Hey, suck-ups! Leave them kids alone!

Another Leak in the Wall,
Part 1,577

We don't need no associations,
We don't need no thought control,
The dark sarcasm of "consultants,"
Suck-ups, leave them kids alone!
Hey! Lawyers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, it's just another leak in the wall.
All in all, you're just another breach in the wall.

HERE'S WHAT the American Society of Civil Engineers does: First, it takes a whole bunch of money -- almost a million bucks -- from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study why New Orleans drowned even though Hurricane Katrina only sideswiped it.

Then the engineers' study group dances to the tune its client plays -- so the members don't look into this, and they don't look into that, because it's "outside our scope." At least that's what one ASCE member told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

And then, voila! The engineer group's "peer review" wonders just how much busted levees had to do with flooding New Orleans, anyway, and offers a much less harsh assessment of the Corps' performance than did two independent panels of engineers and other experts studying why the city went into the soup.

Or, rather, why the soup went into the city.

And when the nonprofit advocacy group Levees.org posted a hilarious-but-pointed send up of the "whitewash" -- a video done by high-school kids at the Isidore Newman School -- the group decided to play some hardball. It demanded that Levees.org take down the video.

One can presume there was an "or else" in there somewhere.

You have to wonder whether the ASCE would be so insistent if Levees.org had a million bucks to sling around.

Anyway, the Picayune is on top of things. And we can show you the nefarious teen production today only because the newspaper posted it itself after Levees.org pulled it down. Grassroots advocacy groups lack the legal resources million-dollar federal contracts can buy you.

Here's some of the Times-Picayune coverage:

The civil engineering group's most controversial claims were that much of the death and destruction would have happened even without the levee failure, and that the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet did not serve as a hurricane highway into New Orleans. Reviews by other scientific organizations were much tougher on the corps.

The American Society of Civil Engineers confirmed the launch of an internal ethics probe of its staff and members based on complaints by a University of California-Berkeley professor, who served on a separate independent panel investigating levee failures.

ASCE officials took the unusual step on Tuesday of e-mailing a letter to its Louisiana members that outlined its response to the criticisms of Levees.org in its online video and others.

"Although it was expressly not our intent, the press release was interpreted by some to be supportive of the corps instead of being critical of the mistakes the corps made," said the letter, signed by ASCE President David Mongan. "A few outspoken critics have even castigated ASCE for appearing to pander to the corps and for apparently being apologetic for the many corps mistakes made in the design and construction of the pre-Katrina hurricane protection system.

"This could not be further from the intent of the press release," Mongan wrote.

The civil engineering group is bristling at a video spoofing its levee investigation recently posted on the Internet site YouTube by the local advocacy group Levees.org. The video implies that ASCE engineers were "in some way bribed or corrupted by the corps," the association contends. They demanded it be taken down.

In the spoof, narrators say, "The Army Corps of Engineers asked the American Society of Civil Engineers to hand-pick some members to find the truth.

"Then they paid them nearly a million dollars and awarded them medals of honor. Way to go, guys!" The American Society of Civil Engineers accepted close to $1 million from the corps to compensate the external review committee members for their time and expenses during the two-year investigation.

"These people wouldn't be able to devote that amount of time to this investigation otherwise," ASCE Executive Director Patrick Natale said. "These are subject matter experts who were getting paid nowhere near what they were worth for their expertise."

The video was produced by Stanford Rosenthal, a senior at Isidore Newman School and the son of Levees.org President Sandy Rosenthal, who said her group would remove the video from the Web by Tuesday night, although she believes the allegations it contains are accurate. It has become an Internet phenomenon, garnering tens of thousands of viewers in just a week.

"I told them, yes, we'd take it down, but our Webmaster is 17 years old and is on a field trip and out of town," Rosenthal said Tuesday. "That same youngster is going to be honored this week with the outstanding youth and philanthropy award of the Association of Fundraising Professionals." The student she is referring to is her son.

The ASCE also sent a copy of its letter to Isidore Newman officials, and Rosenthal said she also informed the school that the video was being removed from the Web.

"The reason we're taking it down, quite simply, is we just don't have the personnel or resources to wage a legal battle with the ASCE," Rosenthal said, "even though we stand by every word of the public announcement and contend it's completely accurate."

Levees.org wants a congressionally mandated, independent "8/29 Investigation," similar to the independent federal investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

AND IF LEVEES.ORG ever gets that independent investigation, I bet it'll find that the Corps, the ASCE, FEMA, the Bush Administration . . . it'll find that, all in all, they're just so many leaks in the wall.

Why I rage against the machine

There's a reason why I rant and I rave and I rage against the daily stupidities, large and small, of Louisiana -- my home state, where I have not lived for almost 20 years.

Part of that reason is -- whether I like it or not . . . and I don't, really, because apathy and indifference is always the easier course -- I still care. I still love the place because it's still home.

I can't always stand the place, but you know how that is.

THE OTHER PART of why I rant and I rave and I rage against Louisiana's proclivity for being "stuck on stupid" is the place can't afford that anymore. As if it ever could.

But especially not now, because it's sinn fein, baby. Ourselves alone . . . or, rather, themselves (or yourselves, as the case might be) alone.

