Number of comments: 5 A Times Picayune reporter seems shocked that a James Perry commercial uses bleeped out profanity to make a point about two of his opponents in the upcoming mayoral election. Unfortunately, I'm anything but shocked that no journalists showed the slightest bit of curiosity when a fourth candidate, Troy Henry,' [...]
Number of comments: 3 Update It appears that the Oct. 29 column will not be posted online. See the comments if you're interested in reading it. I'll add a few comments after the Saints game if I'm not too tired.
I couldn't find the link that would make the point of [...]
Number of comments: 0 Baby Boomers are simultaneously endangering Social Security's finances by retiring early, and blocking the career advancement of Gen Xers by not retiring. That's pretty vicious trick. No wonder I hated Dr. Spock's spoiled generation before I became a part of it in the generational gerrymander of the' [...]
Number of comments: 0 If the point of awarding the Nobel Prize is to influence U.S. policy, shouldn't the prize in Economic Science be awarded to Simon Johnson. Some wag has probably already suggested it, but I'm almost almostserious. [...]
Number of comments: 2 I apologize for the slightly misleading post title.
The Daily Beast "crunched the data on the brainpower of America’s 55 largest cities, from first-to-worst." Silly surveys always spawn silly arguments about their results, but I think it's more interesting to look at methodology (or to compare similar' [...]
Number of comments: 3 I started a rant about this editorial last Friday, but got sidetracked over the weekend. Since I'm taking a couple of night courses, I didn't get back to it this week. I will over the weekend, because that editorial really ticked me off.
Number of comments: 0 As I've said many times before, I doubt any laid off city employees blamed the mayor for the 2005 layoffs; the mayor only did what he had to do. By the same token, I don't understand the constant need to praise the mayor for his brilliant decision to tread [...]
Number of comments: 0 Sorry, if you're looking for a post about football or the weather, you've come to the wrong blog. I have no idea idea what to make of the stock market, but early indications point to a possible sell off today. Notice that neither article mentions Obama's health care' [...]
Number of comments: 4 What do this Christian Science Monitor article: Some 64 percent of New Orleanians say they want a mayor with "political connections." This might sound like a step backward – toward backroom politics. But to political consultant Greg Rigamer, who advises nearly all New Orleans candidates, it suggests a post-Katrina [...]
Number of comments: 3 If Thursday's headline about the city budget came as a surprise to you, you haven't given much thought to the city's financial situation. Earlier this year, there seemed to be chance that a post-Katrina reconstruction boom would hide the extent of the city's financial difficulties for a couple of [...]
Number of comments: 4 I've already registered, but the recovery from a procedure that I underwent Wednesday won't be as quite as fast as I had hoped. So, I've decided that it would be prudent to avoid potentially chaotic situations in which punches may be thrown. However, if anybody reads this' [...]
The Times Picayune on August 9th: So far, though, the tally of declared candidates totals just three: state Sen. Ed Murray, state Rep. Austin Badon and James Perry, executive director of a fair housing organization. The Picayune last Saturday: In fact, it [...]
Number of comments: 0 On Meet the Press this morning: MR. GREGORY: “Pull the plug on grandma.” That’s not part of this debate. It’s not in the bill, Senator.
SEN. DASCHLE: Well, David, it’s hyperbolic, it’s fearmongering, it’s actually politics at its worst. That’s the kind of thing that generates the kind [...]
Number of comments: 2 Can't believe I'm asking this, but is it possible that Texas librarians are cooler than Louisiana librarians? When I saw the Tattooed Ladies of TLA calendar on sale last week, I expected body piercings on the LLA website -- couldn't even find any interesting hairdos. I'd say something [...]
Number of comments: 0 With the city's looming financial problems, one might expect the city government to look for the most cost effective way to restore its battered commercial district. So, it's entirely appropriate to ask why the mayor keeps coming with expensive proposals to shift its center of gravity.
Number of comments: 4 But somewhere along the line, I decided to stop being quite so freewheeling with the insults. So, I'll assume that Mark Singletary puts more time, energy and effort into editing the content of his paper than into writing his commentaries. I thought that last week's was pointless (see comment [...]
Number of comments: 3 We all know that our current mayor won't acknowledge any responsibility if the city's in bad shape in three years. If he comes with a grand vision of the city's future and personally chooses the contractors to start the work, it won't be his fault if his successor can't' [...]
Number of comments: 0 It was not the night's only episode in which Nagin professed to be an unwitting victim of injustice in politics. Later, he employed a part-jovial, part-indignant tone during the Alliance for Good Government 's endorsement forum.
"I hope that once I sit down to write my book, one" [...]
Number of comments: 0 Over half the city's residents rent their homes. At least, that was the case before Katrina. Yet, neither the mayor nor the city's daily newspaper seem to care about 53.5% of the population.
Mayor Nagin: Everyone has a right to return to this city, especially if [...]
Number of comments: 0 The mayor claims to have been making a heroic stand in New Orleans: I have made some tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. To lead effectively, you must sometimes tell people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. Sometimes you have to go against the grain [...]
Number of comments: 6 Once again, Lolis Eric Elie: Presumably, public officials realize that Louisiana law allows for few exceptions to the documents considered public records. But average citizens -- who might e-mail a public official about criminal activity or a personal issue -- might not realize their correspondence is subject to public [...]
Number of comments: 3 So much for ignoring a shit stirrer's shit. The most confrontational words were aimed not at any other candidate but at Mayor Ray Nagin.
