Baton Rouge: Now I remember why we left

Well, the comments on my "Dear Baton Rouge" post have been, uhhhhh . . . enlightening.

For instance, now I remember exactly why Mrs. Favog and I left, and were glad to do so. And also why -- even though I sometimes get wistful over home -- we'll be moving back over the dead body of my Omaha-born wife.

I can't blame her. I really, really can't. Like folks often say, Baton Rouge is one of those places it's really interesting to be from. . . .

AS I SAID, the comments on that previous post over the past couple of days have been interesting. And they've pretty much convinced me that, once again, my old man inadvertently told the truth one fine day, via one of his typical dyspeptic rantings.

Indeed, when it comes to my hometown, "Dey ain't no hope!" Or so it would seem by the rednecks and wannabe Ku Kluxers who crawled out of the swamps and into the Revolution 21 combox.

Here are excerpts from every single comment, except for a couple of deleted ones from a guy who was getting obsessive and, finally, obscene:

From Colleen:

And now I want to see Omaha. My own home state of NJ had Asbury Park infamously in ruins for a decade or two there, but it is on the rise again. I'm not sure what caused the turnaround but I did hear mention of the real estate trend of "follow the gays." I believe this is also known as "follow the artists," and if you can follow some gay artists to where they're settling, that place should really be booming soon.

From GO:

You nailed that one...Omaha does it with multimillioniare philanthropists, and you're mad because Baton Rouge can't do it?

What you're really mad about is that Baton Rouge doesn't have lots of millionaires...

From GO:

The school systems of Ascension, Livingston, and the private school system in Baton Rouge are THRIVING and getting GREAT MARKS on standardized testing and achievements...The reason? Nobody, not a millionaire, not a middle class state employee, not a married college student with school aged children, wants to send their kids to a system that has been run for FOUR DECADES by the NAACP and a ridiculously senile old judge, acting as a puppet at the behest of the prosecution in a desegregation case...

Seriously...a judge that takes 40 years to decide a case? FORTY YEARS? In the balance was our community's school system...

Do you HONESTLY think anyone with half a brain wants their kids in a system like that? Being run like that? Under that sort've weight?

Oh, wait a minute...NONE OF YOU REALIZED THAT, did you?

(snip)

The community got its school system taken away, and then they realized it might not ever get given back to them...At what point-DURING A FORTY YEAR DESEG CASE-does the community just give up? The judge & the plaintiffs never wanted to give it back...So why dump money and resources, nevermind time and volunteering the resources many had available, to a system that was being run not by the community, but an organization and a judge who were both proven to have smashed it to bits...

The community isn't to blame for our school system...Catholic, Redemptorist, PBS, CPS, Livingston, & Ascension's collective systems and growth are almost DIRECTLY attributable to the NAACP, and that idiotic old bat of a Judge Parker, and their completely inept bungling and gumming up of the works of that system...

From GO:

What we're talking about is how the community lost control, and a motivated (politically? ethnically?) community group held it hostage with quite possibly the dumbest man to ever wear a robe and call himself a judge in history...For 40 years, guv-u-nuh...

That wasn't the COMMUNITY holding it hostage...That wasn't WHITE PEOPLE holding it hostage...That was a judge and a community group.

There is no wrangling, no tangent you can spin off on while raging once again about a machine you want to blame someone else for building...

Own it. The truth shall set you free...

From GO:

So the community is supposed to subject itself to the machinations and the posturing during the case...

For 40 years?

That's what a "progressive" community does in your eyes?

(snip)

What's hilarious is that you IGNORE the fact that the community lost control of its school system. It was no longer their own.

Would you pay a child support for children that aren't your own? Would you pay someone else's car note without being able to drive it?

Of course not...Yet you are excoriating the same community for not passing taxes to fix a system they had absolutely no control over...

No taxation without representation, m'friend...You talked about not escaping, I showed you how the community did exactly that.

From Anonymous:

Two numbers, Omaha 80% white, BR 46% white. No need to post any more statistics.

From jamarco:

You have proved his point. Deseg. and busing really worked? right? Just like mom used to say, "you can't bring your friends up, they will only bring you down". Same goes with the schools in BR. Mamma was right. Now all the public schools in BR are in the same shape. And guess what, the money is still there, in BR. Have you been to Perkins Rowe or the Towne Center? When is the last time you drove down highland road, went into the back gate of the country club of Louisiana by giving the guard a Bigmac? or waited for a table at Louisiana Lagniappe for better than hour, or Better yet have you driven down Airline to Ascension Parish?

If you want to look at some real good numbers look at Ascension Parish. It compares very well to your Omaha.

From Anonymous:

It's not about white flight. It's about a large black population, that is uneducated, unmotivated, and that will continue to vote for democratic politicians who perpetuate the problem for their own benefit.

From Anonymous:

When a city has over 100,000 blacks who are granted majority black districts and elect judges like Don Johnson, and Senators like Cleo Fields, and councilmen like Bones Addison, you are screwed. Just move the hell out as soon as you can, and find somewhere like Omaha or some other western or midwestern state with demographics that don't look like ours, and you'll never regret it.

From jamarco:

you keep losing your own argument. If you live in a place with a broken toilet, and no mater how much money you throw at it just can't be fixed. Most sain people have two options replace the broken toilet (private schools) or move to another place with working toilets (ascension-livingston). Why would you want anybody to live in a place with a broken toilet, I don't. When you look at the racial makeup of omaha, how did the busing work, you took a very small number of black students and bused them to white schools right? and probably closed the black schools, that plan did not work here, we bused blacks to white schools and whites to black schools. I lived it!

From jamarco:

i didn't want to point this out not being a racist and all, but of the ten places taht Kiplinger ranked as best places to live not one has a majority black population.

From Lee High Rebel:

Dear Flavor Flavog,

No federal judge destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. The black "students" single handedly destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. You see they destroyed the physical property, buildings, grounds etc. of the schools that they attended. No one wanted to teach there or go to school there so those schools suffered. Then there was desegregation, and as there nature requires, the black "students" then physically demolished the new schools that they attended. This in turn demolished the spirit of learning in the system and anyone who actually wanted their kids to get more than just a free lunch had to send their kids to a private school or leave the parish. That's how the Baton Rouge school system was destroyed.

From jamarco:

nope, i will be around for awhile, will attempt to leave a bit of wisdom EVERY day, even after you stop posting them. I may even attempt to leave comments on some of your other topics also. And by the way us "rednecks" from the great state of looseiana are coming if LSU can pull it out! I have in the past spent lots of money in your town...and i guess you can tell that I had several black english teachers in highschool and at least one at LSU, so my grammer and command of the English language leaves you wanting...

