Hello, I'm David Oles and welcome to Mississippi Happenings.
Joining me is my co-host, Jim Newman.
Jim, how are you, my friend?
Much better than I have been the last week, I tell you.
You've been fighting COVID for a while, haven't you?
Between COVID and a cold, yes.
Well, it's good to see your smiling face and it's good to know that you are feeling better.
Today, our topic we want to discuss is juvenile crime and education in Mississippi.
Joining us today is Scott Colum.
Scott was elected as the district attorney
And he was the youngest and the first African American justice court judge in Lowndes County.
2015, he was elected as a district attorney for the District 16, which is made up of, and Scott, you may have to help me out on these counties.
are Clay County.
Lowndes County, Oktibbeha County.
Thank you.
the home of Mississippi State Bulldogs.
uh Gotcha.
uh It also Noxubee, Noxubee?
Okay.
Great.
Well, as you say, I'm from North Mississippi, so I don't know any of these, but he is a native of uh Columbus, Mississippi.
County.
I'm
I can't even get to Lee County.
Jim won't even let me come there.
He is a native of uh Columbus, Mississippi.
He is a graduate of uh Millsaps College, go majors.
uh And then he also, then he continued his education at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
uh He took uh internships.
with the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and Tanzania.
He earned one of just 24 coveted summer internships with the U.S.
Department of Justice.
After law school, he was also awarded a prestigious national fellowship and also worked for the Mississippi Center of Justice.
welcome.
We're so glad to have you with us.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm honored to talk about my work as district attorney and talk about how education and employments are the key to prevent crime.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
You have reading over your resume, you have such a service heart and such a commitment to public service throughout your career.
ah Let's talk about, let's start with, and this is something that all of our subscribers want to talk to because talk about.
is what's going on in Mississippi in our public schools.
In looking at the history of public education in Mississippi, ah it seems that it's always been a challenge uh for lawmakers to come up with a plan.
And Mississippi still remains
one of the has one of the lowest ratings in public education.
And now with the budget cuts and what the uh Department of Education is doing in Mississippi, it seems like public education in Mississippi is under fire.
Scott, talk to us about that.
Well, if you don't mind, can I give a long answer?
Because I think to understand why I care about that, it's important to understand why it's personal to me.
And I appreciate David saying that I've had a career service and that's result of my parents putting the right values in me, the community around Columbus and Starkville and
West Point and Noxubee County.
investing me as a young person.
I know that uh places like the YMCA are key for young people to have safe environments.
uh Public school, public education was so important to me in preparing me for college and then law school.
And it was just good to have a community of people that cared about me.
And so when I decided to practice law, I truly got into it not to make money, but
to give back to a community that I felt like had given me so much.
And moved back to Mississippi and I was blessed again through uh just support from the community to get several positions, David, as you pointed out.
I've been, I've got a lot of firsts on my resume, but the thing that I care the most about is making sure that I'm not the last.
And so I've always spent time investing in young people.
uh
And so let me talk a little bit.
That's a kind of a get to why education matters.
And so I've been district attorney 10 years now.
And one of the things I've learned since I've been district attorney is that
The keys to actually preventing crime are education and employment.
As a district attorney, I can prevent someone from committing a crime again.
The police can arrest and investigate and prevent somebody else from committing a crime again, but they can't prevent it from happening in the first place unless the person's
already got in trouble, right?
So the best way to actually prevent crime is education and employment.
And what I mean by education is so many of our young people that find themselves caught up in a criminal justice system, it's a result of maybe they don't have the right role models
around them.
Maybe they have a negative peer pressure, something I call negative peer pressure, where you have people that are leading you in the wrong direction.
You drop out of school at a young age and the school doesn't identify the barriers to learning that you need.
And so for me at DA, I always try to focus in on what can I do to support education because that's a key component in the long term of preventing crime and keeping the
community safe.
So when I read about the freezing of the federal funds that were promised to our school district of Mississippi, I was very frustrated by that because I know what that's gonna
mean.
I think the number I saw in Mississippi today was $137 million that
they were that the federal government had agreed to give to our school district and that they had allocated that money towards mental health counselors, towards infrastructure of
school districts, towards things that are gonna make our schools better.
And now those money is frozen.
That's gonna have a real life impact on so many of our young people in our school districts.
And if we don't focus on that and advocate that that money is released, then we're risking.
more young people falling into negative traps.
We had a talk yesterday with former governor Ronnie Musgrove and um he brought up the same issue and he talked about the fact that we got maybe half a dozen cities that do well
enough that they can actually have additional taxes to support their school systems.
The rest of the state doesn't.
