Wednesday, June 13, 2012
C’EST BON
We were never fans of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana Scholarship Program, the controversial voucher plan muscled through the recent session.
PAS BON
Ville Platte is once again putting the “ew” in news with another attempt at clamping down on its black community.
COUILLON
Ville Platte would be our couillon this week were it not for Old Faithful, U.S. Rep. Jeff Landry, whose teapot spews indignant steam with stunning regularity.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
C'est Bon
Being lovers of print journalism we couldn’t help but applaud from the sidelines Monday when our kindred in New Orleans rallied on behalf of the The Times-Picayune and its beleaguered staff.
C'est Bon
The eight-part investigative series from The Times-Picayune on the state of Louisiana’s prison system gave Louisianans a troubling glimpse of how we became — and why we remain — the world’s prison capital.
Pas Bon
Lafayette Consolidated Government appears ready to follow through with City-Parish President Joey Durel’s pledge to sever LCG’s relationship with the city of Broussard.
Couillon
The 15 freshman GOP representatives in the House Tea Party Caucus rode a populist, anti-bailout wave into Congress in 2010, castigating the federal government for its bailouts of Wall Street and the auto industry and their attendant contribution to the national debt.
Wednesday May 23, 2012
C'est Bon
At last report the state Senate Finance Committee was demonstrating the restorative power of wisdom in the face of the House’s slash-and-burn budget priorities.
Pas Bon
Louisiana’s representation in Congress — two senators and seven representatives — is a bunch of sophomores when it comes to the level of sophistication at work in their speeches delivered in their respective chambers.
Couliion
A sportswriter’s frustration with tardy statistics led last week to national notoriety and to his new persona: former sportswriter.
Wednesday May 16, 2012
C'est Bon
Each year the Louisiana State Bar Association selects an attorney and judge in each region of the state to receive its prestigious Crystal Gavel Award, which recognizes community service and volunteer work. This year the honor was bestowed on Lafayette attorney Glenn Armentor...
Pas Bon
Only in Louisiana will you find prisoners convicted of nonviolent crimes wasting away in jail cells for upwards of 10 years with almost nonexistent rehabilitation services, while murderers, rapists and other prison lifers receive job skills training and even the chance for an undergraduate degree.
Couillon
Former N.P. Moss Middle School Principal Ken Douet is seeking more than $500,000 from the school system for what he claims is school board favoritism that prevented him from taking over as principal of the Early College Academy following Moss’s closure...
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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