Alone.

The feds ain't gonna be the cavalry riding to the rescue. If the grudging "help" offered by the Bush Administration is any guide, the feds may well turn out to be the Indians, who've come to take you out, Louisiana. Because, to them, you're nothing but a pain in the ass that somebody who rides horses for a living is well rid of.

Of course, they're not going to be honest enough to tell Louisianians that, because it's so much less unpleasant to promise help to the dying while making sure it doesn't get delivered until. . . .

And, besides, you're a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I see this story, courtesy of The Associated Press, as one of those little stories that tell the Big Story in a way you can get your brain around:

In what some see as another bureaucratic absurdity after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA is refusing to pick up the cost of restocking New Orleans' aquarium because of how the new fish were obtained: straight from the sea.

FEMA would have been willing to pay more than $600,000 for the fish if they had been bought from commercial suppliers. But the agency is balking because the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas went out and replaced the dead fish the old fashioned way, with hooks and nets. That expedition saved the taxpayers a half-million dollars but did not comply with FEMA regulations.

"You get to the point where the red tape has so overwhelmed the process that there's not a lot you can do to actually be effective," Warren Eller, associate director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at Louisiana State University, said of FEMA's actions.

Katrina knocked out power to the tourist attraction at the edge of the French Quarter in August 2005, and the staff returned days four days later to find sharks, tropical fish, jellyfish and thousands of other creatures dead in their tanks.

Aquarium officials wanted to reopen the place quickly. So even before the $616,000 commitment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency came through, they sent a team on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and Bahamas, where they caught 1,681 fish for $99,766.

Despite the clear savings, the dispute has dragged on for 17 months.

"FEMA does not consider it reasonable when an applicant takes excursions to collect specimens," FEMA quality control manager Barb Schweda wrote in a 2006 e-mail. "They must be obtained through reputable sources where, again, the item is commercially available."

FEMA's refusal to reimburse the aquarium is grounded in the Stafford Act, the federal law governing disaster aid that has been criticized as inadequate for Katrina recovery. The Stafford Act says facilities can only be returned to their pre-disaster condition, not improved. Under those rules, the aquarium would have to buy fish of the approximate age and size of the lost specimens.

State experts and others counter that acquiring thousands of duplicates in the marketplace is nearly impossible, and a waste of public money.

IF THERE WERE any political percentage in undoing the Catch 22, I suspect the Bush Administration would set about that with the same zeal it had for getting us into Iraq and then keeping us there, no matter the cost in lives and dollars. But there isn't any such percentage.

Americans might be mad that Bush screwed up the immediate Katrina aftermath, but it's not like they want him to make it right at this late date or anything.

Sinn fein.

Alone.

Root, hog, or die.

WHICH BRINGS ME -- and you knew that it would -- to Baton Rouge Magnet High School. The sad saga of Baton Rouge High, my alma mater, is another of those sad little stories that help tell the Big Sad Story.

In a sinn fein world, the few first-rate high schools Louisiana has make up a precious resource, one more important than crawfish or oil and gas. The oil and gas are going to run out. Not everybody likes crawfish. And when the fossil-fuel deposits are gone from Louisiana, only the most crustacean-crazed Americans are going to give a mudbug's chimney about the Gret Stet.

Louisiana, absent some radical attitude adjustment, then will be seen as offering no return on a hefty pain-in-the-ass investment.

ON THE OTHER HAND, young minds, and the ideas and big dreams inside them, are a renewable resource. Unfortunately, Louisiana has been maltreating and squandering its most precious resource -- its children and their dreams -- forever.

Baton Rouge High is a dump now. Baton Rougeans seem to be OK with sending their precious children to a dump to be educated . . . however much of that can occur in a crumbling hovel.

And Baton Rouge High is not the only crumbling dump Louisianians send their children off to for 13 years of whatever -- in too many of those hovels -- passes for "education." Far from it.

The faculty, staff and students of Baton Rouge Magnet High are heroic. From every measurement, it would appear that amazing things still happen there educationally, just as in my day during the late 1970s. But heroes are singled out for a reason -- there aren't that many of them, as a rule.

But every child, I think, knows when society has screwed him over. Louisiana, one of this country's least-educated states, nevertheless has earned a Ph.D in screwing over its children.

IT IS REAPING what it has sown forever, though the harvest comes in in various forms. Some kids just grow up undereducated, unmotivated and unproductive. Some turn to crime . . . born innocent only to end up rotting in Angola prison.

Others just fall short of their full potential, meaning Louisiana does as well.

Many of the best and brightest -- who, for the most part, got that way with little help from Louisiana, thankyouverymuch -- take their revenge via U-Haul. And Ryder.

After all, what in the world could a state that cared so little about them then offer them now?

AFTER SEEING WHAT I SAW over several hours one late-September day at Baton Rouge High, after seeing what was allowed to become of my old school . . . on behalf of myself and on behalf of the kids who go to BRMHS now, I walked out of there feeling absolutely violated.

A civilized people does not do this to anybody's children.

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge and, knowing what I know, I have to admit that I swing back and forth between thinking Louisiana has a slim-but-real chance at long-term survival and succumbing to utter despair for the place.