So whereas I believe he said Tupelo could offer 140 different classes, another county might only be able to offer 80 or 90.
So the education is not equal.
How do we go about getting that equality?
mean, David always brings up the diversity, equity and inclusion.
That's part of it.
But Mississippi doesn't seem to ever want to get to that point of making all of our schools at the same level so that all of our kids get the same good.
potential education.
Yeah, Jim, that's a great question.
think that for me, one thing I would say is I do think there's a disconnect between sometimes the policymaker and the people, because I just don't think that a lot of the
public understands the uh how the public schools are funded and how much of a partner the federal government is to those funds.
And that's why it's important that you and David
former governor talk about it because I never underestimate, you know, I have two young kids, six and eight.
And I always have been someone to follow the news and follow the politics.
But once you get married and have kids, it gets a lot tougher.
And I understand that probably a lot of people, they're not following the news and we're in a new news environment.
So that's the one thing I say is I think there is a bit of a disconnect.
The second thing I would say is part of the solution is we have to be as citizens of Mississippi,
advocate for our state first.
We can't have this viewpoint that we're going to tell the federal government, no, we don't want money to come to our state for reasons that don't make sense.
So you look at the $137 million.
Why in the world would everybody in our state not be united and fighting to get those funds?
That's money that's going to help our economy, help our schools, and help our students.
But sometimes we get in this world where we're in denial about the partnership that we need from the federal government.
And it makes me think about senators like Thad Cochran.
oh You look at him, his record as a senator.
He understood that Mississippi and our interests had to be more important than DC politics.
And that's one thing that's very frustrating to me.
Where are our leaders talking?
People who have power could do something about this.
Why aren't they talking about the fact that we are suffering as a result of DC politics that are going to hurt our students?
We do want to point out, hang on a second, Jim.
We do want to point out that Philip Birchfield and Lance Evans, they did, one of them, and I forget which one, did contact Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, and asked for that
money back, or asked for that money to be released.
so we do applaud them for taking that position.
Uh, and we have invited them to join us for a podcast about that, but we haven't, uh, heard back from them, but they have the invitation to come join us about that.
Jim.
Well, I find it very, very frustrating that our legislators, both state as well as national, and we've interviewed a number of state legislators, it seems to me that
Most of them have a, let's just go along to get along type attitude.
And that's fine for the six or so cities that have got the money in the industry, like Golden Triangle continues to develop.
But for the other 75 counties in this state that are rural.
It's a tragedy.
And these kids don't have a chance.
unless somebody like you come along.
And Eddie Glowd, who's a professor at Princeton, has written a book and he says, you are the leaders we've been looking for.
And people need to adopt that.
We are the leaders.
Every one of us need to take that individual responsibility.
And I'm glad to see you willing to come out and
make these statements.
ah I hope the legislators listen to it and quit being like milk toast.
Jim's what's what is milk toast?
Hahaha!
Well, if you ever
be serious, I don't know what milk toast is.
Well, if you put a piece of bread in a toaster and then you put it in a bowl of milk, you've got milk toast.
Thank you, thank you.
Honestly.
a child.
Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
Thank you.
Now I do.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I grew up with ketchup sandwiches, but go ahead.
Well, I loved your comment about juvenile crime and the answer to it is jobs and education.
It's difficult for a high school graduate or a senior to uh work at McDonald's and see his buddy out there on the street selling drugs and driving a Mercedes.
Yeah.
How do we get around that?
What do we do?
Well, I think we've got to show them that working at, first of all, any work is dignity.
If you work in McDonald's, God bless you, you have dignity.
We have to put dignity back at work.
And part of that means work has to pay.
You we need to make sure people are making a salary in a way that they can afford to live.
And sometimes, you know, we don't have, we don't support policies that do that.
But the other thing is we have to give that person hope.
beyond their short-term circumstance.
And if you work at McDonald's, don't think of yourself as a person that is just gonna flip burgers.
Think of yourself as the eventual manager.
Think of yourself as a person that can own McDonald's.
And that may seem impossible, but there are people that do it.
There's people, I know people that have done it.
But it does take long-term thinking.
And some of the peer pressure, Jim, is not even about economics, it's about culture.
If people don't see a person or a pathway that they believe is achievable to them, then they're more tempted to be persuaded by what I would call the streets.
I mean, can tell you a great story about it.
It's a case I prosecuted with a guy named, a young kid named Harvey Johnson.
He was 15 years old and he was out of school one day.
hanging out with an older guy, guy in his late 20s named Tommy Flowers.
And Tommy got him drunk, got him high, all day drinking and smoking with him.
And later that night, he took Harvey to a house uh to shoot at some guys that he had beef with, that Tommy had beef with.
