IS CONGRESS TAKING OVER OUR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS?

Monday, March 27^th, 2023

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

 

IS CONGRESS TAKING OVER OUR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS?

 

     School board elections in Louisiana used to be rather sleepy affairs, with generally a small turnout on election day.  Yes, there were often controversial issues considered by local boards.  School libraries have been the recent focus of heated debate, particularly in Lafayette and Livingston parishes.  What books to allow our kids to read and when should school administrators be required to obtain parents’ permission, or what books should be banned all together.

 

     But these decisions have always been made on a local or parish level.  If parents were dissatisfied, their options were to vote those school board members they opposed out of office or even start a recall petition. In fact, Republican legislator Paul Hollis from Covington plans on filing new legislation in the coming session of the legislature to make it easier to recall elected officials. And as former chief election’s officer during the time I served as secretary state, I agree with the representative that it is presently too hard to recall any elected official.

 

      One of the hallmarks of our educational system is to keep it local.  Homegrown control on how and what are kids are taught.  No meddling from those in congress who overspend, get us into unnecessary wars, and jam hundreds of mostly unnecessary laws down our throats every year.

 

      But wait!  We now have congress directly interfering with the job of local school boards and state legislatures. Proposed federal legislation, passed in the U.S. House of Representatives just last week, would direct all local school boards to meet newfangled national requirements, whether local citizens agree or not.

     Actually, most of the new requirements are not all that bad. “The measure would require schools to publish their curricula publicly, mandate that parents be allowed to meet with their children’s teachers and make schools give information to parents when violence occurs on school grounds. It would also require that parents who ask to receive a list of books and reading materials accessible at the school library and give parents a say when schools are crafting or updating their policies and procedures for student privacy, among other tenets.”

      But do we now want bureaucrats in Washington, D. C. second guessing all decisions made on a local level?  This legislation gives more authority and expands the oversight responsibilities of the Department of Education, which is ironic because conservatives have been pushing to eliminate this federal agency for years. 

     “I don’t love going down this road,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Friday. Roy said education policy ought to be left to the states.

     Congressman Mike Johnson of Shreveport warned: “The radical left has infiltrated nearly every institution in the U.S. Our education system is one of the most glaring examples.”  So congressman, who are the radical left members that actually run school boards all across America?  A study by the American Educational Research Association found that a strong majority of school boards are most likely to be white, wealthy & Republican. Hummm! 

 

      Not to be out done with inflammatory rhetoric, US Rep. Clay Higgins, a republican from Lafayette, wrote on Twitter: “The library regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.” I’m sure glad the Congressman let me know that. I go to the library here in Baton Rouge once a week or so with grandkids and grandnieces. I’m going to really have to rethink exposing my family to such an ultra-liberal bastion.

 

     So get ready folks.  We are going to have the U.S. Department of Education calling shots on local school board decisions, with the Department of Justice investigating any lax enforcement of federal law.  Or so a large number of our congressional members in Washington apparently want to see happen. What could possibly go wrong with that?

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also listen to his regular podcast at www.datelinelouisiana.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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ANOTHER QUESTIONABLE BAILOUT FOR BIG BANKS!

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

ANOTHER QUESTIONABLE BAILOUT FOR BIG BANKS!

Well, here we go again. Big banks are “high-fiving” each other after they won big in Washington last week.  We thought government regulators had learned an expensive lesson after the financial crash in 2008 that led to massive bailouts at taxpayers’ expense. Back then, the financial industry was allowed to carry on high stakes gambling with your money. And now, it’s déjà vu as the Biden administration has followed precedent set by the Trump regulators and reopened the casino doors.

Last week, the U.S. suffered the second and third largest bank failures in the nation’s history. This wasn’t supposed to happen. A slew of protections were put in place after the financial crisis 15 years ago to prevent a repeat of big banks collapsing.  A law titled Dodd-Frank required banks not to engage in risky investments that were backed up by taxpayers. “Go ahead and gamble on high-risk investments if you want, but don’t expect a bailout,” so the logical reasoning went.

