Southern Strategy
Has the time come for a public-private route to I-49 South?
News Analysis by John Kennedy
Louisiana has hundreds of needed road projects, the most important of which is the completion of Interstate 49. I-49 North from Shreveport to the Arkansas line will be completed relatively soon, and now we need to get serious about the much more expensive ($5.2 billion) completion of I-49 South.
Couillon alert: Neighbor states mark Lee/King Day
Our contiguous cousins to the north and the east — Arkansas and Mississippi — along with Alabama took time Monday to reflect on more than the contributions to American civil society by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Un-Happy Hour
Bar owners forced to pony up thousands each month for heightened police presence on Jefferson Street’s most boisterous nights are challenging LCG on its ‘special’ levy.
By Heather Miller
“So far, in my research, there’s no other city where a levy like this exists.”
It’s a talking point that sticks out for Lafayette attorney Daniel Stanford, the lawyer for the owners of four downtown bars whose self-proclaimed civil disobedience is headed to federal court to challenge Lafayette Consolidated Government’s fix for late-night Jefferson Street.
Baby Bump
Pippin McGee’s owners say they are ‘taking care of our business ... not running from anyone.’
By Heather Miller and Leslie Turk
For Pippin McGee children’s furniture store owners Kim and Robert Crouchet, a weeks-long liquidation sale on all floor models that’s been repeatedly blasted through email alerts should have served as a sure sign that the Ambassador storefront was planning to close.
UL: A Season to Remeber
Newsmakers of the Year: UL Ragin’ Cajuns
What a Season!
What a Game!
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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