He gave Harvey a gun, he had a gun, he went to the house.
And so the guys that they shot at were ready to protect their castle because they...
that had prior conflict with Mr.
Flowers.
So they shot back outside the house and they killed Harvey Johnson, the 15 year old.
And so we prosecuted Tommy Flowers under accomplished liability.
The theory that although he wasn't the person that pulled the trigger that killed Harvey Johnson, he took them to the bullets that killed him by getting them high, getting them
drunk all day and then taking them to shoot at some people that he knew were dangerous.
And after we got a guilty verdict, I had a chance to talk to Harvey's mom.
And she was happy with the verdict.
She was glad that we got justice for the loss.
But you could tell that she still had the pain of losing her son and wondering what she could have done to prevent him from being with Tommy Flowers at 15 years old, drinking and
smoking all day.
What could she have done to prevent him from having a gun and shooting at somebody?
And so...
When we talk about young people, we have to recognize there are a group of people that are vulnerable to the streets.
And if we let the streets win, that not only is a bad indictment of us on us, but it's also bad for Mississippi's economy.
Those are people that are not gonna be taxpayers, they're gonna be tax burdeners, their productivity's gonna go away because they're gonna be dead.
are they're going to go to prison and that's going to be a tax burden for the taxpayers in the long term.
And, you know, so there's something that we've got to think long term about that.
And we got to provide opportunities for those kids.
And a lot of times school is the best option.
That's where they can get positive peer pressure.
That's where they can get others examples of leadership and other examples of a future.
That's where we can educate them about.
the long-term consequences of bad decisions.
That's where we can save so many of our young people.
So when I read that the federal government has promised money to our school districts, and then all of sudden says, we're going to freeze those funds, which means there's going to
be less mental health counselors, I can't help but think about what that means for Harvey Johnson and more people like him.
I can't help worry that we're going to make more Harvey Johnsons.
and we're going to stop Mississippi from reaching its potential.
Because that's what our focus has to be for our young people.
We have to want them to reach their potential because if they reach their potential, Mississippi will reach its potential and we can stop losing so many young people.
So many young people are leaving the state because they cannot, they do not think they can reach their potential here.
Thank you for the story about Harvey Johnson.
We know that there's thousands of Harvey Johnsons out there.
So thank you for that story.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
eh
you were talking about that, I remembered.
a saying that or story that somebody told me years and years and years ago.
This fellow was walking along the street and he came across a guy that had a shovel and was digging and he asked the guy, he said, what are you doing?
He said, I'm digging a ditch.
So the guy walked on another 30 or 40 feet came across another guy doing the same thing.
And he said, what are you doing?
He said, I'm building a cathedral.
And we need to get that attitude.
And we need to get that attitude in schools.
That attitude.
ah
Yeah, I mean, and I've got young kids that are in the public education system, so I don't have to speak about it from a theoretical point of view.
I can tell you our teachers are working hard, our principals are working hard, but my youngest is Brooklyn Madison Columbus, I call her Maddie.
Just 25 students in her class, one teacher.
And she says an assistant with another teacher.
Well, any parent out there, any grandparent out there,
Imagine what energy it takes for you to just be with one child.
Imagine not only just, you know, I you're not just, they're not just there, right?
There's one thing you just have there, but you gotta teach them.
You gotta teach them how to read.
You gotta teach them how to, the basic numerical concepts.
I mean, and so, man, God bless our teachers.
God bless our teachers.
And oh that's one thing that, again, we, we, sometimes I get frustrated because
We spite ourselves.
We need the federal government to be as much of a partner as possible in supporting our state.
mean, most people don't know a big percent of our budget comes from the federal government.
And let's be clear, because people think federal government, they think that's some thing in DC.
That's money that's coming from California, New York, Boston, DC.
That's money that's coming to that government that's being given to us in Mississippi.
And I don't know about you, but I love Mississippi enough.
I'll take money from anywhere if it's going to help our young people.
I think that we just have to be frank with our sense and say, we don't need to say no to money coming from other places that's going to help our young people.
Because if we can get 15 students in the class versus 25, I don't know a teacher out there that wouldn't say that wouldn't make a big difference.
Is the adequate education formula for funding our schools, particularly in rural areas, sufficient to do the job?
Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that there has been progress made on reading and I'm very proud of that.
uh And I think, you know, there was some reforms that were important to make that happen.
oh What I think about the formula is we need to focus in as much as possible to get money in teachers' hands and we have to have accountability that, because the testing is all
about accountability.
That's what it is, it's about accountability.
But we need to make sure that the teachers have the freedom to teach success.
Sometimes the barriers to success are not whether you can read or write, but it's whether you have food in your belly, whether you feel safe at school.
