Let's go through a few things here that might save you a TON of money....
First, if the light is flashing do not drive the car. &nbs...
Writer's Email: wesawthat@gmail.com
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Twitter:@wesawthat
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” ~ Gaius Cornelius Tacitus
Let's go through a few things here that might save you a TON of money....
First, if the light is flashing do not drive the car. &nbs...
"authorizing the city counsel to enter into a professional services contract with john w. scott and a professional services contract with toni martin to provide legal services to the counsel and services to the city of alexandria related to the alexandria home rule charter; the louisiana open meetings law; the legal affairs of the city of alexandria and to matters before the city counsel. to litigation and/or investigations related to or involving the city of alexandria. to the cleco lawsuit and its settlement and other matters including compliance with local, state and federal law, courts and fact finding gatherings on legal matters pertinent to the city counsel, its responsibilities and deliberations and general legal services."seconded by councilman charles frederick smith.
on monday 30 july 2007 a commenter on cenla antics "blog" posted the following:
On tomorrow's City Council Committee Schedule:
Public Safety/Transportation Committee Meeting at 3:30 p.m. or immediately following
1. To hear from the Administration concerning the agreement with Cabrini Hospital to close Prescott Road relative to the expansion of Cabrini Hospital.
2. To discuss holding a public hearing in reference to the recommendation of the Administration on closing Prescott Road.
Remember this - we've already sold one street to a hospital and look what a mess it has created. It practically takes an act of God or a GPS system to maneuver from the OK Allen Bridge to downtown Alexandria. Do we want Prescott closed off from Texas to MacArthur?
Has the City done any type of traffic study to see what kind of havoc this will create or how much additional traffic will be sent through the adjoining neighborhoods who want to access property north of Texas located on Prescott? I doubt it. Now is the time to speak up.
Monday, July 30, 2007 11:43:00 AM
--END--
moments ago the alexandria, la. city council public safety / transportation committee delayed action on items one and two:
"A clean slate," LaSalle Parish School Board member Billy Fowler said of why the tree was cut down in the past few weeks. "There's nothing positive about that old tree. It's all negative. And I'm serving on the new School Board, and we're wanting to start fresh on some things."
Schools Superintendent Roy Breithaupt authorized the tree to be cut down, Fowler said. Breithaupt on Monday refused to comment about the tree while discussing plans for rebuilding the school after an arson fire destroyed one the school's buildings.
Fowler said the tree eventually would have been cut down for construction purposes, but that he also is hopeful its removal will help heal old wounds.
"School's about to start," he said. "We don't want the blacks coming back up there looking at the tree knowing what happened, or the whites. We just want to start fresh."
click link to read more.
.mp3 here
louisiana state attorney general candidate royal alexander was on the moon griffon radio program this morning. moon is off til thursday, so sitting in for him was his brain and sinister side-kick: ruth ulrich.
ms. ulrich sets mr. alexander up for the sexual harassment lawsuit portion of the interview by playing dumb:
"um i remember before uh you left d.c. actually right before congressman alexander was reelected that there was something that came up there was a lawsuit that uh that was taken to the press by a plaintiffs attorney about ten - twelve days something like that right before the election. would you explain what that was about?"mr. alexander following ms. ulrich's rather not so subtle lead reiterates that yes the lawsuit was "sprung" on the office ten or twelve days before the election and was brought "by a young lady who had left our office the previous may." mr. alexander further tries to explain it all away while curiously always referring to the lawsuit in the past tense: "one part she alleged was there was an unfair wage claim...another part of the lawsuit was that felt she should have been paid overtime when she worked for us...another part involved the fact that the house bank apparently held on to some of her money longer than she thought that it should have and the fourth part of the claim was actually a sexual harassment claim against me, which is false." then manages to work in a swipe at "vicious" nancy pelosi suggesting that the whole thing was politically motivated. uh huh.
in an (as usual) very well written piece, cenlamar bases his post upon a pbs documentary called "news wars" and then goes on to explain how the "meaning of journalism in a world that is slowly being upturned by advances in technology and the ubiquity of the Internet" applies to central louisiana's media and blogosphere as well.
snip:
However, blogging, as Markos Moulitsas stated in “News Wars,” allows the passive reader to become a participant in the story. It breaks down the fourth wall of the fourth estate. And sometimes, as a result of this participation, the blogosphere produces real journalism. It is little surprise that the Central Louisiana blogosphere is so active; the consolidation of our major media outlets and advances in Internet technology and accessibility have produced a space for people to write about the stories the media simply does not or cannot report. There are numerous examples of local bloggers “breaking” a story before it is picked up by the mainstream media, though the blogosphere is rarely, if ever, credited.click the link to read more.