Former Louisiana Senator David Vitter also passed legislation in 2012 that raised the cushion against bad risk by requiring more reserves. This was an important step in saying that we’ve had enough of corporate bank welfare. This legislation reduced the risky financial behavior of “heads banks win, tails, the taxpayer loses” bank mentality. But the question is, why did federal regulators ignore their obligation to hold these big banks accountable?

Here’s the kicker.  Bank deposits are only supposed to protect investor’s deposits up to $250,000.  But the Biden regulators announced that all deposits would be protected. So billions of dollars will be paid out to big investors and corporations.  The message is clear.  Don’t worry about how and where you invest or how risky the investment.  The government will bail you out and you will lose nothing.

And get this. The largest bank to go under, Silicon Valley Bank, paid out bonuses to employees just hours before regulators seized the failing bank. How brazen can you get?

In the movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gecko summed up the attitude of major U.S. banks quite well: “Greed is good.” And this certainly appears to be true, at least for the big banks.  Because after all, the federal government has made it clear that even after the 2008 financial debacle, where hundreds of billions of dollars were poured into the likes of these big guys, there always seems to be a way around the regulations that are supposed to protect the taxpayer.

The old axiom is true. The more the big banks take irresponsible risks and commit out-right fraud, the more things stay the same, as the regulatory system looks the other way. Bank regulators say there will enforce these new strict public protections. That is until big banks face major losses and cry for help. Then the federal dollars begin to flow, and bailout checks pour out of the federal treasury with the force of a flooding river.

Thomas Jefferson was perceptive in what is said 200 years ago: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." I wonder what he would have to say about the current bank defaults if he were here today.

So although America has had enough of Wall Street and big bank welfare, taxpayers are the losers again. And it also looks like we could be hearing the 1930s song, “Brother can you spare a dime.” But with different words this time.

Once I was a banker, it was such fun-sold risky investments by the million.
Once I was a banker, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a billion?”

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown 

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also listen to his regular podcast at www.datelinelouisiana.com.

 

 

 

A LOUISIANA HERO STOPPED MY LAI MASSACRE!

Monday, March 12^th, 2023

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

A LOUISIANA HERO STOPPED MY LAI MASSACRE!

 

 Let me tell you about a great American war hero.  His name is Hugh Thompson and he comes from Lafayette, Louisiana.  When you make a list of Louisiana’s best, special and brightness, Hugh Thompson will certainly be in that number.  It all goes back to Viet Nam some five decades ago.

 

In fact, it was fifty-five years ago this week, when the focus of the Vietnam War dramatically changed.  Many Americans were skeptical of why the war was necessary. There were scattered reports of American soldiers killing innocent civilians. But some would argue bad things can happen during wartime, and that’s the price a nation must pay. Then came My Lai.

 

If you are too young to remember the My Lai genocide, it is certainly a low point in U.S. military gallantry. An Army combat unit of American soldiers charged into an un-defended settlement called My Lai, and over a four-hour period, systematically wiped out the village of some 500 unarmed old men, women, babies and children. The attack was supposedly to weed out Viet Cong solders, but none were there and no weapons were found.  It was a cold-blooded slaughter.

As the killings continued, an Army helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson flew over and observed the massacre taking place below. I had the opportunity of questioning Col. Thompson several times on my syndicated radio program. His words are as disturbing today as they were when I interviewed him years ago.

“We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere,” he said, “people on the road dead, wounded. And we’re just sitting there saying, ‘God, how did this happen? What’s going on?’ And we started thinking what might have happened, but you didn’t want to accept the thought–because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, we’re doing something very evil.”

Hugh Thompson had a gunner and a crew chief on board with him, and he decided to put down his helicopter to investigate just what was happening. “I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed.”  He landed, got out of his aircraft, and confronted the American troops.

Then, he did something unique in wartime. He demanded that the U.S. soldiers back off and stop the killing. He bluntly told them that if they continued the slaughter, he and his crew would open fire directly on them. That cooled the confrontation down, and the killings stopped.