From KingHueyDeweyLouie:

You must have been a kid when you moved, or else you never lived in Baton Rouge, maybe your wife did, I don't know. A lot of people don't know these things are in baton rouge even people that still live in Baton rouge don‘t. But there are some very small businesses along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, they are easy to miss, like I said a lot of people don't know they are there, as a matter of fact when one blew up several years ago people thought is was an earthquake...big plants and I don't mean alocasias or colocasias I mean, petrochemical plants! Just sit back and take in some clean Nebraska air (if you can stand the smell of corn, although I understand that a lot of corn is now grown in cotton and sugarcane fields around baton rouge) and imagine the amount of money that is generated by the millage taxes that these buggers pay to the city-parish. By the way I don‘t think the $75,000 homestead exemption applies. So there is a lot of tax money in baton rouge. As a side note, Jamarco calls it as he sees it, you shouldn’t resort to name calling and making fun, he types fast and he slept through most of his English classes, I know, I wrote most of his papers. And by the way, he is not a redneck, he hasn’t been on a tractor in years and he doesn’t cut his own grass, some guy named Pedro does (now he really is a redneck).

From Lee High Rebel:

The truth isn't hatefulness or kindness, it's just the truth. I watched the truth unfold from 7th grade through 12th grade. Now I make my money in the construction industry rebuilding and repairing the damage that is done to the schools by the "students", and I'm good at it. I wouldn't be where I am today without those little demolition experts, God bless them.

WHAT'S INTERESTING (and troubling) is that racial scapegoating erupted from something as simple as my making a point about how Omaha, a city with many similarities to Baton Rouge, really has made remarkable progress in the time I've lived here -- such progress that it's being noticed nationally, and is appearing in lists of "best cities."

Really, how do rants about the injustice of school desegregation logically arise from my noting that in many respects, Baton Rouge -- my hometown -- still struggles, and that the difference lies in the realm of "civic culture"?

I opined that Omaha has an extremely strong one, and Baton Rouge . . . not so much. Likewise, I noted the rundown condition of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, and the existence of large tracts of crumbling and blighted property -- the old Bellemont Motor Hotel, for instance.

Many things I might be, but naive isn't one of them. I fully expected that lots of Baton Rougeans would be angry that I'd "dissed" their city. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if lots of Baton Rougeans gave me the Scott McClellan treatment, calling me a disloyal little rat who hauled butt, then dumped on my hometown in front of damn Yankees and everybody.

Of course, if you're gonna crack on me for leaving Louisiana, and if you're going to be fair about it, you're going to spend the rest of your life ripping me and a few hundred thousand other folks a new one. And you -- to your dismay -- will find the list is an ever-growing one.

ANYWAY, all this I would have expected.

What slightly surprised me, but oughtn't have, was that after the first positive comment, not only did things go negative and nasty, but that the unifying theme was that Baton Rouge's problem is as plain as black . . . but not white. That Baton Rouge would be just fine if it weren't for federal judges, the NAACP and a city-swamping Negro menace that has destroyed the schools and God knows what else.

Really. That's the gist of people's complaints . . . that I'm some sort of Yankeefied turncoat who just refuses to see that Baton Rouge sucks because it's no longer white enough. The bile lies pooled above, for you and all the world to read.

Now, the question remains regarding how representative these comments might be. After all, this is the Internet. Throw a news story or a blog post out there on the Information Superhighway, and it's going to attract combox nutwagons like a windshield attracts love bugs.

But still. You also can count on a fair number of reasoned, and reasonable, respondents along the road. Everywhere but here . . . when the conversation turns to what's wrong with Baton Rouge (where I used to live), what's right with Omaha (where I now live), and what the former might be able to learn from the latter.

The law of averages tells me this is a fluke. Having been born and raised in Louisiana tells me I shouldn't be surprised. And William Faulkner tells me that, in the South, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

SO SHOULD I BE surprised that, two decades since I last lived there, my hometown -- at heart -- is still a churlish little backwater, riven between black and white, unable to work and play well with others but (as always) hiding behind a delusional "Laissez les bon temps rouler" façade?

Ought I really be shocked, shocked that the reality of Baton Rouge might, to a large extent, hinge on a critical mass of bitter little George Wallace wannabes who -- though rendered incapable by the feds of literally standing in the schoolhouse door and proclaiming "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!" -- still find it within their means to segregate themselves in white-flight schools and in comparatively white communities . . . to hell with the commonweal?

To tell you the truth, that's as good an explanation as any for a state where Medicaid, social services and education (both higher and elementary-secondary) are always the first things the budget ax whacks. It's as good an explanation as any for a school system going from something like 67 percent white to 83 percent black in 28 years.

And that looks like a likely culprit for why not only did voters not approve any school-bond issues for three decades, but also for why no one cared enough to hold "the bad, awful school board" accountable for its actions . . . or inaction . . . or outright abdication of its responsibilities. Or whatever.

While I'm thinking of it, do murders in the 'hood -- unless they're especially grisly or sensational -- still end up reported as briefs inside The Advocate's Metro section, while slain white folks more than likely end up on a section front? Just asking.

Mayor-President Kip Holden likes to refer to Baton Rouge as "America's Next Great City." Really? What I see in my comments box, the abject dump I saw when I visited my alma mater and the plethora of rundown and abandoned properties any traveler will see surely suggest that the good mayor might suffer from "America's Next Great Disconnect From Reality."

ONCE AGAIN, as Abandoned Baton Rouge blogger Colleen Kane -- a New Jersey transplant -- so reasonably asked at the end of one of her posts on the ruins of The Bellemont motel, "Baton Rouge, kindly explain thyself."

I don't pretend to know how Baton Rouge would explain itself. All I know is how I would explain it, as someone who was born, raised and educated there. And as someone who worked there, then moved away from there.

But I do know how a lot of folks in these parts see my home state . . . and my hometown.

They see it as an exotic, bizarre and fascinating place they wouldn't mind visiting. But no way in hell would they want to live there.

Sadly, I can't say that I blame them. Because, when it comes right down to it, neither would I.

Much happier and far less bitchy 2.1

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Much happier and far less bitchy 2.0

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Much happier and far less bitchy

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Godwin's Law: I call bulls***

Godwin's Law is the informal combox protocol stating that the first person to call another a Nazi automatically loses the argument.

Faced with a culture where a Yale "art student" can claim to have inseminated herself and then taken herbal abortifacients so she might smear the menstrual blood and any "products of conception" all over a cube, upon which she intended to project video of herself "miscarrying" into a cup . . . I call bulls*** on Godwin's Law.

If you can't call that evidence of a Nazilike disregard for humanity and the sanctity of human life, then you are left with no words at all to describe the horror afoot in this "culture." In fact, "Nazi" only begins to cover the degree of evil to which Yale's malevolent maven of murder art and her ilk have handed themselves over.