heres the city of pineville's reply to lynton hester's public records request. (for background see also here and here.)
besides being a day late in their reply, we see that pineville is raising the same bullshit excuses with mr. hester as they did in gregory aymond's request. the city of pineville went so far as to sue mr. aymond in an attempt to thwart his public records request. will they do the same to mr. hester?
we see that pineville is using the same worn out ridiculous excuses in mr. hester's request when they say that "...in regard to your request to have the e-mails put on CD or some other media, the City will not agree to do so because of security concerns...ie...if placed on computer related media, the City loses the ability to ensure that the e-mail content is not edited or tampered with in some way". this is an insult to anyones intelligence because even if emails were "edited or tampered with in some way" the city still retains the original emails to refute with. its also funny because pineville raises this same issue in its lawsuit against gregory aymond yet does not cite one case anywhere in the country in which emails were edited or tampered with.
next pineville says that the emails are currently stored on mr. dupree's computer hard drive and that it would be disruptive to have his computer offline for what pineville reckons would be the several hundred hours it would take mr. hester to view the emails in question.
so what does pineville propose to do to solve this? have boudreaux and thibodeaux from the city's "information technology department" set up another computer so that mr. hester may view the emails from off that computer.
now to accomplish this, the city would have to either remove mr. dupree's hard drive and install it on the other computer which doesnt make sense or they would have to somehow remove the emails in question to a device, cd, dvd, etc and reinstall them into the new computer. if the city can do this they can just as easily place the emails on a cd or dvd and give them to mr. hester, which is what mr. aymond requested them to do in the first place!
in 1984 the louisiana supreme court in Title Research Corp. v. Rausch, 450 So.2d 933 (La., 1984) [6 page .pdf] ruled:
As a qualified member of the public, Mr. Heeter is entitled to inspect, copy, reproduce, or obtain a reproduction of the requested public records. He has chosen to reproduce the records, in toto, by means of microphotographic reproduction techniques. He has chosen the method, and the clerk-custodian may not inquire into his choice of medium. Nor may the clerk inquire as to the purpose for the large request. A commercial purpose will not justify thwarting the right to copy the public records.lucy reid raush, was the clerk of court for st. tammany parish, louisiana and the court ruled that she could not prohibit someone from bringing their own recording device into the courthouse to copy public records. there was never a question about someone editing or tampering the records despite the fact that the records in question were conveyance and mortgage records of the parish -- instead it was all about money:
"The clerk responded that the records would be available for inspection only, and that plain paper copies of the records could be purchased from the clerk at the rate of fifty cents per page."and again ten years later, in 2004, louisiana's second circuit court of appeal in First Commerce Title Co., Inc. v. Martin, 887 So.2d 716 (LA, 2004) [6 page .pdf] reversed the lower courts ruling and ordered:
[T]he judgment is reversed, and the clerk of court of Bienville Parish is hereby ordered to permit the use of a hand-held scanner in the clerk of court's office to copy public records during normal business hours at no charge.so whats the difference in someone using a hand held scanner to copy public records and in having emails or other documents downloaded onto a cd or dvd media? versus, as the city of pineville maintains that they must only be copied onto paper so that as pineville erroneously argues, that they cant be tampered with or edited. also the fact that pineville maintains that the emails can only be copied onto paper has the added benefit of prohibiting citizens obtaining the public records as you see when pineville wants $3,531 [2,582 eur] in copying fees.
sean scully is a free lance reporter living in philadelphia. we've been reading mr. scully's blog "seanibus"ever since washington times reporter audrey hudson introduced us to it from her "audrey's right" blog sometime in late 2005.
in fact mr. scully is responsible for this blog because he has his comments set in such a way that you must have a google account to comment there. anyway, recently mr. scully was working on a story about the virginia tech massacre and was using facebook to find story ideas (hmm imagine that, a reporter actually using online resources to find story ideas)
mr. scully writes:
Somehow, Facebook decided that I have become a Spammer. I don't understand - they won't explain. It has something to do with my efforts to contact friends of Virginia Tech students in the wake of the shooting there in the spring, a story I was reporting for People magazine.click link to read more
[...]
