Quite a large chunk of the Katrina reconstruction funds were squandered on graft and corruption, and there are plenty of neighborhoods that never rebuilt after the storm. The oil spill made matters worse, and contrary to what the state level agencies say, the seafood is still not safe to eat. If it were, tar and crude oil would not be washing up on the islands off the coast to this day. They merely forced all that oil to the bottom of the ocean where sea creatures live, by spraying millions of gallons of toxic dispersants on it.
The coast casinos never recovered pre-Katrina business levels as well as the coastal population size. The seafood industry is still reeling from BP. The shipyards are bleeding high-paying jobs now by the hundreds, many of them union jobs. We're sliding backward on so many fronts. The governor's new budget is proposing a 5 percent cut across the board for public education and universities, this in a state with one of the highest regressive sales taxes in the nation because the wealthiest don't want to pay through property taxes.
The people are nice but desperately ill-informed or simply ignorant of the situation with the state government. If people had proper information on which to make an informed decision, this state probably would've been the first to abandon the two-party system a long time ago and also pushed for publicly funded elections to remove the lobbyists out of Jackson. The people's potential is vast, but the energy is being diverted into divisive politics pitting workers against each other. They vote for politicians who don't give a fuck about them.
The only thing worthy of consideration is the people of Mississippi. If they could wake up, they'd clean house quickly.
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