And whether what Aliza Shvarts, Class of '08, has committed is "merely" astoundingly sick "performance art" or, instead, some monstrous neo-Seinfeldian display of "murder about nothing," what we now face is a historical replay of the point at which Weimar debauchery and decadence intersected with the Nazi death cult. All that is required now is some appeal to the greater good beyond the freedom to rut with impunity.

Then again, for all the Aliza Shvartses of the world, I suppose rutting with impunity would be reason aplenty.

AND THERE ARE other Aliza Shvartses out there, though not all have her proclivity for blood-soaked "artistry." Take this comment left for the "Devil and Woman at Yale" post. I won't post it there, but I will put it here for all the world to behold -- and with the expletive partially deleted:

Who gives a s***? At 2 days old it's a bundle of cells and nothing more.

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

ALIZA SHVARTS' stated purpose of highlighting ambiguity and constructing an "artwork" entirely out of uncertainty is nothing more than a postmodern, mumbo-jumbo recasting of Pontius Pilate's "What is truth?" Likewise, mindless, callous and death-dealing comments such as the one above is just another contemporary echo of a sad and ancient tale.

Ancient Israelite idol-worshippers offered up their children to Moloch. Aztec priests cut the hearts out of virgins to appease their blood-thirsty gods. The Turks killed a million Armenians. Josef Stalin starved between 6 million and 7 million Ukrainians. Pol Pot slaughtered millions of Cambodians in the 1970s.

And we all know what Adolf Hitler did.

Obviously, none of these genocides were marked by "insane notions of the sanctity of life."

I wonder whether Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were "much happier and far less bitchy."

The 'art' was a hoax. The depravity is real.

Oh, OK. So now Yale says that Aliza Shvarts was faking the whole thing about inseminating, then aborting, herself for an "art installation."

That it was "a creative fiction."

AND THAT is supposed to make it much less barbaric, disgusting and -- yes -- demonic?

There is no end to how, in fiction, this "art" is no less troubling than if Shvarts' hanging cube had really and truly been smeared with the cellular remains of murdered fetuses. The evidence starts with this update in The Washington Post:

Shvarts told classmates that she had herself artificially inseminated as often as possible for much of this past year, then took legal, herbal abortifacient drugs and filmed herself in her bathtub cramping and bleeding from the miscarriages. She said her work will include video, a sculpture incorporating her blood mixed with Vaseline wrapped in plastic, and a spoken piece describing what she had done.

She declined to comment yesterday. Shvarts presented a mock-up of the project in class last week -- the final piece will go on display at the undergraduate senior art show at Yale on Tuesday -- and told the Yale Daily News that she wanted to provoke debate about the relationship between art and the human body but that the intention of the piece was not to scandalize anyone.

(snip)

In a statement yesterday [Thursday -- R21], Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said: "Ms. Shvarts . . . stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body.

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

"Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Shvartz, an arts major, told the Yale Daily: "I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

WELL, THEN. Let it be understood that, at Yale, a woman who depicts an act of unutterable evil in an approving -- and most graphic -- manner for the sole sake of stirring up s*** is considered to be an "artist" by the highest authorities. Furthermore, these university authorities consider a pseudo snuff film projected on a blood-smeared cube to be "art."

Yale officials also contend that Shvarts "has the right" to engage in "performance art" that is not only indecent -- if the final piece resembles what was advertised -- but assuredly obscene in the broad sense of the word. (And maybe debatably so in the legal sense.)

And so long as a student's "art" doesn't get you raided by federal or state authorities, more power to the little wretches, right? One is compelled to ask, when considering the modern university, who is teaching whom? And what?

Don't answer that. I think I know.

What's equally troubling is how -- before we knew Shvarts' "art" was a scam -- this was as worked up as Yale's pro-lifers could get:

CLAY member Jonathan Serrato '09 said he does not think CLAY has an official response to Schvarts' exhibition. But personally, Serrato said he found the concept of the senior art project "surprising" and unethical.

"I feel that she's manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don't support it," Serrato said. "I think it's morally wrong."

Later, in The Washington Post, the president of Choose Life at Yale was worried about matters of taste:

Students gathered in Beinecke Plaza near the administration building to protest yesterday afternoon [Thursday -- R21], said sophomore John Behan, president of Choose Life at Yale. "CLAY and the entire Yale community, I think, are appalled at what was a serious lapse in taste on the part of the student and the Yale art department."

TO BE FAIR, it wasn't clear from the Post story whether the reporter interviewed Behan before or after the hoax became public. Nevertheless. . . .

Serious lapse in taste?

Surprising . . . unethical . . . morally wrong?

No. Janet Jackson giving God and everybody a Super Bowl peek at her ta-tas was "a serious lapse in taste."

An average day in the life of the Hillary Clinton '08 campaign might be characterized as "surprising," "unethical" or "morally wrong." As would Bill Clinton's canoodling with Monica Lewinsky in the Oral Oval Office.

ABORTING ONE'S CHILDREN for "art's sake" is monstrous on the Hitlerian end of the scale. Pretending to do so in the name of "creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body" is equally high on any moral-depravity index, with the only mitigating factor being that no human fetuses actually died in the process.

When one is "pro-life" but still unable -- or afraid -- to call evil by its rightful name, that in itself is a compelling sign that what remains of our Western "civilization" is being sucked into a politically correct vortex that ultimately defines all deviancy, no matter how glaring, down to something approaching . . . normality.

In dealing with lost souls in a fallen world, our culture needs modern-day St. Francis of Assisis. But it needs its Jeremiahs, too:

26
As the thief is shamed when caught, so shall the house of Israel be shamed: They, their kings and their princes, their priests and their prophets;
27
They who say to a piece of wood, "You are my father," and to a stone, "You gave me birth." They turn to me their backs, not their faces; yet, in their time of trouble they cry out, "Rise up and save us!"
28
Where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up! Will they save you in your time of trouble? For as numerous as your cities are your gods, O Judah! And as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up for Baal.
29
How dare you still plead with me? You have all rebelled against me, says the LORD.
30
In vain I struck your children; the correction they did not take. Your sword devoured your prophets like a ravening lion.
31
You, of this generation, take note of the word of the Lord: Have I been a desert to Israel, a land of darkness? Why do my people say, "We have moved on, we will come to you no more"?
32
Does a virgin forget her jewelry, a bride her sash? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
33
How well you pick your way when seeking love! You who, in your wickedness, have gone by ways unclean!
34
You, on whose clothing there is the life-blood of the innocent, whom you found committing no burglary;
35
Yet withal you say, "I am innocent; at least, his anger is turned away from me." Behold, I will judge you on that word of yours, "I have not sinned."