At first I was really pissed off, because no other website has had any problem with the way I and other reporters operate. But then I cooled off and began to wonder if it might not be kinda cool to be one of the few people banned for life from Facebook.
heres the latest on the city of pineville, louisiana public records request for the city of pineville chief of staff rich dupree's emails...
for those of you interested and following the ongoing saga of pineville's scandalous utter contempt for and disregard of louisiana law -- you probably remember our post from 23 july 2007 in which we documented mr. lynton hester's request to view mr. rich dupree's (already separated) emails, which according to pineville's attorney and federal court judge wannabe: jimmy "the wizard" faircloth in a letter to local attorney gregory aymond just seventeen days ago (10 july 2007) to inform mr. aymond that "the city of pineville has completed its review of the e-mails at issue and divided them into categories in accord with judge swent's ruling and our jointly submitted judgment." see mr. faircloth's actual letter here.
well, earlier this evening mr. hester said that he had received no response whatsoever from city of pineville, public records custodian ellen melancon, despite ms. melancon being statutorily bound to contact mr. hester by today. mr. hester said that according to the united states postal service certified mail return card, a mr. wayne dauzat signed for receipt of his public records request on tuesday 24 july 2007. mr hester told wst... that around 3:45 pm today he telephoned ms. melancon's office and was told that she wasnt in but would return his call. additionally, mr. hester obtained ms. melancon's email address and emailed her. he received no response to his telephone call or email.
louisiana law at RS 44:32 D requires that:
In any case in which a record is requested and a question is raised by the custodian of the record as to whether it is a public record, such custodian shall within three days, exclusive of Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays, of the receipt of the request, in writing for such record, notify in writing the person making such request of his determination and the reasons therefor. Such written notification shall contain a reference to the basis under law which the custodian has determined exempts a record, or any part thereof, from inspection, copying, or reproduction.louisiana's attorney general charles foti, on his website, has a section reserved just for public records laws see "publications: public records laws". ag foti, in plain easy to understand terminology explains the laws governing citizens public records requests and the public body's duty in fulfilling these requests. one can only deduce that city of pineville, louisiana governmental officers together with its lawyers consider themselves to be above the law.
.mp3 here
interesting excerpt from the wednesday 25 july 2007 ksyl talk back live program.
dave graichen and bob madison was discussing the road home program and the recent nbc news report about former fema director and road home scammer james lee witt. bob madison said that it was an eight month long investigation and that the state of louisiana is in contract negotiations to renew the contract with james lee witt when dave graichen cut in and said "if we do we really need to clean house..." bob madison said "what do you want to bet that its signed before october 20th" dave graichen said "absolutely amazing! that was an incredible expose that nbc did on that show i thought they did a really nice job on that. you know its sort of sad thats probably just about the only investigative reporting that is being done nowadays is by the big networks like that i guess they are the only ones who can afford it nowadays...thats about it, theres very little deep investigative reporting going on in this state anymore and i know that a lot of the, especially the newspapers and in radio its the same way too, i havent felt it too much here but i have in the past, in other places, feeling pressure from management having to do with going after anybody who happens to be an advertiser on the radio station, you know? it echo's also for the newspapers too, you know? you dont want to go after somebody, you dont want to bite the hand that feeds you, you know?...i think its an unfortunate situation"
back on 23 july 2007 we posted the copy of the letter mr. lynton o. hester, iii, sent to city of pineville, la. mayor clarence fields, in which mr. hester was asking mayor fields, under the public records laws, as to the date and time that he (mr. hester) could come to pineville city hall and view emails sent and received by pineville chief of staff rich dupree.
this morning we were pleasantly surprised to see that the alexandria daily town talk reporter karina donica wrote a short story captioned "request filed to 'view' pineville official's emails".
as far as we knew, the only place where it had been made public that mr. hester's request had been filed was here on the blogosphere. apparently, sometime yesterday ms. donica telephoned mr. hester for a comment for her story and this rather sudden; unexpected main stream news media interest, perhaps took him aback:
earlier today mr. hester emailed wst...
Wesawthat,
I have posted the following response under the Town Talk article in todays paper about the records request. I thought it was a lame attempt at a public ambush.
Lynton
I have made a request to view specified e-mails that have drawn much attention in Pineville as a citizen using certified return receipt mail with a phone number enclosed. At the time of this posting, I have had no response except the article in todays Town Talk, which I find highly unusual and suspect behavior.we felt that mr. hester's concerns were valid so we replied:
The first question that was asked by Karina Donica was "what do you want the e-mails for?" to which my reply was that I was returning the call out of courtesy and that I was preparing dinner for family and would like to conduct the interview on the following day. She informed me that the story would run and that she understood. What is glaringly obvious is that he subject matter must be highly radioactive for there to be such a high level of interest in a request made by a humble citizen.