Hugh Thompson filed a full report and complaint, but he came under attack from some in the military who felt he should have said nothing. The Army initially covered up the genocide. But an investigative journalist named Seymour Hersh pieced together the horror that took place, and Hugh Thompson’s heroics became worldwide news.  Many historians feel that My Lai was a turning point in the war as support continued to dwindle.

After thirty years of being ignored and scorned, the Army finally acknowledged that Hugh Thompson was, in fact, a hero.  He was given the Soldier’s Medal for heroism.  My Lai is located in the center of Vietnam on the eastern coast. If you travel there today, a museum can be found in honor of Warrant Officer Hugh Thomson.

In his book, War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, historian Bernd Greiner concludes that My Lai was “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War.”  Fifty years ago, a few American soldiers dishonored their country by committing unfathomable crimes. But a young American helicopter pilot from Lafayette, Louisiana had the courage to step and demand that the carnage come to an end.

 

All Louisianans should be proud of Hugh Thompson. He died at 62, but remains one of the Bayou State’s very best.  For America, Col. Thompson represents what more heroes in our country should be.  He joins many other special leaders who stand for all that’s right for our nation.  God bless all such special Americans.  Especially Col. Hugh Thompson.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also listen to his regular podcast at www.datelinelouisiana.com.

 

 

IS LOUISIANA OBSESSED WITH GAMBLING!?

 

March 7th, 2023

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

IS LOUISIANA OBSESSED WITH GAMBLING!?

 

Welcome to Louisiana. Where you will find the largest assortment of gambling options anywhere. It might be the gambling mecca of the world. So go ahead and pick your poison. 

 

You can go to one of four federally approved Indian casinos and 43 state-licensed casinos where you can pick a large selection of betting options.  Craps, slot machines, Bourré, blackjack, Baccarat, roulette, poker (Texas hold'em, Five-card draw, Omaha hold'em), and Big Six-wheel.  Then you can also choose pool, the lottery, online gambling of sports, horse racing tracks, off-track wagering, the list goes on and on.  There are 200 truck stop casinos and over 1000 restaurants and bars that have video poker machines. Cock fighting was outlawed just a few years ago, but still takes place in Cajun country.

 

Sports betting is the new mantra for bettors with full page ads running daily in many of the state’s newspapers.  And can you believe the state’s major university is openly soliciting its students to gamble online?  Even though it’s against the law for someone in Louisiana to gamble who is under twenty-one, the state’s flagship LSU is illegally urging students to sign up for an online account and gamble on any number of sporting events. “It just feels gross and tacky for a university to be encouraging people to engage in behavior that is addictive and very harmful,” said Robert Mann, an L.S.U. journalism professor. 

 

Lia Nower, a professor and director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University writes: “Gambling is a very different addiction from drugs or alcohol. If I’m drunk or high, at some point my family is going to figure it out. With gambling, I can be sitting with my kids, watching cartoons, and gambling away my house, my car, everything I own, on my mobile phone. How would you know?”

 

It would be one thing if the state’s gambling obsession was being absorbed into the economy that was ticking with new businesses, a growing population, and an improving quality of life. But when you compare such qualities in surrounding states, Louisiana continues to be at the bottom of the barrel. Now it seems like we have become obsessed with a gambling addiction.

 

Shouldn’t our public officials offer options to bring the Bayou State in line with our neighbors? Yes, we have a growing number of chemical plants along the Mississippi river. But these operations require fewer employees as their functions become more mechanized. Texas,

Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee all have thriving and growing economic bases.  Companies that require a large number of employees. 

 

 I recently returned from a trip in North Carolina, and my route took me through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. I passed any number of automobile plants and distribution centers that individually seem to take up thousands of acres. Nissen and Toyota have massive plants in Mississippi, and the Mercedes plant in Alabama looks like a major city.  Louisiana does not have the trained workforce that is required to operate such plants.