THOSE STILL CAPABLE of seeing evil for what it is need to distinguish between St. Francis moments and Jeremiah moments in the hard slog of redeeming a culture on its death bed. It's a matter of life and death.

For the culture . . . and for us.



UPDATE: If you want another example of how far gone we really are -- particularly in academia -- read this. It really is possible to be so "open-minded" that your brain falls out.

Devil and Woman at Yale

What's the difference between Aliza Shvarts, Yale '08, and Goebbels, Himmler and the Big Kahuna himself, Adolf Hitler.

I don't know. You tell me:

Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock, saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS, Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler murdered millions and millions of Jews (and others as well) because they wanted to build a "master race," to "perfect" humanity. According to their sick and murderous ideology, the Jews and Gypsies, etc., etc., were in the way.

According to the Yale Daily News, Aliza Shvarts repeatedly inseminated herself and aborted herself -- repeatedly killed her own offspring -- for no grand cause or ideology, but instead for the sake of dubious "art." And to facilitate "some sort of discourse."

That's it.

If you want to do a comparative study of abomination, at least the Nazis of the Third Reich had going for them the mitigating factor of having committed unspeakable evil in a quixotic, whack scheme to "better humanity." At least as they understood it.

Aliza Shvarts enticed men to "donate" their sperm, inseminated herself like breeding stock and then aborted her children -- over and over and over again -- for the sake of a glorified snuff film. For a senior project at an Ivy League university.

And some professor approved it.

And the university, apparently, is going to "exhibit" it:

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

The display of Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts' senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

SNUFF VIDEO AND BIOHAZARD for a senior project. This is the level of complete depravity we have come to in this country, in this time.

I can't even make myself pray "Lord have mercy" anymore. Mercy we've received, and we've crapped upon it and thrown it back in God's face.

If the sick, pathetic spectacle of Aliza Shvarts represents, in any sense, who we are and what we do as Americans nowadays, the Lord needs to take us out as soon as possible -- before we destroy the rest of His creation. It will not be pretty.

Congratulations, Aliza Shvarts and Yale University. You've made the Third Reich look comparatively reasoned and sober, because when it comes to one's reasons for atrocity, you just can't beat "What the f***."



UPDATE: Yes, I know Aliza Shvarts has turned out to be a hoaxer -- a.k.a., performance artist.

That changes the particulars, but not the metaphysics. Go here to the newer post.

'White schools' and 'n***** schools'

The problem with conservative ideologues like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is that rarely do they "conserve" anything. Except, of course, the ability of radical individualists to blow up society for their own profit.

Thus, the dirty little secret behind the "school choice" agenda Jindal has embraced in his call for the state's second special legislative session this year, as reported by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans:

The governor spent little time in his prepared remarks on the tuition tax deduction proposal. But teachers union lobbyist Steve Monaghan said afterward that it could define the tax portion of the session.

At a $20 million cost -- allowing parents to deduct half of each child's tuition cost up to $5,000 per child when figuring their taxable income -- the plan is a blip on the state's budget radar. But the precedent, Monaghan said, would establish that the state's educational priority list is no longer topped by public schools.

"This is a distraction," said Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. "If we're truly concerned about building a world-class public education system, then we have to stop sending mixed messages. Why incentivize sending children to private schools?"

Jindal said the idea, which was not part of his campaign platform, came from several legislators and other advocates of "school choice."

"They made a persuasive case," the governor said. "We think it's important for our families to be able to send their children to high-quality schools all over Louisiana."

WHY IS IT that someone who bills himself as a "conservative" -- particularly a fiscal one -- is so enamored of what amounts to welfare for the well off? Or at least well off enough to shell out thousands of dollars a year in private-school tuition.

Welfare for the at least moderately well off is what Jindal's proposed tax credit is, too. And it's what passes for sound public policy in the eyes of Jindal's buddies in the "school choice" movement.

One of those "school choice" friends is Rolfe McCollister, publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report and a founder of the city's Children's Charter School.

McCollister, who's had his scrapes with the local school system, recently penned a column calling on voters not to renew a penny sales tax that funds part of teachers' salaries and provides funds for school construction and renovation. He decries the local public schools' poor performance, particularly their record with at-risk students.

This despite his own charter school's barely passing grade from the Great Schools website, which uses publicly available data and parent ratings to grade America's schools. In fact, according to Great Schools, McCollister's Children's Charter School had the second highest pupil-teacher ratio of any school within a five-mile radius, while earning only a 6 rating on a 10-point scale.

One would think Children's Charter School would be drawing the at-risk children of the most motivated of at-risk parents. Parents you would assume at least gave enough of a damn to try a charter school. Yet. . . .

On a college grade scale, 60 percent is a D. Barely. On my old high-school grade scale, 60 percent is a solid F. And one nearby public, non-charter school at least managed a C. Barely.

IF I'M BOBBY JINDAL, I'm going to be seeking out advice on education policy from "D" educators? And I'm going to be following these folks' advice to pursue a policy of undermining public schools . . . for what, exactly?

There are none so blind as right-wing pols who refuse to see.

"Conserving" a civic culture and a functional society does not include aiding and abetting the "school choice" of the relatively privileged while abandoning the rest to a "separate and unequal" public-education system. There is no "conservative" principle, properly understood, in tolerating decay and dysfunction as the normative environment of those "left behind" in public schools.

(East Baton Rouge Parish public schools, in the wake of court-ordered desegregation, now are 83 percent minority and 79 percent African-American. Most students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.)

And there is nothing "conservative" about opening the public coffers, wholesale, to private groups for carrying out the public's business. In this case, that would be educating Louisiana's children.

"Conservatives" have forgotten -- utterly -- the flip side of freedom. That would be "duty." Just because middle- and upper-class folk have the ability to "escape" a struggling school system, that freedom to do so does not therefore become an entitlement underwritten in whole or in part by the state.

And it certainly does not translate into some "right" to cast the less privileged into an abyss of voters' making, either by commission -- as in the separate but unqual of Jim Crow days -- or by omission . . . as in the separate but unequal of some McCollisterian "I'm not paying a cent of tax money for 'failed schools'" dystopia.

When, by default, most white children attend private schools partially underwritten by public monies and most black children attend public schools abandoned to decay and dysfunction, it is difficult to discern how the "desegregated" present differs substantially from the darkest days of de jure segregation.

LONG AGO, before de jure school segregation had breathed its last in Baton Rouge, my parents used to threaten me with being sent to "the nigger school" when I misbehaved at the officially all-white Red Oaks Elementary. That was supposed to imply a fate worse than death to a young mind indoctrinated, from birth, into a white, racist milieu.

Now, in my hometown, they're working on making every public school "the nigger school" -- with all the awfulness that once meant to little white ears -- and all you have to do to get your kid sent there is not have enough money (or luck, or whatever) to get into this generation's "white school."

