Kill the head ~ Former New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Greg Williams.
Day: January 10, 2013
From one political grandstander to another: Rep. David Baria panders on Palazzo and Sandy
When one politician slithers out to grandstand it encourages others.
South Mississippi legislator pushing measure asking Congress to help Sandy victims ~ Michael Newsom
About the only thing we can say with certainty about Rep. Baria’s resolution in the Mississippi legislature is that it was guaranteed to get his name in the paper because it stands less than a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting passed.
Jim Brown’s Weekly Column: We still went over the fiscal cliff.
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
WE STILL WENT OVER THE FISCAL CLIFF!
After all that talk about falling off the fiscal cliff, you just knew that members of congress would do the right thing, and work out a compromise on the federal budget that would curtail any additional new spending, close generous tax loopholes, reign in entitlements, and take a dramatic whack out of current spending. Isn’t that what congressional leadership is all about, particularly at times of major financial crisis?
But did the congressional leadership (perhaps an oxymoron that could join the ranks of “virtual reality” and “call me, maybe”) of both parties really put the national interest ahead of their party loyalties? The public doesn’t think so. A national poll, taken right after the ”fiscal cliff” vote in Washington, found that the approval rating of Congress had fallen to an all time low of 9 percent. To put this number in perspective, a recent Gallup poll found that polygamy was morally acceptable to 11 percent of the population, with a similar 11 percent approving of the U.S. becoming a communist country. The BP oil spill was OK with 16 percent of the population. Having our life immersed in oil sludge is now more acceptable than the current conduct of congress.
One of the non-negotiable issues with the Republican leadership in congress had been to curtail expenditures. We kept hearing that “there is a spending problem.” The GOP mantra repeated over and over was the George H. W. Bush proclamation of, “Read my lips — no new taxes.” As negotiations wound down to the final drop dead date of December 31, there immerged support from both parties to stick a tax increase to the rich — those making more than $450,000 a year. Continue reading……….
Slabbed Investigates: Continued bad times at the Legal Department at the Super 8 Motel on Clearview
Are we noticing a trend with the Legal Department at the Super 8 Motel on Clearview Parkway and the media yet folks? It is all here on these pages:
- Luncheons with Ashton Phelps after which the Times Picayune stopped covering major aspects of the corruption scandal in Jefferson Parish.
- Public records requests from Val Bracy at Fox 8 that never resulted in any news stories despite the fact one of the returns revealed Aaron Broussard was conducting business for First Bank and Trust on Parish of Jefferson letterhead. Lee Zurik was Bracy’s boss during that time frame.
- Travel media in Canada taking payola for promoting Aaron Broussard and Danny Abel’s business interests at the resort at Trout Point in Nova Scotia.
- Glowing reviews from the Times Picayune circa 2001 openly touting Aaron Broussard’s connection to the Resort at Trout Point. Later repeating these same facts in the news resulted in multiple lible suits against NOLA area media outlets including Slabbed New Media by Broussard’s business agents in Nova Scotia, Charles leary and Vaughn Perret.
- Letters to the daughters of connected local political types like Amy Sneed, formerly of WDSU, which illustrate the much deeper social relationships that compromise most of the NOLA main stream media.
- Promotion of lawsuits filed by The Goatherders where they serve as plaintiffs or provide representation such as this Travel scam lawsuit by Carl Finley promoted by Uptown Jewish Women on Fox 8 that crashed and burned or the infamous Gates v Strain where Slabbed exposed the disingenious reporting by Channel 4 on the various lawsuits against St Tammany Parish officialdom filed by Abel’s “son” Shane Gates aka Shane D’Antoni.
The last bullet point brings me back to 2010 and a family on the Northshore that found themselves in a legal pickle involving the ownership of the lot upon which their house sat as Channel 4’s Dennis Woltering explains:
Butch and Nicole Martin say their home here in Abita Springs is in many ways everything they have always wanted.
“The house is beautiful,” Butch Martin said. “We absolutely love it.”
Trouble is, when they had some financial troubles and were forced to try to sell it, they discovered they probably don’t own the lot where the house sits.
“We own the house, but not the yard,” Nicole Martin said.
A buyer was ready to purchase their home more than a year ago, but then two days before closing the buyer’s title, the insurance company notified the Martins that the sale could not go through.
“We got a phone call to notify us that we had a bad title, and we actually didn’t even own the property,” Butch Martin said.
The Martins say they now believe that the property under their house was taken from the heirs of the original landowner, William Nill.
“The property was basically stolen,” Butch Martin said.
But this short snippet from Woltering’s story does not do the story justice so I feel compelled to embed the link to Woltering’s report on the fleecing of the Martins and their title insurance carrier Fidelity National because the Martin’s were hosed as it is clear Northshore lawyer Bill Magee engaged in specious land transactions around a decade ago. Continue reading “Slabbed Investigates: Continued bad times at the Legal Department at the Super 8 Motel on Clearview”