Again, I am someone whose Louisiana roots go back to the 1780s.

So if I feel that way, what the hell do you think the feds and the rest of the U.S. think? They think Louisiana not only is hopeless, but probably that it ought to be more-or-less politically and civically euthanized.

Because we're that kind of country now.

THAT'S WHY Baton Rouge High matters. Places like Baton Rouge High are Louisiana's only hope, because it IS sinn fein, baby.

And look what the hell Louisiana has done -- is doing -- to its last best hope.

God help them.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that I first saw the "sinn fein, baby" riff in print on Ashley Morris: the blog out of New Orleans last year. I recall having pretty much the same thought around the same time, but I don't remember using it in print. Ashley did, and it was bugging me that I had overlooked giving credit where credit is due for a hell of a good line.

Works fine, except in producing more W's than L's

Don't blame Curly.

Don't blame Mo.

Hey, blame Cosgrove. Show him the . . . D'OH!

SORRY, BILL CALLAHAN. You and all your Stooges -- most especially the one who runs the Nebraska defense -- are about to be shown the door. From the Omaha World-Herald:

Looking for reasons why Nebraska's football season hit the skids in early October and now stands with a losing record heading into its last regular season game?

Don't blame the offense, Bill Callahan says.

The Nebraska coach used the success of backup quarterback Joe Ganz for what he called proof of development and coaching and a system that works.

"Everybody is very critical of myself about how our offense is too complicated, and it's too pro-like, and it's this and it's that," Callahan said Monday. "But the fact remains that numbers don't lie and the production doesn't lie and the performance of these players doesn't lie. It's there. It's all out there."

Despite records of 5-6 overall and 2-5 in the Big 12, Nebraska ranks No. 18 nationally in total offense (455.4 yards per game), No. 12 in passing offense (309.3) and No. 36 in scoring offense (31.8 points).

"It's kind of a testament that this system works," Callahan said. "It worked last year, it worked the year before and it continues to put up high and impressive numbers."

Callahan talked extensively about offense in his weekly segment of the Big 12 teleconference. It started a bye week for the Huskers, who conclude their regular-season schedule at Colorado on Nov. 23.

Ganz on Monday was named Big 12 offensive player of the week for his school-record 510 passing yards and seven touchdowns in the 73-31 rout of Kansas State — the Huskers' fourth straight game, and seventh overall, with better than 400 yards of total offense.

"He's a product of the system," Callahan said of Ganz. "This is a player that we've developed and you could see his development ooze all over the field on Saturday."

Callahan took it a step further later, speaking emphatically about what he believes he has built offensively in his four seasons at NU.

"We took a guy from a junior college and developed him into the conference player of the year in Zac Taylor," Callahan said. "We took a guy that transferred, Sam Keller, that was on schedule and on pace to break every record around here. And then we insert the third guy within a two-year period of time that throws for seven touchdowns . . . and throws for over 500 yards.

"I mean, that's development. That's coaching. That's system. Those are things that mean a great deal to a program."

OK, so the Husker offense works better than the defense, which doesn't work at all. Just because Callahan might be something less of a tactical screw-up than his buddy (and defensive coordinator) Kevin Cosgrove, that doesn't mean he gets to keep his job thanks to the Bell Curve.

Callahan's West Coast offense probably does work pretty well. Or maybe not. Who knows?

But we all are absolutely sure of one thing: Callahan's football team doesn't work very well at all according to Scoreboard Metrics.

Bye, Bill.

A Belgian divorce?

So, who gets the beer and who gets the frites? Keep the goodies together? Joint custody? All valid questions as the Flemings and the Walloons head for Belgian Divorce Court, as fleshed out by The Guardian in London, where the Brits are feeling a bit guilty over having played matchmaker in the first place:

Belgium is in crisis, apparently, though I have to say it doesn't really look it. At least, no more than it usually does. The theoretically handsome Place Flagey in Brussels, which was a building site three years ago, is still a building site, only more so and much muddier. The trains are running normally, but Bruxelles Midi station is as beaten-up and pissed-upon as ever. The frites remain excellent, of course, as does the chocolate. And in the street the people curse the taxman, as they have always done, and the price of petrol, which is new.

Article continues

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The papers and the politicians, though, are predicting apocalypse. Believe them, and the country is in the worst trouble of its admittedly brief history, or at the very least since the dark days of the last war. Because Belgium, remarkably, has spent the past 156 days without a government. And while this is plainly not yet in itself a catastrophe, there is a very real fear that the fragile and complicated arrangement of string and sticky tape that holds this impossible country together may finally be beginning to come unstuck. Belgium, it is whispered (and none too quietly), could soon be no more.

Should we feel remotely concerned by this? If you dislike unfeasibly potent beer, naff statues of permanently peeing boys, mayonnaise with your chips, and Tintin, maybe you will not. If, on the other hand, you feel a vague sentimental attachment to the idea of a country whose very existence, in the absence of anything resembling a national language, a national culture or much more than a century-and-a half of national history, depends on the virtues of goodwill, understanding and compromise, then you should.