 

Writer Walker Percy, who is buried in Covington, gave this view of his home state. “Its marshes have been plundered and polluted, one of the highest cancer rates in the county and the loss of fifty square miles of wetlands yearly.” He went on to lament that Louisiana should be much more than what he decried as “a slightly sleazy playground for tourists and conventioneers.” 

 

And sadly, how about this from our state’s current most prolific writer James Lee Burke, who has written some 40 novels mostly about Louisiana.  “I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.” 

 

Tough comments from two respected authors who have observed the Bayou State for many years. Will the state ever change? It’s election year with balloting to begin in a matter of months.  Political office wannabes will be trying to convince the electorate to vote for them. Are voters ready to ask tough questions?  We will find out in November.

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also listen to his regular podcast at www.datelinelouisiana.com.

 

 

COMPETENCY TESTS FOR ALL LOUISIANA PUBLIC OFFICIALS!

Wednesday, March 1st, 2023

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

COMPETENCY TESTS FOR ALL LOUISIANA PUBLIC OFFICIALS!

 

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has announced her intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination. As part of her platform, she proposed that all candidates running for president who are over 75 years old take a mental competency test. My reaction? I think it’s a great idea.

 

But such a requirement should not be limited to just older candidates. We need to take it one step further and compel a test for all candidates running for public office.  Why should only older candidates be tested?   Now let me confess that I’m one of these old guys. I was in public office for 28 years, and yes, there could be a problem with an aging outlook towards offering solutions on public issues.

 

But what’s so special about youth, particularly if they have no governmental experience? The youngest governors we’ve had in Louisiana during the past 50 years were Bobby Jindal and Buddy Roemer. Did their youth proved to be valuable in their ability to govern?  I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge.

 

Rather than pontificating on the pros and cons of age versus youth, I would suggest it’s much more important to know just how knowledgeable candidates are on issues involving the particular office they seek.  Does a candidate for sheriff in Louisiana know how to run a prison, have an educated background in how to deal with the growing opioid crisis, and how to train competent deputies so they are qualified to address a challenging criminal element in our state?

 

Does a candidate for assessor have both a financial and an appraisal background to deal with the ever-complicated evaluation of properties, both commercial and residential? Statewide candidates, young and old, need to convince voters that they are not asking for permission to undertake on the job training. Much too often, we elect candidates who have limited knowledge of the political office they seek.  In my home parish of Concordia, a logging truck hauler was elected as the local coroner.  Was he qualified to make medical decisions?

 

In the statewide election this fall, candidates for governor, both young and old, should be called on to explain in some detail their knowledge and possible solutions to a number of challenging problems facing the state. Here is just a partial list. 

Recent reports indicate that Louisiana’s combined state and local sales taxes are the highest in the nation. Should Louisiana require a flat tax and possibly doing away with the homestead exemption? What are their positions on these proposals to finance state government?

 

Louisiana has the highest insurance costs of any state in the country. Should we abolish the elected insurance commissioner, and let the governor be much more hands-on in dealing with insurance issues? The states with the lowest insurance costs appoint the insurance commissioner, and the governor is actively involved.  What is the gubernatorial candidate’s proposals to reduce insurance costs?

How does the next governor deal with the lack of early childhood learning?  Can he or she address the problem that a significant number of parents don’t encourage their kids to go to school, let alone do homework?  How do you support the families that are really trying, and allow their kids not  to attend failing schools?

Hey, we’re just getting warmed up here. There are so many other issues involving health, infrastructure, the environment, a trashy state, crime, I can go on and on. The bottom line is that competency is extremely important in electing the next governor, and all of our other public officials.  Do we really care if they are young or old, as long as they can pursue a high standard in running the day to day  operations of the respective office?

Election day is less than eight months away. Let’s hope Louisiana voters have the common sense to pick and choose those who represent them, irrespective of age.  Holding all these candidates to a high standard of competency, young or old, is the best way to get the Bayou State off the bottom of the barrel.  If we as voters do not strive to elect candidates with a knowledge of issues along with fresh ideas, then we only have our own selves to blame.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also listen to his regular podcast at www.datelinelouisiana.com.