By Karen Gadbois, The Lens opinion writer | Ever played Jenga, the Parker Bros. game where you stack up a bunch of wooden blocks and then take turns easing them out of the middle of the stack, one at a time – until the whole thing falls down? With a hiring freeze on at City […]
Category: Opinion
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Child porn sickos deaf to Jindal’s tough talk
For the past three years or so, Governor Bobby Jindal has traveled far and wide bragging about how tough his administration is on child predators. He’s told audiences that violent child rapists deserve the death penalty, and that sexual predators should be chemically castrated. They’re “monsters,” he never fails to say. As he tours beyond […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Tap it, Gramps: Notes on the Roemerlution and sundry tidbits
Today, let’s do a round-up of recent political news stories. 1. The “Roemerlution” continues! Last week former Louisiana governor-turned- presidential-candidate Buddy Roemer took the guest seat on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” This probably marked the widest exposure Roemer’s struggling campaign has achieved to date. He took the opportunity to appeal directly to “regular folks” […]
Posted inEnvironment, Opinion
Weasel words: BP ‘cleanup’ falls far short of ‘coastal restoration’
BP’s “Louisiana Gulf Response” website exaggerates the scope of clean-up efforts since the blowout. By Mark Moseley, The Lens opinion writer | While reading a local news story on the web, I noticed a familiar yellow and green color scheme on the sidebar. Sure enough, it was a BP advertisement: “Gulf Coast Restoration,” the article teased, […]
Posted inOpinion
Get government funding out of the arts? Get real!
By Lamar White Jr., The Lens contributing opinion writer | In a recent opinion piece for The Lens, Kevin Kane argued against government support for the arts. Louisiana’s richly indigenous culture is self-sustaining – and should be, Kane argued. His views are not surprising. A New Yorker in our midst by way of a Tulane […]
Posted inOpinion
Senator using skewed numbers on oil industry’s safety record
By Benjamin Leger, The Lens contributing opinion writer | Testifying in front of the Senate Energy Committee in May 2010 while the Deepwater Horizon was still gushing oil into the Gulf, Louisiana’s U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu voiced her opposition to the moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling: Since 1971, not a single spill in the Gulf, […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Oversights or plagiarism? Jim Brown’s mea culpas don’t add up
My piece about the lifted texts in Jim Brown’s online opinion columns grew new legs on Sunday when Gambit published a 3,000-word story on the matter, and a 3,000-word sidebar so readers could compare excerpts from Brown’s columns with their original sources. Hearty applause to writers Kevin Allman and Alex Woodward for pursuing this issue […]
Posted inOpinion
Let culture buffs fund the arts – not govt. bureaucrats
By Kevin Kane, The Lens contributing opinion writer | In an opinion piece posted recently at The Lens, New Orleans’ online investigative news site, arts writer and editor Nathan C. Martin recently criticized the Louisiana legislature for cutting statewide funding for the arts. While Martin rightly celebrates Louisiana’s culture, his argument for increased government subsidies falls […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
LSEA an engine for business development? Sure, if you don’t mind driving it out of state
In 2008 Governor Bobby Jindal aptly demonstrated his scorn for classroom science, when he ignored advice from his own Ivy League genetics professor and signed the so-called Louisiana Science and Education Act. Apparently, Jindal worried that Louisiana students didn’t possess his level of discernment and that their belief systems would shatter if they heard biblical […]
Posted inOpinion
TIGER III funds: How NOT to spend these federal transit dollars
By Stephen Crim, The Lens contributing opinion writer | The U.S. Department of Transportation has opened the application process for $527 million in grants for transportation projects under the name TIGER III. In an earlier round of similar funding, last year the Regional Transit Authority won $45 million for the Loyola Avenue line. As a […]