report cannot be measured. It does not and cannot include the every-day acts of generosity – neighbor helping neighbor, friend helping friend, a few bucks to a ragged stranger on the street corner – that ultimately is the purest form of charity. As the old Swedish proverb goes, “True charity sees the need, not the cause.”
As a people, Americans made the decision long ago that we, as a society, are indeed our brother’s keeper, harnessing from the collective wealth or our nation to provide safety nets for our poorest citizens. Each year, federal funds collected from across the nation are distributed based on the needs of the state. Mississippi, being one of the poorest states, receives a large amount of that funding.
Of those federal funds coming to our state, $86.5 million annually is designated for a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The average Mississipian had probably never heard of TANF until a couple of years ago, when a massive amount of those funds were misdirected, often directly into the pockets of politically well-connected friends in high places in our state government. The State Auditor’s office estimated the amount of those misappropriated funds at $77 million, making it the largest public corruption scandal in Mississippi history.
Yet in truth, the state’s handling of TANF money has been shameful long before this scandal emerged. It is a scandal that persists and will likely continue to persist.
The state spends less than half of its TANF money ($86.5 million) to provide direct cash assistance to the poor or for programs that help them, as reported by Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe. Just $4 million (4.7%) goes directly in the pockets of poor Mississippians. Another $35 million goes to provide programs like daycare and workforce training. That portion accounts for 40% of the funding.
That means 51% of the funds to help poor Mississippians go to a long list of vendors involved in everything from banks to software companies to marketing companies to attorneys or isn’t used at all.
Would you give to any charity that spends less than half of its resources on the cause it was created to address? Obviously not.
As for the scandal itself, the first arrests were made in February 2020, while the legislature was still in session. Now we are in the third full session since the scandal was exposed.
Care to guess how many hearings the legislature has held on this matter? Zero.
As Homer Simpson once observed, “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.”
Charity is, first and foremost, a function of the heart.
When we see funds that should be devoted to the poorest among us being so badly, so unscrupulously managed, our hearts should cry out for change.
We shouldn’t merely ask our legislators to correct this abuse. We should demand it.
The extent to which we demand that from our legislators is a reflection of just how charitable we really are.
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Tupelo Daily Journal. February 18, 2023.
Editorial: Shame on Senate for private school bill
The Mississippi Senate is not backing down from a bad idea, one already held up by a state court and awaiting a final decision before the Mississippi Supreme Court.
This week, the Senate passed a bill that among other things would continue to provide public funding for private schools. Not only is this program in direct violation of the state constitution, it actually gives private schools an advantage over public schools when using special federal funds.
The Independent Schools Infrastructure Grant Program, which lawmakers adopted last year and funded with $10 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, allows private schools to receive grants of up to $100,000 for infrastructure projects. Private schools would not have to repay the state.
That stands in stark contrast to the program lawmakers created for public schools. Public school districts can apply to the state for interest-free loans that have to be repaid within 10 years.
A state court last year agreed with the Parents for Public Schools in its lawsuit against the state. The pro-public school organization argued the program violated Section 208 of the Mississippi Constitution, which says that no state funds shall be allocated to “any school” that is not “a free school.” The state appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, where the lawsuit now rests. In the meantime, the program is on hold.
Clearly Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders are hoping the law will survive the court challenge, which is why they decided to move forward with reauthorizing the $10 million in funding.
Regardless of what happens in court, the program is still horrible policy. As we wrote last year, “the idea of using public funds for private schools is a bad one, especially in the case of this grant program, which the Legislature created in a way that specifically prohibits public schools from taking advantage of it.”
Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, tried to amend the spending bill to remove funding for the private school grant program. It passed despite a bipartisan effort to protect public schools that included votes from Republican Sens. Nicole Boyd of Oxford, Angela Turner Ford of West Point and Daniel Sparks of Belmont.
Unfortunately, Sen. Chad McMahan, R-Guntown, voted against the amendment despite having opposed the program last year. McMahan, who has two primary opponents this year, said that he needed more information about the amendment to support it.
But what more information is really needed? The bill would spend public tax money on private schools, which is bad policy to begin with. Past that, it puts public schools seeking ARPA funds at a disadvantage compared to private schools.
Who cannot see the irony that the public dollars are free to private schools, but the public dollars to public schools will have to be repaid with additional public dollars? It’s a laughable double standard.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, has usually been a strong supporter of public schools, though he allowed this program to pass last year. Hopefully the backlash and the current court battle will persuade him and his fellow House leaders to strip the Independent Schools Infrastructure Grant Program from this spending bill.
Private schools are not bad, but they are private businesses. They survive on tuition, fundraising and grants from organizations for private schools. Government has no place funding them, especially not at the expense of our public schools.
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Greenwood Commonwealth. February 21, 2023.
Editorial: A Mass Killing In Mississippi
The U.S. has experienced a deadly start to 2023, including six mass killings in a three-week period in January, according to an Associated Press/USA Today database. It defines a mass killing as four or more people dead, not including the perpetrator.
Mississippi saw its own such episode Friday in Arkabutla, where six people were killed by a single gunman. Authorities said 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum busted into the home of his ex-wife and smashed her boyfriend in the head with the butt of a gun before fatally shooting her in the head. They said Crum shot a man sitting in the driver’s seat of a pickup outside a convenience store first, then his ex-wife. After deputies arrested Crum at home, they found the bodies of two handymen outside and Crum’s stepfather and his sister in a neighboring home.
Police were still trying to ascertain a motive as of Monday morning. Crum’s motivations seem hard to fathom. Sources quoted in the Associated Press described him as “a little weird,” and suggested he suffered mental problems.
As is so often the case, ready access to firearms has promoted an individual’s mental condition into a killing spree. How we answer not only this tragic episode, but others that will doubtlessly occur in the future, is one of the greatest issues that not only this nation, but now sadly Mississippi, will have to decide.
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