Belgium's citizens, in any event, look pretty much resigned to it: recent surveys show that in the north as many as 63% think the break-up of their 177-year-old country, a place their prime minister-in-waiting himself has called "an accident of history", is now more or less inevitable. "The place has had it," says René Vanderweiden, a fiftysomething telecoms engineer queueing in the penetrating Brussels drizzle for a No 93 tram. "Maybe not now, maybe not in 10 years' time. But within my lifetime, I'd guess. The Flemings [Belgium's Dutch-speaking majority] want out of it, and they're no longer afraid of saying so. There's a scorn, and an impatience, that wasn't there before."

Sheltering from the rain in a stylish cafe in the Galeries St Hubert, Joelle Rutten, who works in a bookshop, blames the politicians. "We obviously don't need them," she says. "Look at us - we're all going to work, paying our taxes, nothing has changed. They're utterly out of touch with ordinary people, anyway, arguing about things that mean nothing to most of us. It's a scandal! They have no idea what they're doing at all."

Sadly, though, the politicians - or some of them, at least - seem to have a very clear idea of what they are doing. In a neat and functional town hall office in the neat and functional Brussels suburb of Halle, Mark Demesmaeker, deputy mayor, remarks cheerfully that he "can no longer see the value-added of Belgium, actually. There are six million of us Flemings, we work hard, we make money, and we're perfectly capable of standing on our own two feet. Indeed, we would be one of the wealthier small countries of Europe. For us, Belgium is simply counterproductive. We'd be better off without it."

It takes a while to get one's head around just how complicated Belgium is: this really is not your model nation state. Vanderweiden is a Walloon, from near Liège in the region of Wallonia, which forms, roughly speaking, the southern half of the country. He speaks French. Rutten is Brussels born, and speaks primarily French but, she claims, "not bad" Dutch. And Demesmaeker is a Fleming, from the region of Flanders, the northern half of the country. He speaks Dutch.

The Flemings make up roughly 60% of the population; the Walloons 40%. The two communities lead essentially parallel lives; outside the royal family, the national football team, the foreign office, the justice system and the army, no national institution - not a single political party, a TV station, a charity or even a university - serves them both. Consequently, running Belgium currently requires one federal government, three regional ones (because bilingual Brussels also counts as a region), and another three on top of those, one for each language group (French, Dutch and, just to make matters interesting, a small German-speaking community). Thankfully, the Flanders regional government and the Dutch-language community government are one and the same, so the lucky Belgians are today ruled by a mere six different administrations.

Add to that the fact that Wallonia was historically far richer that Flanders, but, with the decline of its heavy industry, is now considerably poorer; that unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders, and that twice as many Walloons as Flemings are employed by the state; that a sizeable chunk of Wallonia's income comes from the taxpayers of Flanders and is spent (to be polite) in a rather relaxed, Latin kind of way; and - the icing on the cake, this - that Wallonia traditionally votes left while Flanders traditionally votes (quite far) right, and perhaps the real surprise is that Belgium has managed to survive as long as it has. As one of the country's more famous sons, the painter René Magritte, might have said: "Ceci n'est pas une nation." Although typically, like his other famous compatriots Georges Simenon and Jacques Brel, most people tend to think Magritte was French.

WBRH: Major MARKETing unSAVVINESS in '78

The reason God created high school was so we'd be forced to chuckle at ourselves much later in life.

WHEN I WAS HOME on vacation in September, I did what you sometimes do when you live far away and then go back home -- rifle through old crap in boxes stuck in closets in your parents' house.

My haul, now safely back in Omaha, included the old Kodak Brownie camera responsible for all my baby pictures, some vintage flashbulbs for said Brownie camera, a few early-'70s shortwave QSL cards I got for sending reception reports, a couple of vintage Channel 9 hurricane-tracking charts, a 1959 transistor radio and this (pictured above).

This is the first bumper sticker printed up to promote Baton Rouge Magnet High's FM station, WBRH, then at 90.1 on your FM dial. It has to be either very late 1977 or early 1978 vintage.

CAN YOU TELL we were, back then, the only station in our decidedly uncosmopolitan city playing classical music?

But only on Turntable 1. On Turntable 2 during those classical-music shifts (and I know this, because I was one of the hosts doing it), you were likely to find Led Zeppelin. The Zep went over the control board's "audition" channel and out over the big studio monitor speakers.

Loudly . . . very, very loudly. And bleeding ever so slightly into the over-the-air classical feed.

Some old retired geezer used to call up to complain about this. We assured him he was . . . how shall we put it? Nuts. We thought ourselves very clever, pulling one over on some old square.

That is, until shortly before graduation, when the old guy called in yet again to bitch about Led Zep -- yet again -- and just happened to let slip the profession from which he retired.

Audio engineer.

Busted.

One of these things is just like the other

This is the Alamo Plaza in the Mid City area of Baton Rouge. In 1941, it was a showplace . . . a sparkling way station for modern wayfarers, sitting out on the edge of town, on the road to a place called America.

This is Baton Rouge High School, also in the Mid City area of the capital city. In 1927, it was a showplace . . . a sparkling way station for the city's best and brightest, sitting a good half-mile past the end of the streetcar line, on the road to a place called The Future.

