{"id":3385,"date":"2023-01-04T06:04:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T12:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2023-03-15T03:37:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T08:37:54","slug":"welfare-scandal-sharpens-contrasts-in-long-poor-mississippi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3385","title":{"rendered":"Welfare scandal sharpens contrasts in long-poor Mississippi<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) \u2014 In Mississippi, where elected officials have a long history of praising self-sufficiency and condemning\u00a0federal antipoverty programs, a welfare scandal has exposed how millions of dollars were diverted to the rich and powerful \u2014 including pro athletes \u2014 instead of helping some of the neediest people in the nation.
\nThe misuse of welfare money rankles Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, executive director of One Voice, a nonprofit that works to help economically vulnerable communities in Mississippi.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s shameful and disgusting, especially when we\u2019ve been a state where we hear discussion every year about poor people not needing resources and poor people being lazy and just needing to get up to work,\u201d she said.
\nThe state has ranked among the poorest in the U.S. for decades, but only a fraction of its federal welfare money has been going toward direct aid to families. Instead, the Mississippi Department of Human Services allowed well-connected people to fritter away tens of millions of welfare dollars from 2016 to 2019, according to the state auditor and state and federal prosecutors.
\nThe scandal has ensnared high-profile figures, including\u00a0retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who is one of more than three dozen defendants in a civil lawsuit that the current Human Services director filed to try to recover some of the welfare money wasted while Davis was in charge.
\nTemporary Assistance for Needy Families money helped fund pet projects of the wealthy, including $5 million for\u00a0a volleyball arena that Favre supported\u00a0at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi Auditor Shad White said. Favre\u2019s daughter played volleyball at the school starting in 2017.
\nAnother $2.1 million of TANF money went toward an attempt to develop a concussion drug by a company in which Favre was an investor, White said. Favre has asked a judge to\u00a0dismiss him from the lawsuit, with his attorney arguing that the Department of Human Services \u2014 not Favre \u2014 is responsible for \u201cgrossly improper and unlawful handling of welfare funds.\u201d Favre is not facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n

Apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) \u2014 In Mississippi, where elected officials have a long history of praising self-sufficiency and condemning\u00a0federal antipoverty programs, a welfare scandal has exposed how millions of dollars were diverted to the rich and powerful \u2014 including pro athletes \u2014 instead of helping some of the neediest people in the nation. The misuse of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1162,1962,3483,3482,1388,1387],"class_list":["post-3385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-long","tag-mississippi","tag-one-voice","tag-poor","tag-scandal","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7628,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions\/7628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}