Mississippi Happenings

Welcome to Mississippi Happenings.

My name is David Oles and I'm here with my co-host, Jim Newman.

Jim, say hello.

Hello.

Hey, Jim.

What we're going to do today is we're going to kind of do a recap of some of our
episodes.

This will be our 17th episode.

We have had 19 guests to join us and we have talked a lot about a lot of things, a lot of

very important things both for Mississippi and in Mississippi, but also within our nation.

But Jim, I got a question and for our listeners and our viewers, this is just us.

So it's just a conversation between Jim and I.

And Jim, tell me your thoughts on Elon Musk and his spaceship.

Tell me about that, bud.

I knew you were gonna ask about that.

Well.

He's got an awfully good contract with NASA to put a rocket up that will take astronauts
to Mars.

and he's had four in a row that have blown up.

Wow.

uh, yesterday morning about 2 a.m.

they did a launch pad test and it just blew to smithereens.

Mmm.

I mean, literally just blew up on the launch pad.

It was a spectacular rocket show.

and it strikes me as...

maybe having some priorities in the wrong place, given what's going on in the United
States at this particular time.

I know that the spaceship that's been used to go up to.

the uh...

to the moon and then to the space station.

has been very successful.

And a lot of good things have come out of the space station.

And we've had international cooperation.

We've had Russians, we've had uh Frenchmen, we've had, I think we've had a Chinese person
from China, all astronauts.

So I think that's been a very good thing.

And a lot of good scientific

Stuff has come out of that.

But I don't know.

I'm just guessing that that rocket ship had to have cost.

Well, a billion dollars.

I mean, we've got...

fighter jets and bombers that cost somewhere between 50 and 100 million each.

I've got a feel that that rocket ship probably cost.

half a million to a billion dollars somewhere in that range.

And at the same time, its goal is to go to Mars.

yet here we are cutting Medicaid, cutting veterans benefits and access to healthcare,
cutting SNAP, talking about reducing social security, potentially even cutting benefits

that ah our senior citizens are eliminating.

ah

the education department, all of this in the name of cost cutting.

And why are we doing the cost cutting?

So that we can continue to have a

beneficial tax program for those that are extremely wealthy.

And all of that brings me back around to saying, I think we got some of our priorities as
a country in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm not opposed to going to Mars, but I think there are some things that are a heck of a
lot more important right now.

And we really ought to be concentrating on

remedying those situations and we can still keep the Mars project out there as something
we wanted to accomplish, but we don't need to accomplish it on the backs of a lot of

people that don't have the money.

Understood, And you know, a couple of things that we've talked to, talked about, and you
just brought it up, the elimination of the Department of Education.

And we know in Mississippi, we've had a chance to talk to Erica Jones with the MAE.

We've had a chance to talk to Nancy Loom and what taken away between the school vouchers.

and money just simply going to the private schools and the charter schools, it's been a
major effect on the state of Mississippi.

We talked about $170 million dollars that the state of Mississippi lost because of uh
Linda McMahon.

And she pulled back on the program.

And it costs a lot of a lot of our rural school uh districts lost a lot of money.

Do you recall that conversation, Jim?

Absolutely.

That was I think that was one of the best interviews we've had regarding

education. I've always been amazed at our legislature who continues to talk

how education is so important and the brain drain and all of this goes along the line.

And yet the number one priority, the number one bill every year in the legislature is not
education.

I did notice today or yesterday, maybe

a Mississippi Today article that somebody was going to be introducing a bill to raise
teacher salaries.

And I've forgotten what the other issue was.

ah But it had to do with education.

And my thought is, if our future is in our children and grandchildren,

Why aren't we putting the money there first?

if it's that important.

uh I agree with you and in those episodes, we did applaud Philip Birchfield and Lance
Evans.

uh They both had comments in Mississippi Today article uh trying to get uh Linda McMahon
to honor the government's commitment to Mississippi schools.

to get both of them to join us.

And we never heard back from either one of them.

