JindalCo’s “scholarship” program is looking more like the boondoggle many feared it would be.
The tally of private schools approved by the state Department of Education to accept voucher students reads like a who’s-who of who’s-that; one sees few big brand names — no St. Thomas Mores or John Curtises. Evangel, a football powerhouse in Shreveport, jumps out, but the vast majority is overwhelmingly small, Christian schools — evangelical mostly along with a fair number of Roman Catholic schools — tiny operations with fewer than 100 students, although one school approved for 38 voucher students stands out: the Islamic School of Greater New Orleans. (I can’t believe some Islamaphobic lawmaker isn’t raising the Sharia specter, but there’s still time.)
The transition to web-based news continues to divorce journalists from their paychecks. The Times-Picayune is just the latest example.
“Saddle up the dinosaurs, we’re riding to Chernobyl!”
The depressing chime of the death knell for daily newspapers — with an emphasis on paper — took on a shriller, more fretful tone last week when the venerable Times-Picayune, the Pulitzer-winning daily that has been the dominant source of news in the Crescent City for more than a century, announced it will cut its circulation down to three days this fall and focus its energy and resources on digital news.
Politics making strange bedfellows is an abused cliche, but truth can often be divined in its bruises. The 5-4 vote hanging over the fate of the traffic camera program in Lafayette is proof.
Slight is the distance between anti-gay crusader and gay Caribbean cruise.
Much, but not enough, has been written about the Louisiana Family Forum’s latest push back against the radical gay agenda. By radical gay agenda I mean gay people having the same rights and civil protections as everyone else. Because they’re like everyone else, except they’re not wrecking the institution of marriage like us straight people have been doing since Bible days, although I’m sure if more states gave gays the right to marry they could finally make a worthy contribution.
Proof that LCG’s SafeLight/SafeSpeed program works is hard to dismiss.
I’m not a fan of the SafeLight/SafeSpeed program in Lafayette. Nor am I an opponent. I don’t have strong feelings about cameras mounted at traffic signals and in mobile vans because they generally don’t affect me.
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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