And if you don't have the dough (or luck, or whatever) to get into the "white school" in the first place, I don't see how Bobby Jindal -- or his proposed tax credits -- can offer you any hope. Any hope at all.

Let me know how that works out for you, Louisiana.

Washing their feet and looking at the moon

With people like Chas Roemer -- son of Louisiana's last (failed) reform governor -- running education in the Gret Stet, it's hard to hold out hope that anything will ever get better there.

Roemer, newly elected to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from Baton Rouge, is another Capital City swell who thinks teachers and children need to pay the price for the sins of the school board. He writes in the Baton Rouge Business Report:

Taxpayers are now faced with the proposition of either sending more money to the same system or being labeled as “against the kids.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I, for one, will vote against the tax—not because I’m against spending the money, but because I am against wasting the money. I would support any number of different approaches and, in fact, could support sending even a greater amount of money to a system that I believed put the kids first and not “the system.” I have witnessed firsthand the system making decisions that protect them while sacrificing potential opportunities for our kids. For example, the system turned away KIPP Academy—a nationally recognized charter school provider that specializes in serving urban kids. They turned down the Children’s Charter School in their attempt to expand—despite that their student body is 98% at risk and scores above the state average on school performance scores. Children’s Charter operates an 11-month school year with extended day for the same amount per pupil as the system. Furthermore, for years the Children’s Charter operated exclusively out of temporary buildings. Why can’t the system do some of these same things?

HERE'S A NEWS FLASH, podna. When you willfully advocate a politcal course of action that will force teachers to take a pay cut of between 2 percent and 22 percent, you're not only against the teachers . . . you're "against the kids."

And when you willingly advocate a politcal course of action that will doom the parish's students to remain in crumbling, outdated and squalorous "facilities," you're "against the kids." In fact, you're guilty of child abuse.

But that's OK. Baton Rouge's public schools now are 83 percent minority.

So it's not like the children of actual white people are on the line here. At least not enough of them to represent an unacceptable level of collateral damage when you blow up the public schools so that a magical voucher scheme might descend from the heavens and set everything aright.

BUT WAITING FOR GODOT is what my fellow Louisianians do. They're good at it. And the state's periodic political messiahs are happy to offer up the latest hare-brained scheme to throw Bubba a sop and stick it to the Negroes in the name of "reform."

Gov. Bobby Jindal (PBUH) is the latest to try that approach, just today calling on legislators to approve a tax credit for private-school tuition. In other words, welfare for people who have the money to pay thousands per year in tuition for their kids to go to private schools . . . so they don't have to give a damn about public schools.

Welfare is only a dirty word when it applies to minorities -- whose children are left to rot in defunded ratholes.

Gotcha.

IN OTHER WORDS, things ain't changed much in the Gret Stet since Gov. Earl Long stood at the dais in the Senate chambers and laid into one of its members, arch-segregationist Willie Rainach. In his book, The Earl of Louisiana, the journalist A.J. Liebling recounts the scene:

"After all this is over, he'll probably go up there to Summerfield, get up on his front porch, take off his shoes, wash his feet, look at the moon and get close to God." This was gross comedy, a piece of miming that recalled Jimmy Savo impersonating the Mississippi River. Then the old man, changing pace, shouted in Rainach's direction, "And when you do, you got to recognize that niggers is human beings!"

It was at this point that the legislators must have decided he'd gone off his crumpet. Old Earl, a Southern politician, was taking the Fourteenth Amendment's position that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

AFTER THAT, they put Uncle Earl in the nuthouse. Being in favor of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . that'd always get you in trouble in the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

Still will, I suspect.

Hurting people to make a point

Rolfe McCollister, as we've discussed previously, wants Baton Rouge voters not to renew the penny sales tax dedicated to public-school construction and teacher raises.

The Baton Rouge magazine publisher asks voters to write out a spite-based public policy prescription because he's frustrated with the public schools and the poor performance of many. This, when local teachers are chronically underpaid and local schools fall apart around those inside them.

Here's a passage from an article on my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, from one of McCollister's own magazines, 225:

The Government Street school, decades behind in maintenance, is crumbling around the National Merit semifinalists it produces.

Plaster flakes from classroom walls. Mold and mildew feed on intruding moisture behind the crumbling brickwork, which has separated from the building’s exterior. It’s so bad it routinely sickens students and faculty.

“The mold and mildew on the third floor are just out of control,” Principal Nanette Greer says. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who are sick or have problems due to allergies. It’s unbelievable. We’re all sick. I’m on allergy medication as is most of the staff. We don’t complain because it is what it is.

OH, BUT IT GETS WORSE than that. Here's an excerpt from a story about Baton Rouge High and the plight of local public schools in McCollister's other publication, The Baton Rouge Business Report:

The findings were no surprise to Dot Dickinson, who watched a tile fall from the ceiling before a performance of the school’s orchestra, which included her son, in the mid-1990s. Luckily, the wayward tile landed on empty seats.

“Seems someone would have noticed the need for maintenance at that time,” she says.

Most likely someone did. But at the time, every public school in the parish needed work, and there was virtually no money to pay for it, school officials say. The system isn’t in the crisis mode it was in 10 years ago, but there are still a number of school buildings that are drafty, leaky, moldy or otherwise disheveled.

The School Board was scheduled to discuss—and most likely finalize and vote on—the system’s facility plan on Jan. 10. The futures of Baton Rouge Magnet High, which is in line for a $62 million renovation, and Lee High School, which the system had considered closing before Superintendent Charlotte Placide proposed building a new Lee High on the same site, have elicited the strongest emotions.

But the problem is much bigger than two schools.

YES, THE "PROBLEM" IS BIGGER than Baton Rouge High and Lee High. The "problem" is as big as an entire city -- an entire state -- where public education, and generations upon generations of students, just aren't that big a priority.

The problem is as big as a magazine publisher who sits on the board of a charter school and loathes the public school system with such a white-hot intensity that he's willing to cut off kids' noses to spite the school board's face. And he hopes to accomplish this by convincing voters to effect positive "change" via means of material and financial destruction.

Really, what's condemning somebody's children -- though certainly not those of Baton Rouge's Brahmins -- to attend classes in squalor when it's all to fire a shot across somebody's bow. The shot may well cross the East Baton Rouge school board's bow, but here's a sketch of whom it won't hit . . . and whom it will.

Again, from McCollister's own Business Report:

Thirty percent of children in East Baton Rouge Parish do not attend public schools, nearly double the state average of 16%, which the Louisiana Department of Education says is the highest rate in the nation. The private schools can pick and choose whom they want to let in, while public schools take all comers. Public schools tend to have nearly all of the special education and special-needs students, while private schools grab many of the high-achievers.