SIX DECADES ON, the Alamo Plaza ain't what it used to be. What was the epitome of an ascendant America, a symbol of all that was luxurious and modern, of an America now wealthy enough to drive away in automobiles and discover itself at its leisure . . . well, it's the symbol of something quite different now.

Eight decades distant from the grand opening of the "new and modern" Baton Rouge High, the old school now is known as Baton Rouge Magnet High School. What this has meant, since 1976, is that in a city of great opportunity and greater inequity, the city's "best and brightest" still hang out at 2825 Government St., still dream grand dreams and still try to make sense of a city congenitally indifferent to "best" or "bright."

Still.

AFTER AT LEAST a couple of decades of serious neglect, there are dangerous places at the Alamo Plaza where you wouldn't want to mislay your children. For that matter, there's not really anywhere there -- at least, according to an expose in the most recent issue of Baton Rouge's 225 magazine -- that's better suited for human habitation than it is as a breeding ground for rats and roaches:

Because The Alamo Plaza doesn’t operate a restaurant, it’s not required to have a permit from the state’s Office of Public Health. But the agency does investigate complaints of unhealthy conditions, and records show at least 10 complaints in the past five years.

In June, one motel guest complained that her room was “infested with rats, fleas, spiders, etc.”

In February, a woman who stayed at The Alamo said the place was so disgusting she had to change rooms three times. In her complaint, she wrote: “One room I stayed in was full of baby rats. I was scared to go to bed. There were roaches everywhere.” She also called the motel “a gateway for crime,” a description J. Edgar Hoover would have no doubt agreed with.

Health inspector Artis Pinkney was sent to investigate the woman’s complaint. According to his written report, he found rat droppings in the sinks, faulty wiring, broken fixtures and heavy structural damage.

“All of the rooms seem to be in the same condition,” Pinkney wrote. “The manager does not repair any of the rooms. In my professional opinion, I would suggest the building be condemned.”

After at least a couple of decades of abject neglect, there are dangerous places in the Baton Rouge High building where you don't want your children. Or anyone else.

Instead of holding students at assemblies or the public for community events, the balcony of the school's grand old auditorium now holds junk. Not people. Graduation ceremonies no longer are held where I proudly walked across the stage in 1979.

It would seem there's not much that's not crumbling at the old Alamo Plaza, like this doorjamb.

225, as part of its Alamo Plaza story, had writer Chuck Hustmyre screw up his courage and set out to spend the night at the crumbling old motor court.

He didn't make it through the night in Room 2708:

To say that my room was dirty and quite likely a health hazard would be a significant understatement. Room 2708—which I have no reason to suspect was much different than any of The Alamo’s other 89 rooms—was a combination pigsty, hovel and slum.

The room had to be close to 100 degrees when I stepped inside. The maintenance man, who doubled as a security guard judging by the badge clipped to his pants, turned on the air conditioner for me and warned me, without further explanation, to keep the curtains closed at night. The window above the wheezing AC was boarded up with plywood and reinforced with two-by-fours. Broken shards of glass from the window lay inside the air conditioner vent.

As I waited for the temperature in the room to dip into the double digits, I took a good look at my accommodations. The room had no phone. The television was unplugged and the power button had been punched out. There was no lamp, no chair, and no table. Potato chip-sized chunks of paint were peeling off the walls. Loose wires dangled from the busted smoke alarm above the bed.

In the bathroom, there was no towel, just a washrag and a threadbare hand cloth. Part of the baseboard had rotted away, leaving a good-sized hole in the wall and easy access for night crawlers. The stained sink had a steady leak, no drain plug, and only one temperature setting for the water—scalding hot.

The walls of the closet were covered with dark splotches (either toxic mold or just plain mildew, I couldn’t tell). But I held my breath just in case as I stepped inside to snap some pictures.

(snip)

Back in my room, I had nowhere to sit. The paper-thin, stained bedspread wasn’t an option, so I found a plastic chair outside and brought it into my room. I stayed for a few hours, long enough to meet my next-door neighbor, who said his name was Art. He wanted to know if I had a car, and he twice invited me into his room to have a beer. I declined.

I left sometime around 2 a.m.

STUDENTS HAVE TO STAY a full eight hours a day at Baton Rouge High. Five days a week. Nine months a year.

Faculty and administrators put in longer hours.

Well, this is disgusting. Quick! Is it the decrepit old motor court where bums stay and drug dealers ply their trade, or is it the "flagship school" of the East Baton Rouge Parish public system?

It's the decrepit old motor court, of the dopers and down-on-their-luckers.

THIS is a rest room at the decrepit old high school. The one parish taxpayers and the parish school board apparently think is acceptable for the parish's children.

The one over which the school system dithers -- Do we fix it? Do we tear it down? Do we ask voters to pass a dedicated Baton Rouge High tax? Meanwhile, the school board mulls over how to spend its minimum $66 million surplus from the 2006-2007 budget year.

Above, we again have a lovely room view from the Alamo Plaza.

And we have a lovely shot from the women's room in the Baton Rouge High gymnasium. There's a bird nest in the exhaust fan.