And so much of our focus now is on testing that we need to balance that out.
And so I will focus on that as much as I will focus on formula.
And we also...
Too often, Jim, I don't think we listen to the teachers.
Teachers need to be front and center as to what are the solutions to these problems.
Nobody gets a teacher to make a bunch of money.
I'm sure it's not surprising you guys.
Nobody's like, you know I wanna do?
I wanna be rich, I wanna be a teacher.
That's not what you do.
So knowing that these people are getting into it with a sermon's heart, we've got to let them tell us what are the best ways to...
support the students and also we need to pay them as professionals.
So the way the formula needs to pay teachers more, that's for sure.
One of the things that I saw this morning and I was just trying to get the article and we love and we appreciate everything that Mississippi today is doing and I could not find the
article, but uh it talked about uh the progress that we have made in Mississippi, especially with the teachers and increasing their pay.
is being diminished.
And also when you talk about PERS, uh which is the retirement fund for the teachers and public employees, oh how that is affecting this as well.
One other thing, uh we talk about this money, the 137 million that we've lost.
uh I'm in DeSoto County, DeSoto County.
It's lost nothing.
Nothing was taken away.
County lost very little, but you look at the poor, poorer counties, the rural counties, and they were the hardest hit and the most needed.
And that's where they, did that money.
So.
Yeah, and we have to advocate for those students.
as a Christian, it's kind of instilled in me the idea that...
If the school is not good enough for my child, it's really shouldn't be good enough for any child.
And then I can't, as a Christian, not love somebody else's child just because we don't share the same DNA.
But we also have to think of, it's gonna affect us.
It's gonna affect us.
mean, those people that are not educated, the outcomes for them are gonna be a lot.
worse than if they are educated.
I don't think that's a controversial uh opinion.
So when we talk about schools, and this is federal money, right?
This is federal money.
So this is money coming from, can we say federal money?
I don't think people understand.
That's money that people in California, New York, but I can't say that enough.
Those taxpayers have decided they care enough about Mississippi, that they want to support our students.
And all we need to do is to care enough about those students to fight.
to keep the money.
so everybody, this should be something that everybody's on the same page about.
And I really feel like our federal partners need to be sounding the alarm and using their leverage to get the money released and to get more money, uh more federal money to our
schools.
Let me ask you a question since you've been a district attorney for a number of years now.
Have you ever prosecuted somebody for a...
violent felony that had a PhD or a bachelor's degree.
Isn't that the proof of what you're talking about?
Education.
I've had, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
know, typically the violence is between, is people between the age 16 and 25.
And outside of 16 and 25, almost all of them are people that dropped out of high school by the 10th grade.
The only exception to that is when people, is really domestic violence, is men killing women.
That doesn't really have an educational component to it or.
Well, it does have education component to it, but it's a different type of education.
yeah, so absolutely you're right, Jim.
I mean, when we invest in education, we're investing in Mississippi's success.
And that's something that we just have to, we have to be very clear about and we have to fight for those students like they were, you know, like they were our students.
That's what our Christian faith teaches us.
I often wondered when I turned 16, well in Kansas you got to drive when you were 14, but my dad wouldn't let me ah drive the family car by myself until I was 16.
And when I was 16, he was a doctor and he took me down to the University of Kansas Medical Center.
I grew up in Kansas City.
And I sat there Friday night and Saturday night and I watched all the car accidents come in and the knife and gun clubs.
And I learned a lot in those 24 hours of sitting in that emergency room.
And I came to the conclusion that I didn't ever want to be there.
Just not ever wanted to be there.
Whatever it took, that wasn't for me.
And I wonder if maybe that's not a lesson that our high school kids ought to get ah with a visit to some prisons as a one or two hour requirement for graduation.
Let them see what it's like.
Maybe some of them will decide never to come back.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that will work for some kids.
I think the you got to balance it out with also showing kids.
You know, pathways to success because the dangers of of what could happen need to be also balanced out with like you could be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, you could be an
accountant, you could be a basketball coach, you can be an agent.
I mean, there's so many things that are.
And it's just we have to expose our kids to more opportunities.
And that's why, in my term as district attorney, I've been really focused on also mentoring young people.
We have MSMS in my district.
It's in Columbus, Mississippi School for Math and Science.
And for a long period of time, I taught mock trial to the juniors and seniors there, the ones that want to be lawyers, and went out of my way to mentor them uh to show that,
listen, this is
One, you can be a lawyer because I am a lawyer and if I can do it, anybody can do it.
And then also, I mean, it's true.
And then also, just what it takes to be successful in the courtroom and expose them to other lawyers, expose them to judges.