And we talk about a lot of subjects, but we talk about the kitchen table issues that
affects everybody, regardless of your oh political persuasion.

We all have, I mean, we all love our kids.

We love our grandkids.

We love kids.

And we know the importance of

education, but it seems like that's always been kind of at the bottom of the oh of the
list of things that our lawmakers really want to discuss.

Jim?

You just have to look at their record and the record speaks for itself.

Where Mississippi thinks education should be.

They have yet, what, two years, two years I believe, they have fully funded the
educational program.

Just two years since it came into effect in what the...

90s?

It was a matter of fact, it was the 80s and they had the one formula and they recently got
rid of that formula to make sure.

Well, let me rephrase that.

They had one formula that they said nobody could understand.

So they changed it to another formula that even they could not understand.

That was from an article also from Mississippi Today.

So it seems to be a little bit of bait and switch when it comes to the money that really
goes to our public schools.

Yes.

And that's another issue with me, is it?

The m money for education is allocated based on the pupil.

The student goes to public school and the state pays X number of dollars for that student
and all the students in that county.

If he doesn't go to that school and he goes to a charter school, the money follows him to
the charter school, which deletes the total amount of money available to the public

schools to provide excellent education.

Now, this doesn't happen in Oxford.

or Hattiesburg, excuse me, or Tupelo, in our, basically our largest cities, because there
is a sufficient amount of tax base that the taxes are levied and the cities supplement the

state funding so that we pay our teachers.

better and facilities are better.

uh I remember not too many years back when Tupelo decided to put in an artificial football
field and it was, I think it's a million dollars.

And it didn't take him any time at all to raise the million dollars.

Not that that was wrong.

I'm not saying that.

But what I am saying is that...

The large cities are able to supplement the per student.

money spent.

Where it's hurting us is in our rural areas that do not have the tax base.

and there's no way to do it.

So the schools suffer.

How do they suffer?

Well,

Maybe they don't get the best and brightest teachers.

Maybe they don't have the best facilities.

Maybe they don't offer as many courses.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of rural schools don't offer French and Spanish.

ah

And I'm not sure whether I think Tupelo may offer another one.

I'm not sure, but.

What a school can offer to a student in an educational situation as far as the opportunity
for education is limited by how many teachers they can hire and those teachers have to

fulfill the requirements and anything extra like foreign languages or whatever doesn't get
included.

And it was interesting when we talked to Jack Reed Jr.

of the history behind Mississippi going from a segregated school district and then to a
integrated district, but it took them, and Jim correct me if I'm wrong on that, but it

took them about 16 years.

from the time the government said, yes, we are going to integrate the schools.

I don't remember the case, it took that long.

It took 16 years from the time the government said it, you know, in the late 60s until the
early 70s.

when it finally happened in Mississippi.

was interesting when we talked to Jack Reed Jr.

oh and how his father was involved in getting it done in Mississippi.

That was another extremely.

ah

Wonderful interview.

I really enjoyed hearing the stories about Jack Reed Sr.

I did not get to Tupelo ah in time to be really that knowledgeable.

Jack Reed Sr.

I met, we were friends.

ah He would recognize me, we would talk, but I never got to sit down with him.

and ask him those questions.

And I really regret having not done that.

And that's one of the things that I enjoy doing with our podcasts because it was because
of that interview, we then went to an interview with Lovie West and Virginia Tolliver.

Yes.

uh, two black women, extremely intelligent, came from humble beginnings, but rose to the
top and, uh, in spite of things, but

It was.

It was just good to hear those stories and Mississippi is surrounded with those stories
and people who have done those things.

ah I know over in the Delta, there was a saying that the road to success was whatever it
is, highway 59 North.

In other words, get out of the Delta and

Go ahead.

I don't know what the highway was.

What's the main highway there north?

I think it's highway 51.

Yeah.

makes sense.

Yeah, I had heard that a number of times that in the Delta, the road to success, if you
didn't own a plantation was highway 51 North.