Leaky, damaged ceiling at the Alamo Plaza. Did I mention this is a scandalous haven for those on the margins of society?

Leaky, damaged ceiling at BRMHS. Did I mention this is where taxpayers' teen-age children spend their days, attempting to get an education?

When ordinary folks think of a miracle of God, they picture the parting of the Red Sea or Jesus curing lepers and raising Lazarus from the dead. I think of these as well, but nowadays I likewise think of how young Baton Rougeans receive a first-class education here amid Third World squalor.

And since returning to Omaha from a visit to my hometown -- and from a visit to my alma mater, Baton Rouge High -- I picture this when I think of Baton Rouge:

ABSOLUTELY METAPHORICAL, don't you think?

And absolutely baffling that professional journalists -- spanning the spectrum from the glossy and newsfeaturey 225, to the daily Advocate, to the Baton Rouge Business Report to channels 2, 9 and 33 -- remain blind to that, remain blind to the plight of a city's children and blind as to why that's going to be the death of a city (and a state) because they will not see.

Alamo Plaza? C'est toi.

UPDATE: For those of you new to the Baton Rouge High Story, here are some links to the full ugliness of what the East Baton Rouge Parish school system hath wrought:

My reminder

Not even a crumb from the rich man's table

Home is where the heartbreak is

More scenes from 'America's next great city'

Disbelief in Omaha, or No Frame of Reference

When we let our kids' schools deteriorate into dumps, is it a human-rights violation?

But professor, you just don't understand

Some Louisiana State faculty and staff are upset that only about 1 percent of students at the Ole War Skule bother to study abroad. Well, then.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge, home of the world's best meeting coverers, has the story:

Only about 1 percent of students in Baton Rouge colleges study abroad — a statistic that is troubling to administrators, faculty and students alike.

The problem is particularly concerning for LSU because its regional and national peers are moving much further ahead, LSU officials said. The issue reached the point that the LSU Faculty Senate unanimously approved a resolution this week to strongly push for more “internationalization.”

Patricia O’Neill, an LSU music professor who has traveled the world in operas, co-authored the resolution and placed most of the blame on the college.

“We’re really, really behind our peers whom we claim we want to be on the same level with,” O’Neill said, faulting the lack of organization at LSU. “The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.”

Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope agreed: “It’s an unworkable, unmanageable impenetrable system” with no clear leadership.

Harald Leder, interim director of LSU academic programs abroad, said his department is lacking in resources — with a small, self-generated budget and a five-person staff — to serve nearly 27,000 students.

But much of the reason only about 450 students participate annually is the attitude of Louisiana students, Leder said.

“I think it’s Louisiana culture,” said Leder, who was once an international student from Germany. “They feel right at home here and don’t feel a reason to go away.”

O’Neill agreed, arguing that international experience is becoming imperative in the shrinking global world.

“Some of the attitudes of our finest students are really quite provincial,” she said.

Leder said money is another obvious factor because the average study abroad trip costs about $7,000. Simply put, many students cannot afford it, he said, especially with the weak dollar in Europe.

Still, LSU does offer study abroad in a number of locations, such as China, Argentina, Tanzania, Mexico, India, England, Italy, France and, the most popular, Ireland.

Schools such as the University of Arkansas have goals for 25 percent of their students to study abroad, Leder said, but Arkansas has a lot of money from Wal-Mart and the Walton family that LSU does not have.

“We are at about 1 percent, so that’s a pretty big gap,” Leder said.

Adam Hensgens, an LSU senior from Crowley majoring in international studies, said he wanted to participate in a new study abroad program to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to better learn Arabic.

The program was advertised to those in his major, but the study abroad office was not familiar with it, he said.

“The interest from students I think is picking up,” Hensgens said. “But it’s the institution’s inability to handle it.”

APART FROM NEEDING to come up with thousands and thousands of bucks to study in Europe or wherever -- and we all know that most college students, and their parents, are just rolling in that kind of dough -- there's another factor peculiar to the Gret Stet that the LSU faculty doesn't take into account.

Louisiana, by contemporary American standards, IS abroad. Likewise, America -- by contemporary and historical Louisiana standards -- can't get much more foreign.

Why go to South America if you're an LSU student? You're already there. And you can drink the water.

Why go to France when you can go to Breaux Bridge, dance quaint folk dances, buvez du bier et du vin, et riez des touristes américain?

I REMEMBER well my days as an LSU undergrad. When we wanted to go abroad, we went to places like Miami, where we ordered supper at HoJo's from our Spanish-speaking Cuban waiter by pointing at the pictures on the menu.

We also experienced the exotic culture of the United States by journeying to the land of les américains -- to places like Knoxville, Chicago and Milwaukee. And believe me, Milwaukee was utterly foreign to a Louisiana boy on his first trip north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

On the other hand, I gained a deep appreciation of Polish sausage, sauerkraut and Old Style beer. Now, that was good eatin'. And drinkin'.

And I also learned that when college kids from Eau Claire do send-ups of Doug and Bob Mackenzie's The Great White North, they're NOT acting.

Did I mention the joys of Old Style, which we couldn't get in Baton Rouge back then?

