Free Republic

Gov. Kathleen Blanco was ready to go shopping. Her treasury was flush with money. The Republican Legislators said her proposals were dead on arrival. Many Democrats weren’t fond of her session ideas and wanted to discuss Road Home and real insurance reform, instead. Blanco wanted to spend a profusion of one-time money on many one-time spending items. The House of Representatives has told her to do it on her own time, not theirs. On Monday, Blanco failed to get the House of Representatives to approve a revised, reduced version of her spending plan. She has been unable to get the...

A little more than a year after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is seeing a boom in its Latino population, with many coming to help reconstruct the city. Health officials had not anticipated the surge in the city's Latino population, The New York Times reported. In a demographic twist, hundreds of Latino babies are being born in New Orleans to immigrant Latino workers, both legal and illegal. In a city largely abandoned by its doctors after the storm, this new population adds a financial strain to the already struggling city. Many expectant mothers, lacking in financial assistance, cannot afford prenatal care...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco's push to spend $2 billion on tax breaks, pay raises and other budget proposals stalled in the state House on Sunday as the governor's allies ran into problems getting the votes to raise a constitutional spending cap. The Blanco administration tried to work out a compromise with lawmakers behind the scenes, to determine which proposals could gain passage in a 10-day pre-holiday special session called by the governor despite cries from critics for postponement. The House was expected to take up some of the Blanco spending proposals Sunday but adjourned when it was...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco says state police and National Guard troops cannot stay in New Orleans "indefinitely" to help the city fight crime, but she has ordered them to stay in the city at least past the end of the year. Her decision comes in response to a request by New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley to keep the reinforcements well into next year. Blanco said no decision has been made how long the 60 state troopers and 300 Guard troops will be assigned to police and security duties in New Orleans. "We can't do it...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A church that wanted to do something special for Hurricane Katrina victims gave a $75,000 house, free and clear, to a couple who said they were left homeless by the storm. But the couple turned around and sold the place without ever moving in, and went back to New Orleans. "Take it up with God," an unrepentant Joshua Thompson told a TV reporter after it was learned that he and the woman he identified as his wife had flipped the home for $88,000. Church members said they feel their generosity was abused by scam artists. They are...

Congressman William Jefferson has been re-elected to Congress, according to WWL-TV election analyst Greg Rigamer. With two-thirds of the vote counted, Jefferson had a 6,000-vote lead over challenger Karen Carter. "I'm a little worried about what this is going to say to the nation," said City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a Carter supporter. Jefferson was forced into the runoff against a fellow Democrat when he failed to win 50 percent of the vote in a crowded open multiparty primary. His opponent, state Rep. Karen Carter, is seeking to become the first black woman from Louisiana elected to Congress. Jefferson, 59, has...

Jefferson Parish's murder rate continued to spiral upward Friday night, after authorities logged a third killing within 24 hours, pushing the bloodshed to its highest level since 1980. The tally stood at 62 homicides in unincorporated Jefferson Parish, with the West Bank accounting for 43. The previous high for unincorporated Jefferson Parish was 50 murders logged in all of 1990, said Col. John Fortunato of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. Friday night's violence, which brought Sheriff Harry Lee to the scene in Terrytown, came more than 24 hours after two men were cut down in a Harvey neighborhood Thursday night.

Blanco during her speech to legislature BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Governor Kathleen Blanco faces openly rebellious lawmakers who have returned to the Capitol to consider her pre-Christmas, billion-dollar plans for tax breaks, road projects, pay raises and insurance rebates. Blanco called a ten-day special legislative session over the objection of some legislators and government watchdog groups. Her critics object to her nearly $2 billion spending plan, fueled by higher tax revenue from recovery-related commerce such as sale of construction materials, cars, appliances and furniture to replace that lost to two major hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, in 2005. The...

"IT'S AN EMBARRASSMENT AND BREACH OF TRUST" A Louisiana State Police employee and 11 others have been arrested as part of a statewide investigation into the theft of 256 computers purchased by FEMA. Only 43 of the stolen computers had been recovered as of Monday morning, police said. The Dell computers, valued at approximately $900 each, were intended to replace computers in government buildings, hospitals, and other facilities in Louisiana damaged by Hurricane Katrina, said State Police spokesman Lt. Lawrence McLeary. The computers were being stored at the Louisiana State Police Compound on Independence Boulevard in Baton Rouge. "It's an...

