Local store busted

According to one of our sources, the Texaco at Avenue F and Highway 60 had a spot of trouble with ATF the other day for selling alcohol to a minor. Apparently the cashier didn't card the kid.

Real simple, idiots. Check ID or don't sell the booze.

I think I'll patronize a business with more respect for the law.

Trial delayed in St. Bernard pet killings

Excerpt:

A St. Bernard Parish sheriff’s deputy and a former deputy are set to stand trial separately early next year on felony aggravated cruelty to animals charges stemming from the alleged fatal shooting of dogs on the streets of St. Bernard in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.

Clifford “Chip’’ Englande, a sergeant assigned to administrative duties, and Michael Minton, who is no longer working for the Sheriff’s Office, pleaded innocent in February and were scheduled to be tried together this week.

As it stands now, Minton will be tried Jan. 29 by a jury in state District Judge Robert Buckley’s courtroom and Englande will be tried Feb. 14 by the judge, a spokeswoman for state Attorney General Charles Foti said Wednesday. Link

Let's hope justice prevails.

Also see: Trial date set for [alleged] dog shooters

On horses

We've been hearing scuttlebutt about some horses that may not be well maintained - possibly inadequate shelter, poor nutrition (visible ribs), etc. So here, links to the basics on what you're lookin' at and who to call to make a complaint.

The horse's body condition is scored on a scale developed by Dr. Don Henneke, called, unsurprisingly, the Henneke Scale. This is an MS Word doc that will download and open, so you can easily save it for future reference or printing. If that bugs ya, google the phrase "Henneke Scale" for a different format.

Here are some photos of horses, rated by the author of the page. Not for the faint of heart. In a nutshell, you shouldn't be seein' ribs, overgrown hooves, wounds attracting flies, or too much fat.

Who to call? We've heard that humane enforcement by Bogalusa Police Department and the Washington Parish Sheriff's Office is spotty and inconsistent.

We recommend phoning Humane Society of Louisiana, 1.888.6 HUMANE, or fill out their online form, which can be done anonymously. They were prompt and effective at getting care for the animals at Cassidy Park.

You can also contact the Louisiana Livestock Brand Commission Crimestoppers at 1.800.558.9741.

Yon on Beauchamp

Required reading:

Some months ago, a soldier in Baghdad wrote a piece on the way war can degrade the morals and affect the judgment of combat soldiers. His story was published at face-value in The New Republic magazine. In it the soldier wrote terrible things about his unit, making the article sensational.

I was in Iraq when it first hit the stands and someone asked me about the plausibility of the events described in the article. I skimmed the story but it did not even pass a simple sniff-test. With a shooting war going on, there is no time for trivial pursuits, so my only comment was something like, “It sounds like a bunch of garbage.” Turned out it was.

The soldier’s name was Beauchamp. He’d tried to hide his identity, but poor Beauchamp had no idea that the blog world would get on his trail and tree him like a coon. Beauchamp crawled up to the top of that tree, looked down into the snarling spotlight, and suddenly knew he was caught.

Also Michelle Malkin: The New Republic Comes Out From Under Its Desk.

Graft and corruption, waste and cheating.

From The Hill:

“The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts has been mind-boggling,” said Tancredo... Citing administration figures, the lawmaker said that $114 billion has been spent on the effort... The lawmaker criticized in particular the amount that has been wasted through fraud and abuse, estimated at $1 billion.

$1 billion lost to fraud out of $114 billion is less than 1.0%. Guess I've been in Louisiana too long; doesn't seem like a lot to me.

Justice at long last

James Ford Seale.

Indoctrinate U

Speech codes. Censorship. Enforced political conformity. Hostility to diversity of opinion. Sensitivity training. We usually associate such things with the worst excesses of fascism and communism, not with the American universities that nurtured the free speech movement. But American higher education bears a disturbing resemblance to the totalitarian societies that are anathema to our nation’s ideal of liberty. Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary film, Indoctrinate U, reveals the breathtaking institutional intolerance you won't read about in the glossy marketing brochures of Harvard, Berkeley, Michigan, Yale, and hundreds of other American colleges and universities.