I found my experiences abroad served me well when I took a break from college to do a self-directed work study at the North Platte, Neb., Telegraph in early 1983. This extended stay abroad ended in August 1983 when I married the newspaper's American wire editor and returned to LSU with my foreign bride to complete my last 27 credit hours.

And I credit my wholly informal study abroad while an LSU student for my ability to adjust, since 1988, to living abroad here in Omaha, Neb., USA. I am able to converse with the locals in their language, as well as appreciate the local cuisine and understand their democratic form of government.

IN SHORT, I just don't understand why the LSU Faculty Senate has its knickers in a twist. There are plenty of opportunities there for students to experience exotic cultures abroad. All they need do is drive a day or so in any direction.

The trips are easily made, usually not overly expensive and -- if one observes the locals and their folkways carefully -- one can be fairly well prepared to integrate successfully should one choose to emigrate to the United States.

See you later, Peckerwood!

Memo to Caucasian politicians: It's not nice to call African-Americans "Buckwheat." I don't care how many Eddie Murphy tapes you've watched.

Yes, someone did this. And it tells you something -- OK . . . it tells you a lot, actually -- that this stupefyingly stupid someone is a state legislator You Know Where.

Then again, repeat after me: "Dat's Loosiana for you!"

Can't folks in my home state please, please, PLEASE get a clue? At long last, is there no limit to how much you want to be embarrassed by those you put in high office?

ANYWAY, if you would like to read the sorry details, WAFB television in Baton Rouge has 'em:

Louisiana State Representative Carla Dartez is considering resigning after allegedly referring to the mother of an NAACP president as "Buckwheat," a Houma newspaper reported Friday.

Jerome Boykin, President of Morgan City's NAACP, told WAFB 9NEWS that Dartez was speaking by phone with his mother to thank his mother for her help with Dartez's re-election bid. That help included volunteering to drive voters to the polls during the October 20th primary. Boykin says Dartez ended that conversation by telling his mother, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat." Boykin says he considers that to be a racial slur.

Boykin, who supported Dartez's re-election bid in October, says he has now informed Dartez he is no longer supporting her. "I will do everything in my power to see that she's not re-elected," Boykin told WAFB 9NEWS. Dartez received 44% of the vote in October, and faces a November 17th runoff against Republican Joe Harrison, who received 36% of the primary vote.

Boykin says, after his mother told him about the conversation, he called Dartez and she acknowledged she had used the "Buckwheat" reference. He says Dartez started to cry and apologized. "She said she'd gone to Walmart a couple of days ago and bought an Eddie Murphy tape and that's what they said on the tape." He says Dartez indicated she did not realize that the term could be interpreted as a racial slur.

(snip)

In September, Dartez was cited for improper lane usage after hitting a pedestrian with her car. That same month, her husband was arrested [by] federal agents on charges that he employed and harbored illegal aliens. Lenny Dartez insisted he was innocent of those charges.

OH, WELL . . . I guess you could take the glass-half-full approach and be thankful Rep. Dartez didn't call Boykin's mama "Buckwheat" just before running her over while smuggling a carful of illegal aliens to her husband's workplace.

That would have been bad.

We cure ignorance.

Click on picture for web page.

The folks behind the Omaha City Weekly's media blog act like they don't know "tractor punk" from squat. What up with that?

DIDN'T THEY SEE the story on Speed! Nebraska Records last summer in Omaha's other alternative newsweekly? Yeah, this story.

Oh, well . . . it was our pleasure to set the media bloggers straight about tractor punk. The City Weekly folks would have known all about it, however, if they'd just been reading Revolution 21's Blog for the People and listening to the Revolution 21 podcast all along.

It's just the sensible thing.

You want to hear The Monroes, you say? Check out the Oct. 19 edition of the Big Show and you will . . . you will.

The Revolution 21 podcast: Don't leave home without it. Or stay home without it, either.

If you listened, you'd know it's good

I'm sick, and I'm cranky, and I'm on the razor's edge of a major coughing jag, so, dear listener, forgive my pending diplomatic faux pas.

I could tell you what's on this week's edition of The Big Show (otherwise known as the Revolution 21 podcast) in order to cajole you into listening, but then I'd have to kill you. Which would be counterproductive.

Alternatively, I could beg you to listen and pander to you like your typical commercial FM station, but radio sucks, so why join the Suck Parade? The Big Show is kind of like radio was long ago -- when it didn't suck -- but bears little resemblance to radio today.

If you like stuff that sucks -- I'm trying to set a record for use of "suck" in a post, by the way -- listen to your average syndicated weekend fare on your local robo-play FM station. The Revolution 21 podcast, to be blunt (not to mention immodest, but you gotta do what you gotta do), is way better than that.

You'd know that if you gave it a listen. So listen.

Or don't. Some people are perfectly content to settle for the mundane . . . and the sucky.

The Revolution 21 podcast: Be there. Aloha.

Who ya gonna call?

There's one last hope left for New Orleans.

Mad Max.

The police department can't solve crimes, though Crescent City cops can do a wicked beat down on retired schoolteachers looking for smokes. Much of the city's political elite is going to be presiding over various penitentiaries' law libraries, as opposed to a benighted city's Katrina recovery.

