Bigotted Scuzzbucket

Howieluvzus blogs about Terrebone Parish School Board Member
Rickie Pitre who wants to force students to use English only at graduations.




From a Houma today article
Cousins Hue and Cindy Vo, who spoke in Vietnamese during their valedictorian addresses during Ellender High’s commencement May 19. -- Cindy Vo faced the audience at Ellender High School’s graduation last month wearing a valedictorian’s vestments.

The American-born daughter of Vietnamese immigrants spoke of high-school memories, friends and the future. Then she recited a sentence in Vietnamese, dedicated to her parents as they looked on.

"Co len minh khong bang ai, co suon khong ai bang minh," she said into the microphone.

The 18-year-old graduate told classmates that the line, roughly translated, was a command to always be your own person.

That part of her speech has resulted in unintended consequences that may affect how local public-school graduations ceremonies function in the future.

Some Terrebonne Parish school officials now say all commencement speeches should be spoken in English only, and they want a formal rule that says so.

Supporters of proposed changes, discussed at a recent School Board Education and Policy Committee meeting, say they want graduations to be "uniform procedures."

(that's how they hide their bigotry methinks)

Board member Rickie Pitre is leading the charge for change.

"As board members, we get to observe the different ceremonies and there’s some inconsistencies I think the board or administration more importantly needs to address," Pitre said in committee.

He supports English as the only language at graduations. If a message is spoken in another language, it should be phrased in English first and then paraphrased in translation.

"I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language," Pitre said. "They should be in English."

"them"?, Rickie? How narrow minded you are. Looking at the makeup of the
Terrebonne Parish School Board , it appears that 5 out of the nine members have French surnames. Have you forgotten where your forefathers came from? You are indeed a scuzzbucket, Rickie.


More details of this story, including what other members of the School Board think of this idea, are at this link .

Scuzzbucket of the Week

For the second time in a month, our favorite Scuzzbucket is none other than Senator Ann "I'm better than the little people" Duplessis. Reacting to the
governor's veto of her bill, Duplessis said the issue is now dead and that she would not try to override the veto and that she would not bring up a scaled-down version of the pay raise in future sessions.

The Senator expressed her displeasure with what she saw as Jindal's broken promise. "The first thing I was told when I got into office was, your word is all you have," she said, "and we were given his word."

Click here to listen to the entire interview.



Is she in a cave or something? From WWL TV:
Duplessis said she did not believe that there was the big backlash against the raise that the media had been reporting, but that a couple of ‘radio personalities’ had led the charge and overstated how the public felt.
She said the constant barrage by the ‘personalities’ was something she couldn’t fight.
“I don’t have a PR budget that will allow me to do a campaign to tell the other side,” she said.

Funny thing, just a few weeks ago she found some "PR Budget" to do damage control after the pay raise was a success. From Bayoubuzz dot com:
Ann Duplessis and Damage Control
Senator Ann Duplessis, ever since Pay Raise Gate has gone on the offensive with her own PR machine. It was her bill that passed the Senate tripling the legislator’s pay raise. Now she is sending out emails touting her involvement in the community. The other day one email marketer promoted her and a fashion event. Today, Senator Duplessis’s email is "Taking Care of Business" promoting her “Clean and Beautiful Campaign”. Duplessis serves residents of Eastern New Orleans, Holy Cross, and the Lower Ninth Ward. She rarely sent out any emails prior to this Pay Raise Gate debacle. She and the legislators who voted for their own payraise and who threatened the Governor with shutting down the government will have a lot of business to take care of before they regain the trust of the people of her district with whom she has ignored for the benefit of her buddies in the legislature who have never needed the pay raise in the first place


More reactions:

CB Forgotston (great cartoon)
Swampwoman has an idea to take care of the selfish leges.

Well Whaddya Know

Jindal vetoes pay raise

Power to the people.

American Zombie: I love it

American Zombie: I love it

NOLA-dishu: C Ray loves someone else taking heat

NOLA-dishu: C Ray loves someone else taking heat

A Sleeping Giant Awakens

If you have the time and means of transportation, get yourself to Baton Rouge next Monday, July 7th.
Stephen Sabludowsky over at Bayou Buzz is leading an anti-pay raise march on the Louisiana Capitol in Baton Rouge on Monday July 7, 2008, the day before the deadline for PBJ to veto the pay raise.

From Bayou Buzz:

"will initiate a peaceful rally on the Capitol steps prior to the day the bill becomes law. It is the democratic way to let the people know that we mean business and we want this legislation vetoed. The Governor needs to see live bodies demanding change, not simply emails and phone calls. We will need the help of organizations, of individuals and yes, you--who feel left out in the cold by our Governor and by the legislature. It is time for Louisiana to take our state back from the power brokers seeking power for their own person gain while the people go broke. If you want to help in a large or small way, contact me and let us begin to become Citizen Can."

Website Central La. Politics will soon provide a link to the rally in the near future.

