BusinessReport.com

Posted on February 27 at 1:05 p.m.

All due respect to Mr. McCollister, but I usually take whatever he says and divide by four. That gets me a lot closer to the truth of the situation and helps me make a rational decision. Unfortunately, this time, I need to divide something more like 10 to help folks understand his rather flawed logic.
First off, what was the percentage of children living in poverty in 1979 in EBRSS? Having been the ripe old age of 2 at that time, I don't have those figures handy, but I'd be willing to bet my milk money that it wasn't anything close to the 80% we have in poverty now. Any medical scientist will tell you, children born to impoverished homes have nutritional deficiencies that lead to cognitive impairment from an early age. Children from non-poverty households show up in Kindergarten knowing how to read and with enormous vocabularies of words because they are surrounded by educated adults who interact with them. Poverty children show up with about a quarter as many words and most not knowing how to read. When all those non-poverty kids pull out of the system, the remnant is a hard-to-teach group of kids with developmental disorders, behavioral problems and an external environment that makes COPS look like a cartoon.
And if you don’t believe that’s true, then look at parishes with a low percentage of private schools, like Cameron, they have high test scores across the board. Kids need advanced peers to help pull them along, one teacher can’t do it all by themselves. We’ve removed the bulk of advanced peers and put them in elite private schools. And if you think vouchers will solve this problem, they only make the private schools more affordable for the wealthy, they don’t actually open up spots for these troubled kids, which believe me, the private schools don’t want to be bothered with.
But if that’s not reason enough to support this tax, I’ll take Mr. McCollister’s own figure that it takes $8K to teach a kid per year in EBRSS. We’ll spend more than 7 times that each year building a prison cell to house that troubled kid who doesn’t get alternative schooling, gets bored on the streets and turns to a life of crime or the impoverished kid who is smart, but sees selling drugs as the fast ticket out of the bad neighborhood. You can pay 1 penny now or 7 later when you put them behind bars after they’ve burglarized your home. It’s simple economics... it’s a lot easier to start a kid on the right path than to try to correct them later. I agree our school system has problems, but we don’t fix them by punitively taking away our resources.

On Vote ‘no’ on school taxes

Posted on February 25 at 1:48 p.m.

I've driven in cities all over this country and I have to say, Louisiana has some of the dumbest drivers in the US. Signals elude most folks and driving in the left hand lane is like a religion (I had one person ask me how I expected them to get anywhere if they couldn't drive in the left-hand lane). *Shutter* It's for passing folks, that doesn't mean your car can't go there, it just means get back to the right lane when you're done passing. This Saturday I got on I-12 at Airline and the guy in front of our line of cars was doing 40. 40! The acceleration lane is so named for a reason, it means you need to join the speed of those cars already on the road... I can't tell you the number of break lights that lit up behind this guy because he wasn't even close to the minimum speed for several miles. Couple that with the sorry excuses for automobiles that some people take to our roads, distracted cell-phone addicts and drunks and there’s no question you’re going to have more injury-producing accidents. We need better mass transit (like light-rail between BR and NOLA and more logical routes around town) and incentives for people to chunk their clunkers and travel by safer more economical means. Folks should have to re-qualify to drive every 10 years and there should be tougher punishments for drunk drivers (instead of plea bargain after plea bargain). Only that and regulation of the providers will keep our insurance money in our pockets.

On See you in court

Posted on February 1 at 12:50 p.m.

Lest I be stoned by my new neighbors in Lexington Estates (next to U-Club), my husband and I say Right On J.R! Our first question was will they have a shuttle to the neighborhood so that we don't have to worry about driving home after a night of entertainment? Some people like to gamble. It's fun, it's a leisure activity and it's usually a safer bet that you'll be entertained at a casino over a local movie theater for arguably the same amount of money. Unfortunately, if you live in Baton Rouge, your choice is the dump or the other dump that are lined with octogenarians hauling oxygen tanks and chain smoking in front of nickel slots. We need something better, something nicer, something that reminds us of Vegas so that we spend our money here at home instead of taking off to Nevada or even New Orleans. Pinnacle’s new resort won’t even be in the same league as the other two casinos, no matter how much money they spend to upgrade. It’s like going to the Horseshoe over the Wynn in Vegas, there simply is no comparison. We might actually get a Cirque du Soleil show traveling through Baton Rouge with a world-class entertainment venue doing the bidding. And traffic created by a casino? Unless there’s a show, casinos don’t have mass amounts of traffic at one time, it’s more of a steady flow. We’re not talking rush-hour impacts either, unless rush hour suddenly moved to 2AM. Heck, this casino will probably have less of an impact than any new construction in town considering that most casinos are open 24 hours a day which means there is seldom a single time when folks are coming and going all at once. Let’s vote no to mediocrity in Baton Rouge and at least give a resort like this a chance.

On Let Pinnacle play

Posted on November 26 at 2:18 p.m.

I too have seen the TNDs in other places and they are great, not only that, the houses around them are incredibly popular places to live because of their proximity to the town centers. In Reston, Va., there is this great one that features an outdoor ice skating rink during the winter where folks can bring their kids and dogs and shop or drink coffee while socializing with their neighbors. Another popular development in Arlington, Va., Pentagon Rowe has the same sort of set up... where folks can let their kids play, walk their dogs, have a beer at the local pub and pick up some milk on their way back home to read the magazines they just picked up at the local news stand. These places epitomize vibrancy with fitness centers and healthy food stores and people being social.
Everything I've seen is very family oriented and about the closest thing to smut I've seen is a wild pair of red three-inch pumps in the window at DSW at the Pentagon Rowe shops in with some naked scones in the nearby window of Starbucks. I’m not sure how the BR ruling class goes straight from beer to smut, but most folks my age (thirtysomething) tend to just hang out with our beers and talk about world affairs or LSU football or more recently, the price of gas. I've never been to the Gold Club, but I've been to these TNDs in Virginia a number of times, to meet friends, to shop and even to ice skate (or ice fall as I do it).
The bottom line is these places are incredibly clean, beautifully designed places to shop, socialize and dine. The houses around them become great draws for young couples who are focused on reducing their carbon footprint while still having the places they like at their fingertips. And kids do ride their bikes to these, they park them at the beautiful little bike racks built for just that purpose. If we had a metro, there would be a metro stop so that people could come there without having to drive their cars.
It is the future, I have seen it, and it is really nice. I think the best approach for Baton Rouge may be in moving beyond what we are to what we could be with just a little bit of imagination. With some collaboration with the nearby neighbors and the developers, I think this development can be orchestrated with some great design and innovative vision. But, and here is the key, we have to quit running scared and seek some understanding of things beyond what we have done for generation after generation. Change is the number one way to fight extinction.

On Rouzan hell