And a lot of people went North.

ah

went to Chicago and St.

Louis and to Memphis.

A good friend of mine, Jim Casey, went to Carbondale, Illinois, ah where he was very
successful and became principal and superintendent.

ah

So.

I hope we continue those efforts in uh finding people with interesting histories because
history in our school system is about to be not taught nearly as well as it has been.

ah I don't know whether it was this morning's newspaper or yesterday's newspaper.

shed the,

schools, the state school board has decided to do away with the history tests.

If you're to do away with the history test, how much effort are you going to put into
teaching the kids history?

Good point.

And it seems to me that that might just be a result of the DEI situation, the diversity,
inclusion and equity.

because I've heard a couple of professors and you have too at Ole Miss talk about, well, I
can't do this and I can't do that.

And I can't talk about the Civil War.

I can't talk about slavery.

can't talk about, that's the history.

and you cannot rewrite history.

It's there.

You can't change the facts.

Read the first Mississippi Constitution.

It's.

I don't know the exact words, but it's to the effect that blacks are more ah able to work
in the hot sun than whites.

So slavery is okay.

There was, yeah, a lot of those things, just absurd.

It is absurd.

And if our children aren't learning the history of Mississippi, the actual history of
Mississippi.

How are we teaching them to respect and treat others like they would like to be treated?

Yeah, I'm of the opinion and this is my opinion that with the elimination of diversity,
equity and inclusion, you know, personally, I think that's a way for us to get back to

segregation.

And Jim, that scares the hell out of me.

ah It's just, it's, frightening and it's, it's how we as a, as a nation have lost

our way and have lost our compassion and our understanding of, of, of, of people.

And you're absolutely right.

Uh, the history books is thrown out.

Yeah.

Just because I know of, of, slavery and just because, you know, it was the, the white
plantation owners.

that had the slaves, were beating the slaves.

that has no, I mean, how do I put this?

That's history.

It doesn't make me feel any less of a person because of who I am, but some of the far...

radical right, you know, they want to say, that's making the Caucasian, and I like the
term Caucasian better than white, but that makes the white person feel ashamed of their

history, which makes no sense to me.

History is history.

You can't change it.

No, you can't change it.

And when you are racist,

Yes.

and you treat other races with less dignity than you treat the Caucasians.

You are

saying that you believe in slavery.

And, and, know, we've, we've had some good conversations also, you know, cause this is,
these are, we, have to talk about these things because it goes back.

It's not going to be taught in the school.

It'll, as you said, it's good to hear the stories.

You know, we're just, we're just two old white men.

I mean, let's face it.

And I am ashamed.

I only learned about June 10th, which was June the 19th.

I only learned about that about four years ago, which is, you know, I'm ashamed to say it,
but it was taught in my history books.

I had to learn that from other people.

you know, yes, it's great that we all need to be celebrating Juneteenth or June 19th.

It's some of the things, one of the things that I've recently discovered, and I'm not
quite sure where I read it, m but in Mississippi, the governor has his Confederate day.

Yes.

Well, that's a state holiday.

But I recently have learned that not every municipality has to celebrate that holiday.

They can not have it and just have it as a regular workday and make Juneteenth or that
weekend the holiday.

Yep

So how do you go about getting that done?

You got to go to your city council or city alderman and get a petition and get that done.

So there are opportunities out there.

I mean, this, was surprised to hear it.

I don't know how that got passed the legislature.

Somebody ah wasn't paying attention, but thank goodness they weren't.

Slid it in.

Good!

gives us an opportunity to make right something that I think is wrong.

Yeah, we've talked to a representative.

Robert, excuse me, Representative Justice Gibbs, and we've talked to Senator Robert uh
Johnson, and they had some great stories to tell us during the 2025 oh legislative

session.

They had some good stories about that too.

and the elimination of primarily, yes, public education again, but also the elimination of
the state income tax and how we are, you know, it's going to save the average

Mississippian about $44.