Hopefully, the days of letting the good ole boy network do what they want and get away with it seem to be finally over.

Jeff Croere puts it better than I could:
I doubt that our legislators realized that their push for a 124% increase in salary would lead to an awakening of the sleeping giant, the voters of Louisiana.

Never before had Louisiana voters, long accustomed to political shenanigans reacted with such fury to an action of the Legislature.

This issue struck a responsive chord for a number of reasons. The pay raise was too large and it came at a time that the “regular” people were suffering. Citizens cannot vote themselves a pay raise and neither should politicians.


A recall petition is available here.
This site provides the petition (in pdf format) and recall rules as well as quotes of Jindal regarding his stance on the pay raise
A recall petition would require verifiable signatures from well over 900,000 registered Louisiana voters. This can be done, folks.


Thanks to Swampwoman for this info

Fountainbleu State Park

A few months ago we biked the Tammany Trace from Lacombe to Fountainbleu State Park in Mandeville. The park was closed for nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina due to extensive damage.

The park itself looks great. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of trees lost in the storm, but the two years since the storm has allowed for underbrush to fill in and the regrowth of pole pines.

click on pictures for full size versions




Some new additions Post Katrina are the cabins that are on the lake which can be rented for $90/night.



This is where we will spend our summer vacation in a few weeks, thanks to the high price of gas.

There's also a fantastic pier that can be used for fishing,contemplation or just enjoy the breezes coming of the lake.



Notice the new pavillion to the left.




What was shocking was the amount of wetland loss. Unless visitors to the park take the hiking or biking trails, it's not evident. But if you walk the boardwalk that juts out into Lake Pontchartrain it's extremely obivious. Here are pictures of the same area taken in 2004 and then in 2008:



2004



2008



2004



2008

The park is full of wildlife, a rebuilt beach, a kiddies area with swings and jungle gyms and plenty of other places to enjoy a weekend day with family or friends.

Katrina vs the Midwest Floods

From a Mississippi blogger, her take on people trying to compare the aftermath of Katrina to the latest flooding up north


I think a lot of people still have no idea of the amount of destruction Hurricane Katrina did. FEMA made it to the Mississippi Coast a lot faster than I would have expected. The situation in New Orleans was different. To me, it wouldn't have made sense to try bring in truckloads of water and food to a city that was being evacuated, especially from the RealClear Poltics article you linked to which showed the National Guard had the necessary items on hand.



read the entire piece at the link above.

New Orleans Post K

Lord David over at Humidcity dot com has penned a wonderful piece about what makes New Orleans a special place.

Here's an excerpt:

So how do I feel about New Orleans post-K?
It was a gift from heaven.
A gift of truth.
A vision of community so vested in each other that material things mattered noticeably less, & there was that glint in the eyes of complete strangers that told you they were strangers no more.

Life goes on.
New Orleans goes on.
It lives and breathes like a leviathan in the swamp.
Old worldly, decidedly unsober, mannered in it’s own lingo, beautiful, decrepit and wildly free.

Learning from the Past (Hurricane Season)

Found a wonderful post about hurricane season here that was cross posted in Humid City.

Here's an excerpt:
Here’s the deal. Today is the first day of hurricane season and it’s like some invisible demon has shot a starter pistol off into dogbreath blue sky signaling the Olympic Games of Organized Neurosis to hereby officially begin. It’s a stressful time of year, for sure.


Back before the big storm, hurricane season could be nerve-racking at times – but there was a kind of camaraderie about it, an almost jovial good sportsmanship associated with that universal fear of the so-called big one, a certain comfort in the comfortable uncertainty of how it might play out. We were only guessing then, and the guessing felt like a game.


Now it’s different. We’ve all seen how this shit plays out for ourselves, up close and personal. Now we know how very fucked up things can get around here. There’s not a whole lot left to guess about.


I’ve noticed that the biggest difference between now and then is not the weather, but our collective state of mind. Remember back in the day, when Ivan or Georges or Isabelle or whatever one-eyed shitfuck had to crawl so far up the radar that it was breathing down our necks before we even got the tiniest bit antsy about it? That was really not a bad way to go. Nowadays, everyone shifts way down low into mental meltdown mode as soon as the tiniest swirling bit of goo forms off the coast of Africa. It’s really ridiculous, but we all watch this shit like hawks now, as if such obsession can possibly do anyone any good at all.

Social Commentary

Two great blog posts about what's on a lot of peoples' minds: the crime problem and some of the issues that are contributing it.

Cliff writes about the evolution of youth in his blog:
These youngsters are not doing anything we didn’t do when we wore our Ninth Ward hats and had beef with the cats back of town at the house parties. They just have AK-47’s at their disposal.

Mark Folse blogs about growing up on the other end of town

I don’t know how to change this anymore than I know how to take all the folks in Lakeview or Metairie (some my oldest friends) and shake the ingrained racism out of them.

Both are well thought out posts and are worth reading.