And a lot of those students ended up becoming successful lawyers.
One of them is, I'm about to go to her graduation, Ariel Hudson.
She's about to graduate from Yale Law.
And she's from Pumica, Mississippi, know, came from a good background and a great mom, but you know, she wasn't born with a silver spoon in mouth and she had a dream and Yale off,
she's a Rhodes Scholar.
She's one of the ones that, she wants to come back to Mississippi.
That's the other thing that I would often tell her, go back to Mississippi.
great.
And that's what we need.
We need our students to get that education, come back, invest in their community.
And there's a lot of rewarding that.
I I couldn't be DA.
I got elected DA at 32.
That probably doesn't happen anywhere else in the country except for my hometown.
A place where people knew me, a place where my parents had respect in the community, a place where I could, you know, build my ideas and have people willing to hear them.
And I'm very proud of that.
I'm very proud to be from this area.
I'm one of these people, I love Mississippi.
To me, Mississippi is a negative route.
And our people are just as good as everywhere else.
Certainly, oh we need leadership that can be truthful about what the problems are and truthful about what the solutions are.
And that's where we've always struggled to me is we've had people mislead the public as to what the problems are.
and mislead the public as to what's going to suffer.
Why do you think it is that the number one House bill every session is never about education?
And that is the key to absolutely everything succeeding in Mississippi.
Yeah, Jim, I think our politics has become too nationalized.
I think that's one of the core problems is that you have people who I know that I'm friends with that I know are Republicans and they know that the policies that will
actually help Mississippi and the ones that won't.
But because they're so concerned about national politics and
how that's gonna play out nationally and national politics is such a uh factor in local politics now that that misaligns voting and policy perspectives.
So one of the things that I feel like we as citizens have to talk about is we've got to make our politics local again.
We can't fall into the trap of thinking that these DC public, these DC issues,
are actually gonna make our lives better in Mississippi, because most of the time they don't.
We gotta have local officials, state officials that are focused on Mississippi, not focused on a problem in Texas, not focused on a problem in New York.
I mean, for example, the migrant crisis and how that affected states across the country over the last few years.
Well, that wasn't a big issue in Mississippi.
I we can just be honest.
We don't have...
a significant migrant population in Mississippi.
So we need to have leaders that understand that may be a problem in that another area, but we've got to be focused on a problem that we are facing, which is we need employment.
We've got to find ways to attract industry.
We've got to find ways to get our young people to stay in Mississippi and grow our economy.
That's what's going be important for us.
And to the extent that the federal government is a partner in that, we have to be willing to put
our local interests above national and political interests.
I was reading Jack Reed Sr.'s book about the speeches he gave.
And one of the things that he said is, the things that happen in, and this is quote, things that happen in my house are more important than what happens in the White House.
And think that's what you're saying.
I'm gonna steal that quote.
That's a great quote.
That is a great quote.
Well, the things that happened in my house are more important than what's happening in the White House.
And we have to have that mentality.
And Mississippi is our house.
it is our house.
And as long as we're talking about it, ah I happen to be a political nut.
Why do we have so many people that vote against their own interests?
And even worse, in our municipal elections here ah in Tupelo,
with 29,000 potential voters.
The mayor's race was decided with a total of 4,000 plus votes.
That's that apathy is just unbelievable.
How do we, is there something our schools aren't doing?
We don't have good candidates.
What do you think?
Yeah, think so I think a lot about that.
So the issue of how people vote, I think that we have to be.
One of the big issues is in Mississippi, usually the Republican has all the money and they're only getting Republican messaging, right?
So, I mean, there's a reason why Coke outsends RC Cola and it ain't always the taste.
They Coke spends 10 more times advertising their product than RC Cola does.
And so uh that's one thing we typically don't have competitive elections, especially statewide elections, because the Democrat isn't able to raise the money necessary to even.
penetrate a message.
when the candidate can't penetrate the message, then the reality is it defaults back into national politics.
So they think about what some national Democrat views on the issue because they don't know what this particular issue, this particular candidate said.
When we do have funded candidates, they do relatively well.
You look at Brandon Predeci's race.
He did a very strong race going against an incumbent governor because he was able to raise the money.
He also
which is going to my second part, Jim, he found issues that people care about.
When you run for office, you have to find issues that people care about.
And that's something that some of our candidates struggle with.
And so that's the next thing.
Now, the municipal elections, Jim, it was true in Columbus.
Our turnout was very, very low.
We had a very competitive primary with two candidates that were all both in elected office.
And then we had, we got a general election coming up in June that...
I hope is well, hopefully there's high turnout, but I have my doubts.
