Showing posts with label Port Allen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Port Allen. Show all posts

Thursday, June 13, 2013

The hefty troll of census acquisitions


I am from Louisiana. Thus, I have seen some political train wrecks in my time.

But this one in Port Allen, just across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge, takes the cake.

All you need to know is this: In five months in office after her November election, Mayor Deedy Slaughter billed the taxpayers for a personal trip to President Obama's inauguration, raised her salary by $20,000 when no funds had been budgeted for that, hired her brother-in-law as chief of staff, fired the city's chief financial officer -- pant, inhale -- was ordered by a state court to reinstate the city's chief financial officer, subsequently took away the chief financial officer's authority to deal with finances or sign checks, complained to the U.S. attorney general that white council members were running a smear campaign against her because she's black -- wheeze, gasp -- and hasn't yet gotten around to formally introducing her city budget proposal, even though the new fiscal year begins July 1.

But at a council meeting Wednesday, Deedy explained it all: "I been witch hunt since Day 1. I been fighting acquisitions after acquisitions."

Well, if you put it that way. . . .

For all the fun the local newspaper and Channel 9 have been having with this pluperfect example of civic dysfunction in the Gret Stet, Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ, has been having more. Here's a f'rinstance from February.


NOW, if you're not from Louisiana, do not do an Internet search for any of this stuff. Chances are, as a non-native, you don't have the stomach for it . . . or a brain acclimated since birth to craziness like this.

Go in cold, and you may never emerge from the secure wing. It would be akin to a Mormon partying with Keith Richards -- you just know that's not going to end well.

Sooner or later, the guy unaccustomed to even caffeine is smoking anything that will burn and chugging anything in a bottle and snorting anything that will pass through a straw . . . and then he can't remember what happened next.

In this case, you -- the outsider -- might stumble across a local Internet forum or something and see how poorly everyone is acquitting themselves in what became a racial pissing match about three seconds in. You'll come across the N-word, and eventually you'll start thinking representative democracy is way overrated.

Just save yourself the trouble. Enjoy the show. Try not to think about how this isn't reality TV but, instead, is reality somewhere in these United States.