Put your name on the list to get a screening in our area here. Bogalusa will be on the map as soon as they count my vote ;-).

Via Gates of Vienna, a Very Important Blog.

Need help!

We need to network with other parents who have kids at Bogalusa Middle School and are unhappy with the way a particular course was taught in the spring '07 semester.

Please leave a comment or send an email.

This is important stuff, folks. Let's get together and help each other out, and make a positive change.

Breaking news.

We have just received a text message that BHS has received a bomb threat and the school is on lockdown.

More as we know it.

UPDATE: Not to worry. Read about it at Nola-dot-com [this is an editorial].

Yup. The crime rate.

The Daily News has finally caught up with topics we think are important. First quarter crime stats alarming, it says:

A council district-by-district breakdown shows 323 "serious" crimes reported through the first quarter - including two murders, six rapes, 10 robberies, 60 burglaries, 148 thefts, nine auto thefts, 17 aggravated batteries, 56 simple batteries, 11 aggravated assaults and four simple assaults.

Yeah,that's alarming. As I posted back in July of '06, referencing 2004 numbers, the city already had a hellacious crime rate. My crime post was paired with "Just Go Home" written on the same date, referencing this op-ed which was unsigned in the online version.

The author blamed the crime problem at that time on thugs from out of town - also known as come-heres, in the local parlance. And my crime post pointed out that Bogalusa was a hotbed of crime, higher than the national average in many areas, before the Katrina evacuees arrived.

Here, the crime numbers from 2005, compared to Oxford, Mississippi, a town slightly larger than Bogalusa (click to enlarge):
































Depressing.

I agree with the article that Neighborhood Watch will help. I've seen that program work very well in other cities.

Once NW gets rolling, perhaps a "Court Watch" group can be formed. People can rotate on and off and go to criminal court and observe. Is there a lax judge? Is the DA not prosecuting criminals with the zeal we'd like? Showing favoritism?

Part of reducing crime is arresting your way out of the problem, a/k/a lockin' up the bad guys, or my personal favorite, takin' out the trash. Neighborhood Watch puts criminals on notice and helps the cops (all nine of them). Court monitoring tells the judge(s) and DA that we care what's happening in the courtroom.

One more thing. Nobody's going to get arrested for a crime that isn't reported. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say they didn't bother to call the cops and report their shed break-in because "They won't find out who did it anyway," blah blah blah.

What if the crime rate is higher than even the above numbers indicate? Report, report, report. Every. Single. Incident.

If Bogalusa needs more cops - which it surely does - we'll need to know the true figures to influence the City Council into budgeting for and hiring them.

Links:

Court Watch
Citizens Court Monitoring - New York
Watch - Minnesota. Good resource page.

Fifty lenders have gone bust.

That's right. Fifty. Read it and weep.

Mortgage lender implosion

The number of defunct mortgage lenders has risen to forty-four.

Bogalusa city audit

Federal violations detailed:

"...the City did not comply with requirements regarding procurements that are applicable to its Disaster Grants-Public Assistance Program, nor with requirements regarding allowable costs, Davis-Bacon Act, and procurement that are applicable to its Airport Improvement Program."[...]In his report, Seal wrote, "Most, or all, of the 2005 findings could have been avoided if effective internal controls had been maintained. Most of the noted weaknesses in internal control and findings were not hurricane related."

Will somebody please make the necessary arrests?

Jindal talks, but says nothing.

At WWL online:*

Public housing should be made available for working class families and the elderly, not a haven for the criminal element of society, Rep. Bobby Jindal (R) said Friday...

The law already prohibits drug convicts from living in public housing in New Orleans. Plenty of public housing residents were working poor and the elderly before Katrina. Duh, Bobby.

Further into the article, he says:

“Let’s make sure we don’t allow the drug dealers, the gang members, the sex offenders, those that have committed acts of domestic violence, let’s not them back,” Jindal said.

I appreciate the sentiment behind this. Recidivism being as high as it is, chances are that allowing convicted criminals into subsidized housing means there will be a whole lotta criminal activity goin' on there. I hate druggies, and I hate living near 'em, and many people in public housing share my sentiments.