On the poor end, know, the poor, it's going to save them four, one, two, three, $4.

But on the

the millionaires and the people with the money, it's going to save them about $40,000.

But we all will lose a lot of services, in my opinion.

I think that's one of the things that brought you and I together on this podcast is that
what we're trying to do is bring out issues that are not generally talked about in the

open, in the legislature, ah or on the editorial pages of our newspapers.

And as a result, things go on and happen and we're all surprised by it.

And it's too late to do anything about.

And you mentioned kitchen table issues.

Yes.

One of the things that Jack Reed Sr.

said that will stick with me forever is, what happens in your house is more important than
what happens in the White House.

Absolutely.

and it is so true.

What happens in your house if you are not involved, if you're not trying to get educated
on the political issues.

m

If you're not out.

promoting or protesting or whatever you want to call it.

The fact that we in Mississippi do not have the right for an initiative petition.

because the legislature won't rewrite the Constitution so that instead of having five
congressional districts, we have four, and then they could pass an initiative petition.

But they're not interested in doing that.

That's a kitchen table issue.

Yes.

healthcare.

cuts in Medicaid, the lack of Medicaid expansion.

And the one thing that I always get upset about is they want people to have to work to get
Medicaid.

They already have to work.

If you're able-bodied, you've got to do 20 hours a week, 20 hours a month, I believe.

Most people on Medicaid

Cannot work.

That's why they're on Medicaid.

They don't want to be on Medicaid.

When you are not involved, you don't realize that.

most of the nursing homes.

are only able to survive because their patients are on Medicaid.

Now if they cut Medicaid enough, grandma's going to be out on the street because the
nursing homes are for profit.

These are things that go ahead.

And you look at the jails and we do want to, we're trying to get someone scheduled to talk
about their jail system, you know, and their jails are for profit.

That to me, that's just absurd.

Jail's for profit.

Yes, the article ah yesterday, Representative Curry, State Representative Curry was over
at Parchman.

She's a nurse.

Mm-hmm.

She saw a man, six foot two, who weighed 115 pounds.

He had lost the weight.

because he wasn't getting the medication he needed.

But it was.

not something that he couldn't get, they just weren't giving it to him.

She saw another person there who had

I think ammonia in his blood ah had something to do with ammonia in his blood.

But that was another instance that could be taken care of.

And the result was that he had a five-year sentence, but because of what he had
contracted,

He was given three months to live.

man.

So you go from a five year sentence to three months to live?

We're going to try to get representative Curry on a podcast.

ah I would love to hear her story.

me greatly when we don't treat incarcerated people with dignity.

I don't care what they've done.

When you put them in jail, we need to feed them and clothe them and take care of their
medical needs.

I think that's just, that's the minimum that we should be doing.

It's enough that they're not running around in society again, but they certainly should
not be dying for lack of healthcare.

I agree with you there.

And, and we know that there are those that uh strictly don't care about the incarcerated,
you know, the other side of the coin.

Well, they shouldn't have done whatever they did anyway.

You know, they shouldn't have been, you know, whatever they got sent to jail for they,
well, it's like the opposite of the coin as well.

You know, they deserved it.

Well, that's wrong.

You know, that's

They don't deserve to die uh in jail because of lack of healthcare.

That's just not who we are as human beings and as compassionate people that we need to be.

uh

of the jails is you can, um somebody can be picked up, taken to jail for drunk driving or
whatever.

and they may sit there.

for six months, a year, year and a half, two years, because they don't have the money to
make bail, and they don't have an attorney.

who's going to process it and cause it to happen.

So we wonder.

why we have.

a population that thinks that the way to solve problems is through guns.

and not at the ballot box.

Yeah, we could spend days talking about that, we?

my gosh, 29,000 voters in ah Tupelo and in the Mayorial election, less than 5,000 decided
who the mayor was going to be.

I remember talking to Dr.

Deborah Williams from uh DeSoto County.