Some of the "Fighting Tigers" are fighting mad at Governor Blanco. As noted in the press, there are unofficial reports that LSU Tigers are going to the Rose bowl. After this was announced, Governor Blanco began making phone calls that haven't exactly impressed LSU fans. Several fans have approached THE DEAD PELICAN expressing a mixture of outrage and ridicule, claiming that Blanco is trying to take credit for something that isn't her doing. Other LSU fans haven't forgotten about Blanco's tail gate party for ULL, at the same time that university was playing the LSU tigers. According to a statement...

A multi-agency task force investigating as many as 21 stranglings arrested a 42-year-old Houma man on Friday and booked him with two of the earliest ones. See story A statewide investigation into nearly two dozen slayings of men, most around the southeastern Louisiana town of Houma and in neighboring parishes, led police to arrest a suspect Friday who they believe is a serial killer, charging him in the killings of two men from New Orleans. Houma police arrested Ronald J. Dominique, 42, at a homeless shelter run by the police department on Friday, and accused him of leaving two dead...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Wednesday that she will not remove one of her top aides from his job or ask him to abandon his post as head of Southern University's governing board while he is being investigated for sexual harassment complaints. The Governor's Office hired an independent attorney, Mark Falcon, to look into the complaints from unidentified Southern University System employees against Johnny Anderson. But Blanco said her office has received "a verbal accusation with no evidence that I'm aware of" and she wouldn't make changes in Anderson's role until further investigation. "This is very treacherous,...

Is Crime Causing Locals To leave? NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Even among the best-off post-Katrina returnees to New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parishe — those living in houses or apartments, rather than trailers — about one-third say they may leave the area within the next two years, a small poll indicates. The poll only reached people whose houses or apartments were in good enough shape to have a land-based phone, pollster Susan E. Howell of the University of New Orleans noted as she released the results Tuesday. "They are presumably not in trailers," she wrote. And, since the university's Survey...

Federal prosecutors on Thursday came a step closer to putting away a Ponchatoula man charged with hatching a murder-for-hire plot against the DEA agent who made a big drug bust against him last fall. Johnnie Sims, 26, of Robert, La., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to charges of plotting to kill a federal agent and conspiring to deal cocaine and marijuana in and around Tangipahoa Parish. Sims agreed to testify against his alleged narcotics selling cohort, Chris Walker, 31, who faces trial next month on charges he not only trafficked in crack cocaine, but also tried to have his...

Wilbert Ross is known as a fighter to fellow residents of Renaissance Village, the trailer park for hurricane evacuees in Baker. His latest battle is to keep bus service for the people who live there. Several dozen hurricane evacuees, including Ross, met Friday at Faith Chapel Church on Staring Lane with officials from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. The evacuees met to express their opposition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision to end funding for emergency transportation services. The services set to end Nov. 30 because of a lack of funding include the use of RTA vehicles that...

The Loiuisiana Democratic party hasn't taken very kindly to Bobby Jindal's latest gubernatorial bid. The Dems realeased a statement Friday with the title "THOUGH SHALT GO FORTH AND SEEK CONTRIBUTIONS." The title was an apparent snide reference to Jindal's religious faith; Jindal had claimed that he'd been "praying about" whether to run for governor. Some believe that the press release contains ethnic and racial overtones, as it pointedly makes snide use of Mr. Jindal's Indian name, which is "Piyush." The Dems attacked Jindal in the statement, saying that "Piyush (Bobby) Jindal has finally admitted to a partial divine revelation that...

BATON ROUGE — A state office that oversaw a series of controversial charities tied to African-American legislators is being scrutinized by the FBI, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s office confirmed Tuesday in annoucing that it had complied with a subpoena for records from the department. “The governor’s office staff has complied with the FBI’s request for information dating back to 1996 regarding certain programs funded by the former Office of Urban Affairs,” Blanco’s office said in a prepared statement. The governor’s office confirmed receipt of the subpoena Tuesday after a reporter inquired about it. Before it was abolished earlier this year, the...

The ravaged neighborhoods of New Orleans make a grim backdrop for imagining the future of American cities. But despite its criminally slow pace, the rebuilding of this city is emerging as one of the most aggressive works of social engineering in America since the postwar boom of the 1950s. And architecture and urban planning have become critical tools in shaping that new order. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan to demolish four of the city’s biggest low-income housing developments at a time when the city still cannot shelter the majority...

Hurricane Ernesto is coming!

Fake officials "reopen" New Orleans public housing By Peter Henderson and Matt Daily Mon Aug 28, 5:49 PM ET NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A prankster posing as a federal housing official took centre stage at a New Orleans event with the city mayor and the governor of Louisiana, controversially promising to throw open closed public housing to thousands of poor former city residents. The stunt, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development called a "cruel hoax," was the latest by an activist group known as "The Yes Men" who have previously masqueraded as World Trade Organisation officials announcing...