The mayor not only is from Uranus, he's on Uranus.

AND WHILE street crime is looking for all the world like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the city's district attorney did the Curly Shuffle right out of office after not being able to convict any of the few perps the cops actually could catch. And that was only after he pulled a reverse Wallace, decided the D.A.'s office was for Blacks Only and promptly got his office sued to the brink of extinction.

Which is where we stand now. Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo!

OF COURSE, The Times-Picayune has all the nyuk nyuk nyuk hilarity that's fit to print:

The Orleans Parish district attorney's office watched helplessly Thursday as about six of its bank accounts, including payroll, were frozen by a federal judge, the first step in seizing assets to collect on a $3.4 million job discrimination verdict brought on by former District Attorney Eddie Jordan's firing of 43 white workers in 2003.

"The mayor ignored us in his budget proposal," said Clement Donelon, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "I'm not sure how the city is going to ensure public safety by shutting down its DA's office."

No money has left the bank accounts yet, Donelon said.

Instead, the plaintiffs have embarked on a fact-finding mission to determine exactly how much the district attorney's office has socked away, asking Liberty Bank President Alden McDonald to disclose how much money is in accounts labeled "payroll," "FEMA" and "Crime Victims Assistant," as well as others.

But for now, the district attorney's office cannot touch the money, with payday approaching Nov. 15.

Keva Landrum-Johnson, acting district attorney since Jordan resigned Oct. 31, called the move "appalling" and lawyers for the office said it will only complicate talks to resolve payment of the judgment.

"I strongly urge the plaintiffs' attorneys to reverse this action and release these critical assets," said Landrum-Johnson on Thursday evening outside a Poydras Street high-rise where about 90 lawyers and 110 support staff employees work in temporary quarters since Hurricane Katrina ruined their office building.

The district attorney's office made the first payment on the $3.7 million judgment last week, a $300,000 check knocking down the debt to about $3.4 million. That payment, said Landrum-Johnson, came from a "cash-strapped office" eager to make a show of good faith toward the plaintiffs while buying some time for the office to figure out a way to find the rest of the money.

Kirk Reasonover, an attorney representing the office's role in paying the judgment, said the move has provoked a round of court action that only makes resolving the crisis more difficult.

"We don't know what accounts are subject to seizure," Reasonover said. "This action is trying to provoke a crisis by disrupting the criminal justice system. This has forced us down a road where discussions have become much more difficult."

Mayor Ray Nagin said the court action "threatens our recovery and the safety of our city," two years after New Orleans watched its criminal justice system crumble along with the federally built levees.

"Although the judgment is not against the city of New Orleans and the DA's office is an entity of the state," Nagin said, "I maintain my commitment to explore every possible option locally and at the state level to maintain the public safety of our city."

Donelon said he is not going after any trust accounts or child-support money, which is provided by the state to help the district attorney collect court-ordered child support to parents. About 50 people work in child support at the district attorney's office, while an additional 60 handle other support staff tasks.

With the legal move, Donelon made good on his promise to ensure that his clients get the money a federal court approved two years ago, as city leaders continue grasping at straws to figure out how to pay off the jury award that increases each month by about $20,000 in interest.

Donelon said he has felt ignored by all of the players at the negotiation table. But Landrum-Johnson said the office has kept in touch with the plaintiffs' attorneys. She said she met with the mayor, City Council, business community leaders and others on Wednesday to explore options "for finding a win-win solution."

Representatives of the district attorney's office already must attend a federal court hearing Wednesday to open its financial records and books to the court.

Donelon said his legal team made the move out of frustration, and said city officials who should be involved in the negotiations over the $3.4 million debt have not returned his calls.

Whether the legal attack is a warning shot or a sign of things to come remained unclear late Thursday.

Val Solino, the executive assistant district attorney, said because the accounts were seized at the end of the business day he could not say which accounts were involved and what effect it would have on the office.

Solino said office leaders are trying to make sure that all employees will be paid next week, when they are scheduled to get their next paychecks. "We are working hard and we are going to do everything we can to make that happen," he said.

YOU KNOW, the Chocolate Mayor really cracks me up. Them Uranians -- Uraniaites? -- is funny.

I like this quote especially, that the seizure of the D.A.'s office accounts "threatens our recovery and the safety of our city."

Excuse me, but wasn't the murder rate soaring and the recovery flagging long before the plaintiffs' lawyers got those accounts frozen? And who or what is responsible for that?

It couldn't be that when it comes to functioning civic culture, there is no there there, could it? And it couldn't be that too many of the city's residents are desperately poor, pretty much unemployable and utterly without hope for the future, could it?

And it couldn't be that the residents of New Orleans have been electing crooks and clowns to run their city for a long, long time now, could it? And it couldn't be that New Orleans public schools would have a tough time teaching the ABCs to Albert Einstein, could it?

And, of course, it couldn't be that there's a culture of corruption and fatalism there as ingrained as in the ripest of South American banana republics, could it?

Naaaaaaaw, that couldn't be it. It's those nasty ingrates who had the nerve to sue after getting cashiered for the crime of having the wrong color skin.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

And that's why Mad Max might be the only hope for the city that Curly built.