Secondly, if I was being properly informed of governmental developments by our local media, I would not be compelled to investigate for myself.
Thirdly, can any and all citizens expect the same "public outing" if they make a similar request?
Inquiring minds want to know
thats an interesting theory that you raise -- as far as being "outed" or an attempt to intimidate you etc. will you go ahead with your request or will you withdraw it? or have you decided yet?to which mr. hester replied:
The request is in play and they have failed to return the serve thus far. They have my cell phone and my home address as you saw. I fully intend to show up when they inform me of the accommodations in time and facilities that are available. Failure to respond will result in a complaint being filed through proper channels with all of the attending documentation. I will let the dogs chew on them for a while if they fail in their diligence.stay tuned...
Lynton
kudo's to the alexandria daily town talk for not falling for or being intimidated by alexandria city counsel president everett hobbs recent charges of racism. we also like the way that the town talk turns it around and puts the focus squarely on the remaining six city councilmen to do something about their failing leader:
The body for which he speaks includes six other council members: Charles "Chuck" Fowler, Roosevelt Johnson, Myron Lawson, Louis Marshall, Harry Silver and Charles Smith Jr.so will the remaining six city councilmen step up to the plate and remove president hobbs? we're not very encouraged since it appears that president hobbs together with at least four other councilmen (the bridgett brown 5) appear to be operating together in the same organized crime ring.
The councilmen have chosen and endorsed Everett Hobbs as their leader, so they are the chorus behind what their leader says. They can sing his praises, or they can remain quiet. It's their choice. Either way, through praise or silence, they say the same thing: that they support their leader.
On the other hard, they can choose to criticize their leader -- because they disagree with him, because they think he stepped over the line, because they think he is wrong about something, or because they think he may be unfit to handle the responsibilities of the position.
the criminally insane maniac that currently occupies the oval office, with the stroke of his pen, has made it illegal to protest the iraq war. do you understand yet that we do not live in america anymore? and just where is nancy pelosi, harry reid and the democrats at on this? is impeachment still off the table ms. pelosi? forget them what about republicans or anyone that considers themselves real americans?
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky --
The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US led war.
A presidential Executive Order issued on July 17th, repeals with the stroke of a pen the right to dissent and to oppose the Pentagon's military agenda in Iraq.
The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of "certain persons" who oppose the US led war in Iraq:
"I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people."In substance, under this executive order, opposing the war becomes an illegal act.The Executive Order criminalizes the antiwar movement. It is intended to "blocking property" of US citizens and organizations actively involved in the peace movement. It targets those "Certain Persons" in America who oppose the Bush Administration's "peace and stability" program in Iraq, characterized, in plain English, by an illegal occupation and the continued killing of innocent civilians.
sometime on friday 20 july 2007, central la politics and us received an anonymous email tip regarding someone named "joe bishop" who's name appeared on a rapides parish clerk of court report and we posted the screen grab here. central la politics speculated about who this joe bishop was here.
then we played the waiting game to see if anything was reported about it in the local news media. the weekend came and went and nothing which wasnt unusual since everything is closed. then monday came and went and still nothing. in the meantime, a commenter on central la politics blog named "sam" confirmed that this joe bishop was indeed the city of pineville, la. councilman and current candidate for rapides parish police jury, joe bishop.
so by tuesday when neither the town talk or kalb had reported on the story we started to sense a media coverup and wrote a very um terse post about it here. central la politics blog did as well here.
now, kalb can play it off like they did when they reiterated several times that they received all these emails and calls which motivated them to move this story and they probably did, we're not saying that they didnt.
but we know something else too and what that is, is that that kalb was on our blog yesterday for over an hour reading our posts about this then unreported story:
we're not posting this to blow our own horn so to speak, or to make kalb look bad or anything like that. we dont blog for a media mention and attention or for a credit. in fact leave our name out of it. we are merely posting this to show people the power and influence of the blogosphere and to encourage more people from around central louisiana (and everywhere else too) to start blogging. start writing about the things that matter to you, whatever it may be: politics, flower gardening, etc.
anyway, without further adieu heres kalb's 25 july 2007 6:00 pm broadcast of this story first broken...on the blogosphere:
be sure and follow the link to kalb's website where they have posted a lot of the court records and information for you to access. alternatively, click here to go to the kalb.com printer friendly version.