For middle- and upper-class children, private schools are the rule, not the exception. Nearly 77% of the students left in East Baton Rouge public schools are poor, as measured by how many qualify for free or reduced lunch. Often, poor children come from unstable homes or dangerous neighborhoods, and they bring those problems with them to school. Parental involvement in a child’s education, a key factor in academic success, is often lacking in poorer homes.

IT TAKES A BIG MAN -- and a classy city -- to kick kids who already are down. And, in the case of Baton Rouge High, an added bonus is getting to kick the crap out of the really smart kids Louisiana desperately wants to stick around.

The school board is clueless. Kids, however, get the message loud and clear.

For the former, may we have a standing eight count and a prison cell, please? And for the latter . . . a scholarship to an out-of-state school, a U-Haul and some mail-order Community Coffee.

Because now it's possible to get the coffee without having to live in a world of suck.

SO, WHOM ELSE is Rolfe McCollister willing to shaft to make the point that he's mad as hell, dammit, and he's not going to take this anymore?

Here's part of a comment left by a Baton Rouge public-school teacher in response to McCollister's diatribe:

If you run a business, you get to choose the best and the brightest people with which to surround yourselves. You get to choose from which suppliers and vendors you will purchase your raw materials to make/create/perform your products/services. If an employee is failing to do his/her job at a high enough standard, you get the luxury of firing him/her. We don't get that luxury. We have students that come to us with varying negative backgrounds, poverty, no adult supervision, no structure, exposure to violence, etc. over which we have NO control. We have students that come to us from homes where they are taught that the teacher is always wrong and "out-to-get-you." Sometimes, when I discipline a student in class for negative behavior, that student tells me "I'm going to tell my mom. She's going to come here and get you."

Yet, despite this, we work as hard as we can. We go above and beyond the call of duty. Even when we have NO support from administrators, and sadly sometimes no support from parents, we make strides to take kids from nothing to something.

I like my job. I like what I do. I love to teach and talk to the kids and see them learn and grow. I like to hear them laugh. I live for that rare moment when a kid tells me "thank you."

So, if you have a problem with the way the school system runs, then get involved. Work to make changes. Go into the schools and observe. Volunteer. Maybe you could offer your advice on something (since you obviously know so much about education). But, PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT take it out on us. Do not take it out on the kids. Do not take it out on the hard-working, dedicated teachers.

And, finally, if this renewal does not pass, my annual salary will drop by exactly $5218.00. How would you like to suddenly lose $5218.00 of your salary just because people don't like the school system for which you work. If I lose that salary, I won't be able to afford the house that I worked so hard, took a part time job, and struggled to be able to buy five years ago. I guess I will have to move back in with mom and dad.

REALLY, if you're willing to make children suffer for pique's sake, what's ruining the life and finances of a schoolteacher? It's all in the name of reform, right? Even if you don't have a Plan B yet to deal with the wreckage you leave behind.

I would ask Rolfe McCollister what the hell gives him the right to tell people to hurt kids and punish teachers in the name of making the perfect the sworn enemy of the good. But, then again, everybody knows that "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Maybe it's time you tried, Baton Rouge

One has to wonder whether the animating political instinct of my hometown, Baton Rouge, is spite.

Confronted with pictures -- in his own magazine, no less -- of a public high school crumbling around the children and faculty within, the publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report is foursquare against renewing a sales tax that could fix all that. And give raises to teachers, too.

IN SHORT, Rolfe McCollister is calling on his readers to put a bullet in the head of a school system that has come up lame:

I had a neighbor tell me last week, “I have never voted against a school tax, but I am going to have to vote no this time.” I think that’s the conclusion many folks have come to for the special March 8 election. I certainly have.

“Outrageous,” you say.

No, what is outrageous is what my neighbor said to me after he proclaimed his position. He said, “We have become the New Orleans school system.” Now that should make the hair on your neck stand up. Fact is, he is referring to the old New Orleans system characterized by poor performance, declining enrollment, resistance to change and a constant hunger for more money. New Orleans, as a whole, has been innovative about its school system since Katrina and drawn lots of attention. It still has issues and is struggling, but it has signs of new life and hope. Can you say the same for East Baton Rouge schools? This election is your opportunity to answer that question and speak out so the school board and the community can hear you loud and clear.

So why would folks oppose the school taxes?

It’s not because we think education isn’t important. It is very important. And many of us opposing the taxes have been involved in supporting education in many ways for many years.

It’s not because we aren’t concerned with the needs of children, particularly lower-income children. They are the ones who have been denied a choice and stuck in our failing system. More of the same provides them with no hope and no way out.

It’s not because we don’t appreciate teachers and the tough job they have. We have supported teachers and pay has increased—but are teachers and the classroom a priority for funds? Have the best teachers been rewarded and the worst removed?

It’s not because we aren’t patient enough. We have allowed time and supported previous taxes. We have watched for progress for years and passed millions in new taxes [property and sales taxes] and renewals. And what are the results we have to show for that commitment and investment?

GOT IT? The school system is failing. Ergo, let's take away the money to fix and rebuild crumbling schools, let's make sure teachers are paid less than surrounding school systems, let's give the school board a symbolic fickle finger of fate and see whether things get any better.

That's what we have to assume is McCollister's line of "thinking" since, unfortunately, he doesn't tell us what, exactly, he proposes to do about the quite live children crawling around inside the carcass of a school system euthanized by denying it nutrition and hydration.

The ballot will have three propositions funded by renewal of a sales tax. While the tax was previously authorized for a five-year period, this time they are asking for a 10-year tax which would generate $870 million total. Proposition 1 funds construction and technology, Proposition 2 is for discipline and truancy and Proposition 3 maintains salaries of teachers and school workers.

The school board points out they have done well in the last 10 years and built seven new schools, with three more under construction. They have repaired 40 schools, spent millions on technology and created six new alternative schools. So with all these millions spent, these accomplishments, facilities and new assets, we still have an F system, we’re losing students and now the state is even taking our schools away.

And the school board is asking us to sign up for 10 more years and spend $870 million more. For what? More of the same?

This is exactly why a tax is set up for a limited duration: So you can decide if it generated the desired results and if you want to re-invest. I would conclude we got little return on our investment, and we need to look for something new to invest in. This system is broken down like a car with no engine. Why would you paint the body and hire a driver when it is going nowhere?

WHAT DOES McCOLLISTER propose Baton Rouge invest in after it again cuts off its nose to spite its face? U-Haul? Ryder? Mayflower Van Lines?

Perhaps the citizenry might choose, instead, to invest in more prisons. Of course, McCollister might object to a new prison tax -- being that the recidivism rate never came down -- so Baton Rougeans might want to just invest in guns and ammo.