She is the chairwoman of the executive committee of the Democrats in DeSoto County.

you know, there was a plea for poll workers.

oh And also, you know, she also touched on, oh yes, getting out the vote and...

of what a lot of people term is GOTV, get out the vote, which kind of ties into a little
bit of what we talked to Jamie and to Mary Jane from indivisible Northeast Mississippi and

political activism.

And that was a fun episode.

They were a lot of...

Bye.

They were.

That was a good one.

And a few days later, they had a

hands off or no no kings no kings here in Tupelo ah

Oxford, Jackson, Gulfport, Biloxi.

think there were seven or eight cities in the state of Mississippi that did the No Kings.

That brought a lot of attention, ah got a lot of coverage, and it wasn't just in
Mississippi.

2100 cities had no King's protests.

And the estimate is that there were five million people.

showed up in all cities around the country to protest what's happening with our government
for various things.

ah

And we've been very fortunate to have the retired Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett ah to talk
about, you know, the international uh issues that we have, both with the international uh

diplomacy and also cybersecurity.

ah I mean, and this, all the people we talked about, they're all

that we mentioned, they all are experts uh in their field.

They have firsthand knowledge of this.

uh But some of the stuff that Jamie Barnett talked about was kind of, really was kind of
frightening.

uh He also has a sub stack uh called opinion aided, which is opinion aided by facts.

And uh it was kind of...

uh

It was frightening some of the things that he was talking about of oh how we are losing
our foothold as the world's leader and we're letting other countries take over because of

the current administration and uh their lack of, what's the word I'm looking for, I guess
for their imperialism or because they...

You know, it's all about America and, but it's America is a big part of the world and has
been a leader in the world for decades.

And I guess ever since the first or the second world war, I'm not a history teacher or
historian.

But it seems that we're losing that and that was kind of frightening and that came from
Jamie Barnett.

Yes.

And if you think about it, everything he talked about, cybersecurity and ah the number of
ships the Navy has, things like that.

Yeah.

Just remember that Ingalls Shipyard on the Gulf Coast is one of the largest employers in
the state.

And then when you find out that the United States as a country builds, I think my memory
is right, two warships a year is what we're turning out to join the fleet.

While the Russians or the Chinese are turning out something like 20.

It was either 20 or 200.

What oh was it David, do you remember?

I don't remember, but that's close.

Yeah, it was just really amazing.

there's, know, people don't realize that we're building ships in Mississippi.

High technology ships.

My gosh, right here in Tupelo, we've got a company that builds the propulsion system that
goes on an aircraft carrier that propels that jet off the deck.

The technology is fabulous and it requires a workforce that's educated.

And here we go.

That circle is coming back around, isn't it?

An educated workforce.

Absolutely.

And we talk a lot about the issues in Mississippi, but uh there's ours.

There's wonderful things about Mississippi.

You know, I grew up in Tennessee, just across the state line.

And then you grew up.

Where did you grow up, by the way?

I haven't grown up.

I'm still working on it.

Yes, it's like, okay, Jim, what are you gonna be when you grow up?

That type deal.

But that'll work.

That'll work.

a bell at Christmas.

But, you know, it's, and so there's, we, I mean, we love, we live in Mississippi.

You know, I've been here since 72 in Mississippi and you've been here since the eighties.

78.

78?

Okay.

We love Mississippi.

We really do.

There's a lot of great things, you know, but also we do have to bring out, we do try to
bring out the issues so we can address these issues.

And yes, we are reaching out and we do want to hear from, you know, Republicans.

We want to hear from independents.

We want to hear from progressive.

We want to hear from

Democrats because we want the discussion.

We are not afraid of discussions.

We do very respectful interviews.

oh I've seen some from Mississippi Public Broadcasting, which I'm thinking, I don't know
if I'd want to have a conversation with some of those interviewers, but that's a whole

different thing.

You know, we do want to discuss those issues and we as a nation have got to come back
together again.

There is middle ground.

There is a gray side.

It's not all all the way to the, to the left or all the way to the right.