That's a question that is harder to solve.
really, you know, it's been a trend for a while and part of me thinks that in some ways I blame some of the elected officials and some people that have influence.
not being clear about what benefits that you get from good governance.
know, like let's take Medicaid, for example.
When you say, listen, I want to protect Medicaid.
A lot of people, if you're not on Medicaid or if you don't know someone on Medicaid, you may not think about how that affects Mississippi.
Well, we need to make sure that we break that down in a way.
Medicaid pays for a lot of the people that are in our nursing homes.
So there's a lot of elderly people that are receiving federal money, again, coming from outside of Mississippi, that helps our elderly people have the care and support they need
at a time where it's necessary for us to be there for them.
It also helps the businesses because those nursing homes, they are able to provide that care.
So if you take that money away, that's going to affect not only those elders, not only those businesses, that's gonna hurt communities, because there's gonna be anti-growth.
All so we have to break that down.
You talk about hospitals.
So many of our children that are born in Mississippi are on Medicaid, and the federal government is helping to reimburse the hospital, pay the hospitals for that care.
If you take that money away,
That's not only gonna make our births more dangerous, it's going to make the hospitals, because the hospitals are gonna be there for the mothers.
They're gonna have to, not like, can't imagine, I don't think it's not legal to do it, but you're not gonna turn away a pregnant person and say, listen, I'm not gonna let you have a
child.
That's not gonna happen.
The question is, are you gonna get paid for it?
And we need our hospitals.
Jim, I don't wanna talk too long.
Do have another question you wanna ask?
Well, that's fine.
mean, you're on a roll and I'm right there with you.
ah My wife was a healthcare lawyer and I'm very familiar with the hospital situation and talk about the nursing homes.
One of the interesting things that I found out in talking to former governor Musgrove is that the majority of people that are in the nursing homes
are white.
And you would think that the majority of the state is white Republicans.
And why wouldn't they want to look out for their grandparents or their parents?
Are they just gonna let them die?
I'm sorry, go ahead.
think they do.
I think people, you know, I think they do.
I think they're just a disconnect.
When you say Medicaid, there's been marketing and branding that makes them think that that's a democratic thing.
That only helps Democrats.
Well, the reality is, you know, the hospital don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican.
The nursing home don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican.
And our mothers don't care if they're Democrat or Republican when they're having a child.
We, but we've got, we just have to, we have to message that and we have to be aggressive.
We have to take advantage of platforms like you all created.
Like you said at the beginning, Jim, we are the solution.
Nobody's coming to save us.
We're going to have to fight for the state we love ourselves and doing things like you all are doing, just doing a podcast, putting it out there, forcing the public to actually hear
another point of view because
The one thing I've learned from being DA in 10 years is I do a bunch of grand juries, right?
So big part of being DA is you impede on grand juries.
Grand juries are made up of 25 random citizens selected for that term of court.
So it's going to be Democrats, going to be Republicans, it's going to be all ages.
And through that experience, I have just learned how much Mississippians have in common, how much they care about their schools, how much they care about their communities, how
much they care about their hospitals.
But there's a disconnect between what they view and what their politicians, too many of our politicians are delivering.
And we're not doing, particularly the people such as myself that care about our state, we're not doing enough of a job of telling the stories that matter to people and
explaining why these policies, connecting the stories, the nursing homes and the policies.
We got to connect the stories and the policies.
in a way that resonate with people.
And we got to be able to raise money to get it out because, know, the current politics, you got to money.
In, down in your district, do you have a drug court?
Judge Acock up here does.
Do you have one?
Does it, does it work well for you?
Oh, absolutely.
So, I mean, the reality is anybody that's dealt with drug addiction knows it's a public health crisis.
I mean, it's, you know, it's not something that going to jail is going to fix or prison is going to fix for the most part.
There's some people that might go for six months and they say, listen, I'm going to stop using drugs.
Those typically aren't your addicts.
For addicts, you're going to have to have, you're have to treat it like a public health issue.
And that's what drug court does.
It focuses on rehabilitation.
It focuses on rehab.
on AA, NA, it puts you around people that are also suffered from drug addiction or alcohol addiction in a way that reinforces the possibility of you getting over it.
so it's been very successful in our area.
But it's one of those things, David and Jim, that it's kind of tricky because you don't hear about success stories, right?
Let's imagine 10 people do drug court.
Nine of them are very, very successful.
move on and have great lives and know, taxpayers, fathers, mothers to their kids, you know, help their parents like just the model citizens that we need for our state to
progress.
But one person re-offends, commits another crime and you know, does something bad.