In 1981, white Baton Rougeans invested in private schools so their darlings wouldn't have to be bused across town to attend school with the Negroes. In time, Baton Rougeans also invested in new homes in neighboring parishes so their children wouldn't have to go to crappy public schools that really weren't any more mediocre than they were at 65 percent white -- just much poorer and much blacker, with all the baggage that connotes.

And, by and large, the East Baton Rouge Parish schools have been awful for decades, with some glaring exceptions . . . like Baton Rouge Magnet High, my alma mater and one of the schools most desperately depending on that tax getting renewed.

Part of the reason the parish's public schools have been so substandard for so long is that Baton Rougeans have been OK with that. After all, until voters approved the penny sales tax in 1998 -- the one up for renewal -- no school-construction tax had passed in three decades.

Indeed, most of the Baton Rouge schools I attended more than three decades ago were, shall we say, dumps. Except for Baton Rouge High. Now, it may be the biggest one of all.

IF INCOMPETENCE were a capital offense, the East Baton Rouge school system ought to have been executed years ago, when it was still mostly white and the public still was paying attention. Not properly funding it, mind you, but still paying attention.

But no. The Rolfe McCollisters of Baton Rouge only want to "pull the switch" after the public and "civic leaders" have really let it go to hell . . . and have let it become 83 percent minority, and largely poor.

Now it's time for the blindfold and last cigarette -- now that those who have better options largely have exercised them and those "left behind" have no better option at all. But only if we're sure there's no Plan B for doing this public-education thing.

But say there were a Plan B -- which there isn't. If there were a Plan B, a knight in shining armor to magically fix the school system and make every poor, ill-educated child suddenly above average . . . if there were such a savior on the horizon, where would these miracles be performed?

In the same old crumbling facilities, decrepit schools unfit for dogs but not for Baton Rouge's kids? Would that make the miraculous all the more . . . miraculous?

DOES ROLFE McCOLLISTER'S public-policy prescription include making children sit in squalor to atone for the sins of the school board? Or is it possible that the city might embrace an imperfect plan to fix up facilities in anticipation of a coming push to fix the problems with education administration and student achievement?

Baton Rouge never has been, is not now nor ever will be "America's Next Great City (TM)" so long as it is dominated by reactionary, spite-driven, race-tinged politics. It will never progress beyond "Southern backwater" in the eyes of the nation until folks down there figure out that they're all going to pull together or fly to pieces.

That starts with public education. Building a capable, literate and skilled workforce for a state that currently doesn't have one is a lot easier if you don't -- in a fit of pique -- throw your school system back to Square Zero in the name of "reform."

But then again, we are talking about my hometown, Baton Rouge.

They say that a dog won't crap in its own bed. That may be true for Phideaux, but not for the Baton Rouge that I know and love . . . and hate. (They get complicated, my feelings do.)

The Baton Rouge I know -- and the Baton Rouge evidenced by the deplorable conditions at my alma mater, and by that anti-tax McCollister column -- not only will crap in its own bed, it'll then plop its children in the stinking pile.

Change you can believe in (to steal a slogan) is a city overcoming a crappy legacy. A big part of that would be renewing the school sales tax to fix dilapidated school buildings and raise teachers' pay -- a first step on a challenging journey toward a better future for Baton Rouge's children.

In Baton Rouge, for a change.

And he could there do no mighty work. . . .

Is Louisiana fixed yet?

After all, it has been the better part of a week since the Messiah took office. Robert Kennon Buddy Roemer Bobby Jindal, by his mere presence and tough talk on ethics, was to instantaneously transform a state that's been mired in varying degrees of dysfunction since the dawn of the 18th century.

SO, WE FIND that, thus far, the status quo is hanging tough in the Gret Stet. The business community and LSU are fighting over the resignation of Chancellor Sean O'Keefe, forced out amid political machinations by the school's new president and its board of supervisors.

Also in Baton Rouge, existing downtown casinos, through front organizations, are airing anti-casino TV ads to keep a competitor from opening and sucking gamblers to a new "resort" in the southern part of town, where -- on a different matter -- some residents are fighting tooth-and-nail to stop the kind of mixed-use, commercial/residential development that most American cities lust after.

Meanwhile, murder rates are soaring in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and the mayor of the Crescent City is still a preening doofus.

And my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School, is still a dump. Despite having one of its own in the governor's mansion.

Any moment now, I expect that disillusioned Louisianians will begin denouncing Jindal, asking what use have they for a messiah who can't turn water into wine, much less a Third World entity into something resembling a functioning civic society. And do it instantly.

Remember, you read here first that -- even under the most miraculous permutations of great good fortune -- the best Bobby Jindal can do is futz around the edges of Louisiana's pathology, perhaps fixing a doodad here and a thingamabob there. Maybe a couple of thingamabobs, which probably would earn him a vice-presidential slot on the 2012 GOP presidential ticket.

That's about it, though . . . fixing some doomaflatchies and whatsits. Because Jindal can't legally do anything about the real problem with Louisiana -- the people who live there.

It takes people to make a culture, and it takes people to generally care so that government might generally work. Your score in the Louisiana Bowl, after 300 years of play, is Violent Dumbasses 76, Prosperous Functioning Society 14.

The coach, alas, is only as good as his players.

LET'S LOOK, in a metaphorical vein, at the governor's old school and mine -- Baton Rouge Magnet High.

Over the past generation or so, it has been allowed to fall into an extreme state of disrepair. Quite literally, it has been falling apart around students, teachers and administrators . . . which is not exactly the way a state tells its best and brightest young people "I love you. Please stay."

Football programs quickly learn they can't recruit good players when Whatsamatta U's athletic facilities are falling apart. Louisianians never learn, however, and demographic data has shown for some time that the state pays the price.

When I was a child, Baton Rouge's public schools were pretty dumpy, and the school system pretty much sucked. Except for one school -- Baton Rouge Magnet High.

Now, as reported by the Baton Rouge Business Report (and everyone else), the school system still pretty much sucks and the facilities have nosedived well into "Good God ALMIGHTY!" territory:

About a year ago, workers employed by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System were looking to perform some fairly routine repairs to Baton Rouge Magnet High School. But the more they looked, the more problems they found. For starters, the brick and mortar of the venerable main building were no longer even connected to the exterior walls.

The findings were no surprise to Dot Dickinson, who watched a tile fall from the ceiling before a performance of the school’s orchestra, which included her son, in the mid-1990s. Luckily, the wayward tile landed on empty seats.

“Seems someone would have noticed the need for maintenance at that time,” she says.

Most likely someone did. But at the time, every public school in the parish needed work, and there was virtually no money to pay for it, school officials say. The system isn’t in the crisis mode it was in 10 years ago, but there are still a number of school buildings that are drafty, leaky, moldy or otherwise disheveled.