We've got to meet somewhere in the middle because we all have the same goals.

We all want, you know,

healthcare, we all want, you know, good roads.

We all want to have good education.

We all want good hospitals, good doctors.

We want educated, we want an educated workforce.

But it seems the difference is how we go about it.

And that's where we got to come, that's where we've got to come together.

And most of these issues, when you get right down to it, are not Republican or Democrat.

They're issues that affect every one of us every day of our lives.

And unless everybody comes together and talks to each other and comes to an agreement, we
don't really move forward.

One of the things that...

the Minnesota Senator, or yes, Senator that was killed.

can't think of her name right now.

Everybody I've heard talk about her that knew her said that she was the absolute best
person ever to get

both sides to come together and sit down and hammer out an issue that was so critical to
Minnesota.

And I don't, I have not heard exactly what that issue was, but that's what we've got to
do.

And it's very hard to do when one side says, I'm right, you're wrong.

And the other side says, no, you're right.

I'm right and you're wrong.

Nobody's right all the time and nobody's wrong all the time.

But we need to get together and start talking to get each other.

And that's what I hope we're trying to do with this podcast is bring people together ah so
that we can talk about the various issues and see their side of it and get an education.

Absolutely, absolutely.

we do want to thank our, uh have oh several sponsors.

We do appreciate them.

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We ask, yes, uh we want more subscribers.

We ask that you subscribe to this broadcast.

this podcast is no charge.

It is free for you to view it or for you to listen to it, however you do.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, we would love to hear from you.

And you can email us at mshappenings, the number one at gmail.com.

That's mshappeningsthenumberone.com.

We'd love to hear from you.

We want to hear, uh you know, things that you want to talk about, things that you like
that we said, and things that you disagree with what we said.

And we do want to uh talk to local and state elected officials that can share some
information.

to us.

do want to educate uh our viewers and our listeners.

Jim, you got anything you want to...

End this with.

Bring us home.

uh Bring it home or what are we?

Yes.

I would like to see.

legislators from both sides of the aisle.

Maybe a couple of them.

come together on the podcast.

And let's just have a conversation.

Yes.

and see where it goes.

The legislature will reconvene next January and now is the time for citizens to be talking
to their legislators, letting them know what is of interest to them as far as legislation

is concerned or what's important.

But we got a good size state here, a little less than three million people.

And I can promise you everybody's got an opinion and we're not always gonna agree.

But I think the time has come.

for us to start to at least agree on the things that we do agree on and move forward on
those.

And we can work on the things that we disagree on, but let's get together and agree on the
important things and move forward in Mississippi.

One last thing, Jim, I've got to ask you.

ah You seem to be in a, your arm seems to be in a sling.

What happened, buddy?

Oh.

I tripped.

No, no.

A dog got in my way.

I was taking steps backward and a dog got in my way and I went down.

Fell on my shoulder last Saturday.

ah Hurt an awful lot.

Thought I had just done some.

tissue damage, maybe a ligament or two or something.

Went to the doctor on Monday and found out that I had fractured the humerus bone, which is
the bone that runs between your shoulder and your elbow.

And...

uh

They didn't want to do any surgery.

said that putting it in a sling for three weeks, everything that was fractured was in
proper alignment.

And they're hoping that three or four or five weeks we'll get it cured and I'll be fine.

Thank you for asking.

But I tell you, it has given me a new perspective.

ah

If you, I don't know how you, how you might view handicapped people, but I'm here to tell
you, I've got a new perspective and respect for handicapped people.

When you only have one arm, try to get your pants on.

Try to brush your teeth.

Try to fix dinner.

Just try to do the things you normally do.

and you'll find out that you cannot do it.

And like I said, I've gained a real healthy respect for those that are not as fortunate as
I have been throughout my life to have everything work.

But to all of our listeners and our viewers, we do appreciate you.

You are very important.

uh Please share this with your friends.

We'd love to hear from all of you.

And as always, may we never be indifferent to the suffering of others.

Thank you.