From a criminal justice system, that one person is probably gonna make the news, they're probably gonna be profiled, it could be easy just to focus on that one person.
and not remember the nine people that you didn't hear about because it's their stories, you're not gonna hear about them.
They're gonna move on and they're not gonna wanna go, you know, do a big rally, you know, how was success for a drug court?
Let me tell you about the worst time of my life and how I got over it.
They're not gonna really wanna do that.
They're gonna wanna to be thinking about the future.
And so as a DA, I always keep in mind, can't, from a public policy perspective, I can't think about things from the worst outcome.
I also have to consider the best outcome.
Yeah, we've got a city attorney up here, Keith Babs, that does a wonderful job, particularly with the youth that get in trouble, trying to find a way to get them out of
trouble and back on road to success.
And it seems like you have that same opportunity ah when you get youth in front of you.
Absolutely, it's a beautiful opportunity and I look and I love helping young people.
We're getting too many of them too late.
That's why I'm focused more downstream, more focused on prevention and talking about prevention because I don't, like I told the story of Harvey Johnson, it's my obligation, I
feel like as a Christian, as a public servant, as a father.
to try to prevent us from losing as many young people as we currently are.
We live up here in North Mississippi in the so-called Bible Belt.
You would think there would be more people think that way.
And take action.
you
but sometimes it just, I don't know.
ah
Sunday sometimes just comes and goes.
I want to uh back up just a little bit and ah earlier you talked about immigrations and immigrants ah in DeSoto County and I'm not going to use his name, but he is a district
attorney in DeSoto County.
You know who I'm talking about.
And also one of our representatives, you know, they had proposed a bounty
law.
And we talk about Christian values and love in our neighbor.
And here we had two people willing to pay Mississippians a thousand dollars if they would go out and find an illegal immigrant.
Now that's that's sad.
And that's a sad state of affairs ah for our state and for our country.
I just wanted to throw up.
you because there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant.
There are undocumented immigrants, but there's no illegal immigrant.
They're just undocumented immigrants.
And the way I would think about that, David and Jim, is again, always focused on the actual problems.
Now I can imagine the Soto County that there is, I'm sure that there's some crime in the Soto, David.
I mean, I know you probably feel safe, but I can imagine.
of jail last night.
I can imagine that you feel safe and I know your district wants you to feel safe, but I'm sure there's some crime, there's some violence.
And so for me, as public officials, we have to be focused on the actual problem.
I just can't imagine that, I mean, there's so many practical problems with that proposal, but from a moral and ethical standpoint,
You also have to go back to, we want to encourage our citizens to be, I mean, just the idea that they will be trying, like how are they gonna know whether the person here is
here legally or not?
And that's what, and so, yeah, I mean, it's a, I don't think that got anywhere.
I remember having conversations with other district attorneys and it was not well supported within our organization.
I didn't have any support to be honest with you.
Good.
It seems like our legislators tend to pick on small issues and make them sound like mountains.
And then they spend the entire legislative session trying to figure out ah what they're going to do with it.
And then they end up like this one with no budget.
We still don't have a budget.
And June or July 1st coming up pretty fast.
And the governor's made it very clear that if they don't present a budget, he can run the government without them.
I'm not...
way, Jim, ah excuse me, by the way, Jim, the district attorney in DeSoto County used the term illegal.
Well, he's wrong.
It's undocumented immigrant.
I'm just telling you what I read.
Okay.
him.
You can correct him publicly.
I have no intention to have any conversations, any correspondence with that man, just so you know.
your birth certificate, in which case you might be undocumented.
I could be.
Well, I'm sure you guys keep y'all birth certificates very close and near to your heart.
Uh-uh.
Hell, I don't even know where mine is, sorry.
Well, my mom has mine to be honest with you, but she's got somewhere else, so.
yeah, you're in good shape.
Yeah.
What's the, of the things we've talked about today?
and all the things that we've left out.
What are maybe the top two or three items that you would like to see the next legislature focus on?
Well, employment is when we haven't talked as much about, you you pointed out Jim that our area has done well with industries.
uh And that's very true.
I we now have a aluminum plant that uh is being built in Lowndes County next to our steel plant.
And that's...
transformative because I know young people that work at those plants that are able to have a salary where they have filled dignity in their employment and they can take care of
their family.
They can, you know, maybe afford a vacation every now and then.
oh Things that I feel like Mississippians deserve.
And so I think we've got to figure out ways to spread that throughout the state.
And we've got to think about
employment opportunities that are realistic for where the future is going with manufacturing.
I don't think textile plants are coming back to Mississippi.
It's just the competition for that labor is too much of a race to the bottom.
And it's also going to be probably soon enough replaced by machines.