The School Board was scheduled to discuss—and most likely finalize and vote on—the system’s facility plan on Jan. 10. The futures of Baton Rouge Magnet High, which is in line for a $62 million renovation, and Lee High School, which the system had considered closing before Superintendent Charlotte Placide proposed building a new Lee High on the same site, have elicited the strongest emotions.

(snip)

Revenues over the next 10 years, including a $20 million surplus, are expected to be more than $489 million, assuming the renewal of a one cent sales tax. That covers what the system believes are the most pressing needs.

But making all the needed repairs could cost about $800 million if everything is fixed by 2011, system spokesman Chris Trahan says. Meanwhile, the parish’s older schools will continue to deteriorate. Placide says the system needs more money to catch up, but will parish voters pony up, especially since so many abandoned the public school system years ago?

For more than three decades, the system didn’t build a single new school. From 1964-98, parish voters approved enough tax renewals to keep the system operating, but not nearly enough to make any significant capital improvements, Trahan says. There were no bond issues, and no dedicated stream of revenue for infrastructure. The system didn’t even have a building maintenance fund like most districts.

Placide says there are “various reasons” why voters wouldn’t approve significant fees for capital improvement, which she didn’t attempt to list, but allowed that the problem was “related to the desegregation issues the community struggled with for some time.” The parish settled its 47-year-old desegregation case with the federal government in 2003.

IN OTHER WORDS, since 1981 -- the beginning of "forced busing" as a desegregation tool in Baton Rouge -- white residents steadily and relentlessly removed their children and their financial support from the public schools. The numbers don't lie.

Sheer racism may or may not have played a major role in the ethnic and financial "cleansing" of the local schools. For the first wave fleeing the East Baton Rouge public schools for brand-new private schools (and to neighboring parishes), race played a big role. Or at least I suspect it did.

For later waves of refugees, that abandonment probably was due to being sick and tired. Sick of fighting against growing urban decay and the resulting educational dysfunction, and bone tired from the fight.

Nevertheless, the result was the New Orleanization of the capital city's public schools, and civic support for public education cratered. Again, from the Business Report article:

In 1997, the system put together a comprehensive facilities plan that identified millions in needed work. Perhaps hoping to take advantage of goodwill engendered by the end of forced crosstown busing the previous year, school officials put together an ambitious proposal, asking voters to approve a 25-year, $475 million bond issue and a 35-year 1% sales tax for constructing and maintaining new school buildings. Both propositions were soundly defeated at the polls.

Thus chastened, school officials came back the next year with a proposition that had been drastically scaled back: a penny sales tax, levied over five years, about half of which was earmarked for a pay-as-you-go repair and construction fund. The tax passed and was renewed for another five years in 2003, and the system built seven new schools with that money.

(snip)

“The school system is one of the greatest detriments to economic growth that we have here,” says Fred Dent, chairman of a Baton Rouge financial consulting firm and spokesman and founding member of TaxBusters, which works for lower taxes and streamlined government. “When we keep getting headlines about the lack of performance of schools, it does not engender a lot of trust for any school board that has that problem. … It’s not about the money, it’s about performance.”

(snip)

Thirty percent of children in East Baton Rouge Parish do not attend public schools, nearly double the state average of 16%, which the Louisiana Department of Education says is the highest rate in the nation. The private schools can pick and choose whom they want to let in, while public schools take all comers. Public schools tend to have nearly all of the special education and special-needs students, while private schools grab many of the high-achievers.

For middle- and upper-class children, private schools are the rule, not the exception. Nearly 77% of the students left in East Baton Rouge public schools are poor, as measured by how many qualify for free or reduced lunch. Often, poor children come from unstable homes or dangerous neighborhoods, and they bring those problems with them to school. Parental involvement in a child’s education, a key factor in academic success, is often lacking in poorer homes.

EVERY STATISTIC in this story is staggering. And very few of them can be ameliorated by even as great and talented a political messiah as Bobby Jindal.

In Baton Rouge -- and in New Orleans . . . and all across the Gret Stet -- the problem with public education lies in the people. The people have the freedom to elect good stewards of the public trust . . . or lousy ones.

The people can commit themselves to strong public education for the good of society . . . or not. They can give public education -- and desegregation -- a chance . . . or not. They can vote for taxation sufficient to support good public schools and then hold officials accountable . . . or not.

The people of Baton Rouge, and Louisiana, can be OK with the sorry state of one of the state's best schools . . . or not.

So far, the people's job performance hasn't been exactly inspiring.

And the Business Report article makes it sound like passing the tax renewal won't exactly be a slam-dunk. Even in the face of damning evidence that Baton Rougeans have fallen down on their job -- the job of creating a functioning civic society that offers all its citizens equal access to the necessities of modern life.

Like a decent education.

IN STATES not Louisiana, public education has a history dating to 1635, with the establishment of the Boston Latin School. Universal education as a function of the state had one of its early champions in Thomas Jefferson, and the idea took off in the mid-19th century.

As it has been understood in the United States, free public education is a basic service civic society -- through local government -- provides to all its citizens without regard to status, creed, nationality or race. As it has played out in Baton Rouge, among other unfortunate examples, free public education is what you get when you are unable or unwilling to pay for private or parochial school.

And like the segregated education African-American children routinely received in the South of my childhood, public education in my hometown once again is separate and unequal. Some 83 percent of those children on the public side of Baton Rouge's resegregated educational realm -- many of whom are doomed to attend classes in substandard, crumbling facilities -- just happen to be black.

Separate. Unequal. Still.

Faced with the picture of children -- if not theirs, somebody's -- trying to learn in squalid classrooms such as those at my alma mater, Baton Rouge High, "activists" like Fred Dent balk at setting tax rates adequate to erase the shame of a city.

"It’s not about the money, it’s about performance.” That's what the man says.

Really? Couldn't it be just a little bit about, "I got mine. Screw the ghetto dwellers"?

Or does Dent really think the rational response to a crumbling, failing school system is to cut off the money and kill the sucker dead? And he and his ilk are working to replace the unacceptable entity with . . . what, exactly?

MEANWHILE, it'll probably take a brutal fight to pass enough of a tax renewal to assure repairs to Baton Rouge High, Lee High and all the other dung heaps where Baton Rougeans are content to warehouse their children. If it even passes at all -- despite all the shocking pictures, despite all the gallons of ink used to print the story of a city's shame.

"America's Next Great City," as its mayor laughably calls it.

Louisianians wait with bated breath for one of their occasional political messiahs to pull off a miracle well beyond the pale of mortal man. And soon enough, they'll crucify him because cheap grace was something that would not materialize out of his insufficient incantations.

A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work. . . . And he marvelled because of their unbelief.