Criminal Justice
Police face misconduct allegations over Carnival incident – FOX 8 WVUE | Video shows a group of plainclothes New Orleans police officers descending on the son of an NOPD officer and taking him down. After his identity was established, the officers left and police claimed they were looking for narcotics or illegal weapons. The young man’s mother, Hazel Newman, said:
Why take a child or a young man that’s 130 pounds and sling him across? Why not just walk up to him and say, ‘What are you doing? What’s your name or why are you here?’ That’s a human being. I would hate to think that it was because these boys were young black boys. I would hate to think that.
The NOPD says the tape revealed “no obvious violations of misconduct.” However the NAACP has called for investigations into police brutality.
Dozens of Orleans Parish inmates make new claims of violence, neglect in jail — NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune | Reports of stabbings, rapes and a widespread lack of inmate security were described in a recent legal filing that is part of a civil rights suit filed by the U.S. Justice Department against Sheriff Gusman’s office, which oversees the city jail.
The War on Drugs Is a War on Kids — The Nation | A law professor argues that “the war on drugs has metastasized into a war on children.”
Government & Politics
Jindal airs tax plan in D.C. but here at home leaves details to his aides — The Lens | Tyler Bridges reports that Gov. Bobby Jindal has yet to outline his tax overhaul plan in a public setting in Louisiana, nor had he answered questions from local reporters—until Thursday, when The Lens asked Jindal’s press office about it.
Instead, the governor is pitching it in private meetings with state legislators. The governor’s desire for secrecy led to an extraordinary confrontation with one lawmaker who refused to return a two-page outline of the governor’s plan that had been distributed at their meeting last week.
Jindal says tax plan to be neutral, flatter, simpler, fairer — shreveporttimes.com | Jindal said: “We don’t have a proposal yet because I … made a commitment to meet with every single legislator. Our goal is to get rid of the income tax and to do so in a revenue-neutral way, and to do so in a way that protects low- and middle-income families and to do so in a way that leaves us with lower, flatter, simpler, fairer taxes. There are many ways to do that.”
Louisiana Miscellany – Public Policy Polling | A recent poll shows that in a hypothetical race for governor in 2015, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Sen. David Vitter are both tied at 44%. One curiosity at the end of the data: a 38% plurality of Louisianans have no opinion about former Gov. Huey Long. How do you have no opinion on Long?
Land Use
$400 million Houma amusement park waits on investors — wwltv.com New Orleans | While the ruins of the Six Flags amusement park in eastern New Orleans sits, a developer is looking for investors to fund a theme park complex in Houma. The developer says, “Most investors ask ‘why not New Orleans?’ But they don’t realize New Orleans is not what it used to be since the hurricane. Houma is now so packed and so busy it just makes more sense to put it here.”
Throw Me Some Sod! — My Spilt Milk | “Does anything miss the spirit of Carnival like a Mardi Gras land grab?”
New Orleans becomes “boutique”— BBC | Touting the city’s originality, real estate developer Sean Cummings has christened New Orleans as the world’s newest “boutique city.” Post-Katrina, that term referred to a vision of New Orleans’ future in which the city never returned to its previous population peak, when it was the “Queen of the South.”
Schools
LSU rebuffs public records request — The Advocate | “LSU will continue to keep secret the names and qualifications of candidates in the running to become the university’s next president after rejecting a public records request from The Advocate.”
Ben Mays families lament loss of community as failed charter prepares to shut down — The Lens | “The Mays community doesn’t dispute the school’s poor scores, but they believe test scores are just one part of the formula that makes for a good school. They cite the school’s familial atmosphere as one of its greatest strengths, and they wonder what impact the school’s closure will have on kids who have grown to love Mays’ faculty.”
Related: an editorial by the Chicago Sun-Times says mass closures of under-enrolled, low-performing Chicago schools cannot be done “sanely and humanely” in one year’s time.
Louisiana governor helps McDonnell promote education reform proposals – The Washington Post | “Louisiana’s statewide Recovery School District served as the model for [Virginia Gov. Bob] McDonnell’s proposal to create an Opportunity Education Institution to take over failing schools.” Jindal also touted Louisiana’s new A to F school grading scale as a reform that Virginia should emulate.
Environment
Funding crisis looms for $14 billion hurricane protection system — The Lens | How will we afford the “eye-popping $34 million annual bill” for the new levees and floodwalls? Bob Marshall reports that “possible solutions are blocked by state and congressional politics.”
Judge approves plea deal between Transocean and feds on criminal charges stemming from Gulf oil spill — NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune | Transocean will pay $400 million to settle criminal charges stemming from its role in the 2010 oil spill. That will be the second highest criminal payment in history after BP’s $4 billion settlement last month.
Traces Of Anxiety Drugs May Cause Fish To Act Funny — WWNO | A Scandinavian study notices that fish are affected by medication runoff in bodies of water. “The key question is whether the drug is affecting the growth, survival and reproduction of fish in the wild, and by so doing perturbing the ecosystem.”