How can we be, so the one thing I would be thinking about if I was a state legislator is how can we be proactive in trying to find the manufacturing and the economies of the
future?
Because the future is always won by the people that can see it coming first.
And Mississippi needs to have leaders that are not.
at the bottom of that, or at the top of it.
And there's some opportunities with software, with AI, with modern manufacturing where we can be ahead of the scale that could make a big difference for our young people.
And that was going to be better for us.
It's going to keep young people here.
It's going to reduce crime.
It's going to build communities.
It's going to build cities.
It's going to build our state.
oh And we need to make sure it's spread out.
We can't have it all in one area.
We've got to spread it out.
Do we have the employment in our rural counties to do something like that?
I think that we do, especially if we open up opportunities.
uh One of the things that I feel very strongly about is people that have been convicted of crimes and have served their time, we've got to figure out ways to open up opportunity for
them for employment.
I mean, I feel like that's a untapped labor market in Mississippi that we've got to encourage and we've got to support and we've got to...
think about as potential employees, when you think about, people think about workforce training, but we gotta make sure that we're including a population of people that find it
difficult to find employment when we think about our rural communities.
And so, you know, there's no easy fixes here.
I'm not gonna be, you know, I'm not gonna be.
disingenuous, there's no easy fixes.
But if someone really cares and loves Mississippi, I think that we got to be very, very honest about with ourselves and with the population about what we need to be successful.
And that is we need a federal government as a partner.
We don't need to be fighting the federal government saying we don't want money.
That's okay.
Don't give us $137 million.
That's okay.
We don't need the money for our nursing homes.
We don't need the money for our hospitals.
We don't need the money for our roads.
We don't need the money for our water infrastructure.
We'll do it ourselves.
I think that mentality is not serving the citizens of Mississippi well.
We need more uh Mississippi in DC, unless DC ain't Mississippi.
I've often thought that...
Companies look to see if there's sufficient employment or employees.
And I've often wondered why the state has not created ah several four county areas ah and called them enterprise zones because if a company like uh New Core Steel uh were to locate
in Oktibbeha County.
Yeah, they were in there.
draw employees from the three or four counties around County.
And that would be such a boost.
And then they could spread the wealth between the school systems and start building the rural areas.
And I've often wondered if something like that should not be looked at.
Well, that's basically what we've done in our area.
I you know, we have a guy named Joe Max Higgins that basically does economic development for three of our four counties, Ottawa, Iowes, and Clay.
you know, it hasn't been a problem.
And so I think that that's a good way for our rural communities to be successful.
Because you're right, they're gonna have to draw employees from the surrounding counties.
mean, so it's not, we can't have a mentality of competition.
We have to have a mentality of That's exactly what you said, not competition, collaboration.
David, you're awfully quiet.
What do you think?
You're contemplative?
that I beg your pardon.
Are you being contemplative?
that's a big word you wouldn't understand.
Are you thinking about something?
I'm thinking that Scott, it's great to meet you.
We appreciate you being here.
We appreciate your passion.
ah We ah like, we love your enthusiasm and ah so happy that uh you follow your servant's heart.
ah
and we do appreciate you being here with us today.
This apple didn't fall far from the tree.
That's true, that's true.
He's referring to my parents, Wilbur Cologne and Dorothy Cologne, they're the role models.
So listen, David and Jim, thank you all so much for having me.
I hope I didn't bore you to death.
uh
Great conversation.
This is who we are as Mississippians.
more people.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm happy to be a part of it and hopefully we can do it again sometime.
I hope so.
open invitation.
Jim, any final words from you?
ah It's a sunny day here.
And when I've been looking out the window, I know it's gotta be spring because I've seen my first hummingbird.
Great.
We haven't seen ours here yet, but hopefully we will.
ah We do want to continue to thank our supporters and our subscribers.
Any questions, comments that you have, please reach out to us at Mississippihappeningsthe1 at Gmail, which is mshappeningsthe1 at gmail.com.
ah Please let us know.
Please subscribe.
Please tell your friends.
And we do, as usual, this, you know, ah may we never become indifferent to the suffering of others.
Thanks, guys.
A lot of fun.
Yes.
Let's hear it.
Go for it.
pair.
to be very honest with you, it's been very hard to find any Republicans that want to come on board and have a conversation.
I don't know what the issues are, but unless we can start talking to each other, nothing is going to improve.
So to
any Republican out there that wants to come on board and have a good conversation, not a hatchet job, but a good conversation about issues, we welcome your invitation.
We extend an invitation rather.
Please get in touch with us.
We would be more than happy to give you our time to air your opinions and let's have a discussion.
Thank you.
Thanks guys.
Thank you.
Have a good day.