Category Archives: Human Interest
It was a terrible week on Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” This narrow strip of the bayou country between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is home to more chemical plants and refineries than just about any area in the world, let alone the United States. Over the decades, these plants have been a source of both jobs and income for a state in desperate need of both. But as the nickname implies, [...]
Read More »Did you hear about the latest iPhone app? It alerts you when you find yourself under aural assault, when the decibel level where you’re at reaches the point where it could actually damage your hearing, or worse. If you’ve been paying attention to the posts here about noise pollution over the last couple of years, you probably won’t be surprised at all where the inventors headed to test their creation: [...]
Read More »Nobody likes being a guinea pig. But apparently that’s what happened in Pennsylvania and some of the other places where the boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, first hit in the late 2000s. Thousands of acres were leased — often by farmers and other property owners in economically depressed areas — and then rigs began to dot the rolling hillsides, But all of this happened before the key regulators — [...]
Read More »As feared — but predicted — the tax on New Orleans hotel guests is headed to the desk of Gov. Bobby Jindal. It’s hard to imagine that Jindal — who harbors dreams of riding all the way to the White House on the white horse of fiscal conservatism — would endanger his reputation by approving a tax hike when it finances such a dubious purpose. And before Louisiana’s GOP governor [...]
Read More »Earlier this month I told you about the ill-conceived plan racing its way through Baton Rouge to impose a new tax on tourists visiting New Orleans and to use the money not to address the burning problems in our neighborhoods — high crime and lack of code enforcement — but on an amorphous tourism slush fund. Although our arguments have gained some traction, so far common sense has not been [...]
Read More »This past weekend’s Memorial Day ceremonies were a special time for remembering the many men and women who were called to serve and who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. The troops who have fought for our country are truly special — and yet at the same time they embody something more fundamental about the American character. There is a deep instinct among so many citizens — not just [...]
Read More »There’s an old saying that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Well, here in New Orleans, the tourism industry is a double-edged sword. Ever since the first oil-and-gas crash of the 1980s and especially since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the Crescent City has depended on the kindness — and the tourism dollars — of strangers from all over the world to pay its [...]
Read More »If there is any state in the country that is in serious need of good watchdog journalism, it would be my home state of Louisiana. Sure, our Sportsmen’s Paradise has been celebrated for its colorful pols dating all the way back to Huey Long and the barely fictional “All the King’s Men,” but the reality is that too often “colorful” has been a euphemism for “corrupt.” And that is no [...]
Read More »One of the more important topics I cover here at this site is noise pollution, particularly in my hometown of New Orleans. Over the last few years, I’ve worked together with a website www.HearTheNOLAMusic.org, where you can find a lot of critical information about the harmful health impacts from unregulated noise. That is why communities pass noise and other quality of life ordinances: It is, quite literally, a matter of [...]
Read More »Louisiana is a state of contradiction — earning its official nickname of “Sportsman’s Paradise” with shimmering waters and miles of vibrant swampland, yet often in the shadow of so many strench-emitting oil and chemical plants, more per square mile than anywhere else in the world, that it gains the alternate nickname of “Cancer Alley.” Sadly, it’s not unusual for folks down here to complain of permeating foul odors — sometimes [...]
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