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Channeling his inner preacher, City-Parish Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, adorned during the start of Tuesday's council meeting in a hooded sweatshirt in recognition of the Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida, offered an inspired defense of his attire and called on Lafayette to work beyond its racial grudges.
“I’ve always said Lafayette is good, and Lafayette would never become great until we could take down the divisions and the walls that exist, where people could start living and functioning together in one accord,” the District 4 councilman said, his voice rising with his emotions. “... any type of profiling is wrong by anyone at any time.”
Both Boudreaux and his fellow inner-city rep, District 3's Brandon Shelvin, wore the attire during the first few minutes of the council meeting. Shelvin echoed Boudreaux’s encyclical on racial tolerance in a more measured but equally incisive address.
Boudreaux told The Ind earlier in the day when we called to confirm that he planned to wear a hoodie to the meeting that he wasn’t making a political statement. Rather, he said, it was intended as a reminder that members of Lafayette’s many Neighborhood Watch groups must practice restraint.
But at Tuesday night’s meeting, the councilman’s sense of outrage over the Martin case was palpable, and he called out those who frowned on his and Shelvin’s fashion-forward statement: “There were those who were critical and said it is inappropriate for a council member to wear a hoodie at a council meeting,” Boudreaux said. “But yet when the Saints were winning and all nine council members put on a Saints shirt, I didn’t hear a word.
“I wear pink ties during cancer awareness. I wear purple ties on Domestic Violence [Awareness Week]. I don’t see where all of a sudden bringing attention to a significant issue that needs to have some clarity and some understanding and some sensitivity has become something wrong. I wore a fire department hat when America was under attack.”
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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