I guess you could change the law to keep out other convicted criminals. I don't see how you'll extend the ban to "gang members," unless they're ex-cons, though. And I hardly think you can ban people who don't work. What about the disabled, and people receiving welfare?

The banned people will end up living in poor neighborhoods, most likely. In low-rent districts - many of which are adjacent to the housing projects. We'll move the problem a few blocks, is all.

We punish sex offenders forever, by making them register and other requirements. I don't think we should add restrictions to other ex-cons. We want them to go straight and integrate back into society. They already have a tough time getting jobs and education - drug offenders are prohibited from federal educational aid. I don't think the potential of a ban from public housing in future will be a deterrent that keeps people from dealing or using drugs. But it might discourage them from going straight after they've served their time.

* Registration required. Use Bug me not.

Mortgage lender implosion, again

The number gone kerplunkt is now THIRTY-SIX.

Mortgage lender implosion

THIRTY-FOUR mortgage lenders have gone bust.

Previous:

If I had any extra money... -- posted Sunday, March 4, 2007. Three more MLs down the tubes since this post.

If I had any extra money...

... I'd probably buy silver coins and bury them in Mason jars in the backyard.

Stock market shenanigans. Subprime lenders going bust. Housing prices and the bubble. It's all there at Housing Panic, and it ain't goin' away.

Read the posts, the links and the comments, and plan accordingly.

UPDATE: Thirty-one mortgage lenders have gone bust since late 2006.

R.I.P, David Creed Rogers

Sad news [link]:

David Creed Rogers, 85, one of the last remaining links to Washington Parish's bloody civil rights legacy, died Monday at Good Samaritan Nursing Home.

And excellent news:

"We have some very hot leads on this case," Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the FBI in New Orleans, said.

It's a shame Mr. Rogers didn't live to see justice. He surely wanted to.

But he isn't the last remaining link to those times. The last links are the people who know -- the people who need to unburden themselves by calling the FBI, before they've gotta try and explain it to St. Peter.

Get on the phone and do the right thing, folks. Help put the murderers in prison where they belong, and truly end Bogalusa's sordid legacy of lynchings and killings and bigotry.

The murder of Oneal Moore

A Google news alert showed up in my inbox, with a link to this at the Times-Picayune - also being discussed on the Hard Copy board. Excerpt:

The unsolved 1965 killing of a black Washington Parish sheriff's deputy by a group of white assailants is among roughly a dozen unsolved murders from the civil-rights era that the FBI is giving new scrutiny, said Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the bureau's New Orleans office.

The murder of Oneal Moore is one of 10 to 12 unsolved inquiries into suspicious deaths around the country that FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday the agency is re-examining.

Further down in the article [emphasis mine]:

Ironically, Moore and Rogers were hired in part to help quell racial unrest in Washington Parish, which at the time was thought to have more members of the Ku Klux Klan per capita than any county in America.

I believe it. Remember David Duke's run for a seat in the Louisiana legislature?:

Duke actually carried Tangipahoa Parish, a rural county which is one of four in the district, and finished second in another rural county, Washington Parish. Link

And here's an excerpt from a 1965 Time article:

Governor McKeithen offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction, promised to "demonstrate to the world that Louisianans are law-abiding, Godfearing citizens, and that our state is no haven for cowards and murderers."

Sadly, he has been proven wrong. In this case, Louisiana, specifically Bogalusa, was indeed a haven for a murderer and his two accomplices.

Turn them in. This is a terrible blot on the city, and it's way past time for justice.

Trial date set for [alleged] dog shooters

Arraignment of Minton and Englande was Tuesday in St. Bernard Parish.

Trial will be May 8, 9 or 10.

Full story on this page.

Special thank you to Pasado's Safe Haven animal rescue org for traveling all the way from Washington state to help and show support in this very important matter.

For those of you who didn't see my previous post on the topic, you can write a note to the judge here.

For y'all who have companion animals, or understand the love people feel for their pets, why not help Pasado by buying a T-shirt? I like "Not Without My Pets" :-).