in what amounts to about the best piece of investigative journalism we have ever read, daily kingfish contributor, "pointecoupeedemocrat" explains in great detail just what bob dean and his gang are really up to; who the players are and how the swindle (our word not his) works.
daily kingfish snip:
So Daniel's bill aims to create "tax districts" encompassing "hotels and related facilities" located specifically in Baton Rouge and Alexandria. Earlier this week, all of us were forced to choke on news stories involving the Hotel Bentley in Alexandria. According to these stories, which were printed in the Times-Picayune, The Town Talk, The Shreveport Times, KATC TV-3, Lafayette and Michele Godard's CenLA Media Blog, which is essentially an offshoot of KALB TV-5, Alexandria, although her website for some reason is not subsumed beneath that station's banner, which leads me to question its integrity, especially when one considers its conservative bent, Cyntreniks Hospitality LLC will not purchase the Hotel Bentley from real estate tycoon Bob Dean unless a "true public/private partnership" with the City of Alexandria is established.click link to read more.
The news stories all quote Cyntreniks Hospitality LLC CEO Jim Schneider uncritially, and all are written in order to engender public pressure on the City of Alexandria to "pon[y] up some form of financial help to restore the hotel to its former grandeur." Involving a historic hotel, a demonstrably racist cultural nostalgia for the "grandeur" of fin-de-siècle Louisiana, a city with a young Democratic Mayor who assumed office this year and one of the most wealthy men in Louisiana, Bob Dean, this coordinated media event, one orchestrated by Cyntreniks LLC's letter to the City of Alexandria, which was copied to various media outlets, is timed, for Daniel's legislation will soon be considered by the House Committee on Municipal & Parochial Affairs.
Not only do Dean and Cyntreniks want to ensure that they will not receive opposition from the City of Alexandria when Daniel's bill is considered; they want the City of Alexandria to drop millions of dollars in the tax district Daniel's legislation will create if passed in the state legislature.
