Day: June 6, 2012

Mayor Half Moon picks former assault victim as interim City Council member

Former State Senator Diana Bajoie / Daniel Erath, The Times-Picayune archive

Folks we stay very busy on the Jefferson Parish beat but you must give Mayor Half Moon credit for nabbing former Senator Diana Bajoie as his pick to fill Stacy Head’s old slot on the NOLA City Council. As a youngster Bajoie was viciously assaulted with an ugly stick, yet rebounded to a long career in the Louisiana legislature. Her accomplishments include steering $50,000 via earmark to a conprofit controlled by the Jefferson clan, which then dutifully looted out the taxpayer largess. Frankly I think she is right up Mayor Half Moon’s alley.

Slabbed congratulates Ms Bajoie on her interim appointment to the NOLA City Council.

sop

Above the Law picks up on the doughnut glaze problem over at Judy Barrasso’s place. Duncan scrubbed at Flanagan?

Normally one post on Keith Magness shooting spree on company time would be my limit but Above the Law picked up on this case and put a pdf of the “that ain’t doughnut glaze on my dress!” lawsuit online. Interest in what Magness did during his free time at Judy Barrasso’s place has been very intense.

I normally back click the search referral terms to see how people ended up on Slabbed and in doing so today it appears Ms Duncan has been scrubbed from Flanagan Partners website including the press release announcing she was hired back on January 1st of this year.

Now I can certainly see why someone would want to scrub any association with Magness but the victim of the whack attack? That folks, is not working smarter IMHO. Female members of the Slabbed Nation wishing to express their indignation should fire away in comments.

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A rare Threefer: Vic Planetta gets off without jail time after defrauding the SBA of a cool million after Katrina.

Robin Fitzgerald has the skinny for the Sun Herald and this post is a threefer for the following three reasons:

  1. Slabbed has previously tagged along with the Sun Herald’s coverage of the case.  I’ll add someone had an advance heads up as to what was coming and stopped by here to register a bit of displeasure.
  2. St Slammany Parish DA Walter Reed is a lock ’em up and throw away the key type of guy unless a family member or Vic Planetta is involved in the crime. I am repulsed by the fact Reed would ask for leniency given his track record back home.
  3. The AP version of the story is online at NOLA.com and is Fitzgerald’s story heavily edited leaving out the Walter Reed factoid among others.  McClatchy evidently has a corporate policy of “404ing” their stories after a month or so but the AP version will be online at NOLA for years and that is where the site traffic interested in this niche topic will go and yes there is niche interest in this story.  Since the T-P restructuring news hit I’ve been mentally compiling a list of things newspapers do to slit their own digital throats, the above being but one example.  If I had not been making this point chances are I would have written about Reed’s letter for leniency and linked the story that would remain online for longer than a month in the AP report instead of the source.  For those reporters at McClatchy that wonder why blogs link the AP versions of your stories you now know the answer.

The future of journalism is here in cyberspace. Embrace it or perish.  Pro Bono Publico.

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