While other candidates talked of finding peace with the administration despite recent, very public dust-ups, Clarkson advocated using the budget, the council's main source [...]
Number of comments: 1 In a conversation about crime last Winter, another local blogger said something about young guys on bikes making him nervous, especially at night. He went on to ask another person present if it was true that the problem of muggers on bikes in the French Quarter had grown worse in [...]
Number of comments: 0 Though I agree with the Times-Picayune editorial page staff that raising that raising the homestead exemption would be a bad idea, I can't say that I was impressed by Thursday's editorial. Though I'm no fan of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, it's probably correct that businesses pay [...]
Number of comments: 0 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. You may have noticed this item in the news over the weekend: A Virginia [...]
Number of comments: 1 Interesting article in yesterday's paper: Governments get lower bids from contractors as economy slows
A catastrophic hurricane and a booming world economy combined to make construction prices soar in the New Orleans area in the past three years. But the tide has turned, and contractors are underbidding construction' [...]
Number of comments: 2 That should be asked before Saturday's election.
Do you think that ridiculous hyperbole should be treated with ridicule? If a politician kills an important piece of reform legislation because it goes too far, do you think she has an obligation to help craft a more acceptable piece of legislation? [...]
Number of comments: 3 I wanted to wait until I had time to add a few thoughts, but it's already been a week since I received an interesting comment on a post from December of 2006. I will say that though I think that all of the questions that I've raised about James Carter [...]
Number of comments: 7 Interesting comment on a recent Picayune article: Posted by stinc on 03/23/09 at 8:26AM
Tracie Washington KNOWS the rules. She was the attorney for Capital Metro in Austin Texas, their version of RTA. She was fired for calling the local prosecuting attorney an SOB in front of reporters [...]
Number of comments: 0 WWL did a report on the pathetic state of the city's playgrounds, informing us that the city has spent less than $3 million of the $16 million that FEMA has obligated for playground repairs. There was the usual back-and-forth about whether FEMA or the city is more responsible for' [...]
Number of comments: 1 I did a fair amount of thinking out loud in last week's post on electronic monitoring, but I never got around to adding a clarification at the end. TSAP's listing on the state's corporate data base is vague enough to pique any amateur detective's curiosity, but I can't' [...]
Number of comments: 0 But, I think this Teach for America employee got a little too excited: MARRERO, La. – A teacher at Higgins High School has been arrested by Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputies for obscenity after three students claimed they saw the teacher masturbating alone, inside a classroom, according to JP spokesman [...]
Number of comments: 0 I left a comment on WWL's website that was indecipherably cryptic, because the website didn't accept html. It accepted the comment, but without the link I assumed would be included. Just as well, because it was late and I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, I misunderstood something in' [...]
Number of comments: 0 I hate for my first post in ten days to be little more than a collection of links to earlier posts, but I saw Lee Zurik's report on the Old Gentilly Landfill and remembered that I had written about it a few times myself:
Number of comments: 5 About a month go, I basically acknowledged that it was softball question when I asked: How can SDT provide private collection so much more cheaply than any of the firms provide public collection? Speculating about a possible reason, I wrote: The private collection would be for buildings with five [...]
Number of comments: 9 Still, the Louisiana coast might have survived another 1,000 years or more, Louisiana State University scientists said. But the discovery of oil and gas compressed its destruction into a half-century.
By the 1980s, the petroleum industry and the corps had dredged more than 20,000 miles of canals and new [...]
Number of comments: 3 Rush job, articles that I had quoted in the past are no longer available online, so I found myself imitating a conservative Shreveport professor.
I don't often defend Bobby Jindal, but Chris Matthews' comments were way out of line Tuesday night. Others have criticized Chris Matthews far more [...]
Number of comments: 0 Was it that he sounded like that museum tour guide who talked your ninth grade class as if he were talking to a third grade class? Was it that he was more interested in talking himself up than in criticizing Obama's speech? I mean, it was the Republican response to' [...]
Number of comments: 0 What will his smugness say next October? Will he welcome new residents and thank them for helping to shore up our decimated tax base? Or, will he tell them not to bother asking how their tax dollars are spent because they're not from here and wouldn't understand?
Number of comments: 0 When Nagin urges the King of Bacchus to shake his booty, Val Kilmer should respond that he's not from here. So, he wouldn't know the history of shake the booty dance and what's going on. And Ray Nagin should show him how to do it, or he'd [...]
Number of comments: 2 I can't find either a transcript or a recording, but I thought I heard the smug prick challenge his critics to name one questionable professional service contract. When he defended his executive order suspending professional service contract review panels, Nagin that that the 311 and crime camera contracts were' [...]
Number of comments: 0 John Pilger in The New Statesman: The politics of bollocks
Supporters of the new US president refuse to admit that the "man of change" is, in fact, changing very little. It's time the Obama lovers grew up Probably a little premature, but somebody other than Anderson Cooper has' [...]
Number of comments: 3 Can't guarantee a second will follow
SDT's new commercial, prominently featured on the company website*, promises private garbage collection for "the same or less than what the Sewerage & Water Board puts on your bill." All three sanitation companies charge the City of New Orleans more than what [...]
Number of comments: 0 Last November, I heard it from a very reliable source that O.C. Coleman was planning to run, as a Republican, for J.P. Morrell's House seat when Morrell moved up to the State Senate. Sure enough, in today's paper, I read that he's declared his candidacy. Since he's officially [...]