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.

Where there's enough smoke . . .

Over and over and over again, through the years and in a torrent the past month, Omahans in the rougher parts of town have complained that police have a brutality problem.

Over and over and over again, through the years and in a torrent the past month, the Omaha Police Department has responded that there's no problem, officers followed procedure . . . move along, nothing to see here.

And the public moves along. Probably because folks don't want to get the hell beat out of them by a cop.

You know, once or twice, you can blow off complaints of police brutality as a miscreant trying to blow smoke to cover up his own misdeeds. The trouble in Omaha is that the smoke is getting so thick, you have to assume there's a fire somewhere.

I READ STUFF like this in the Omaha World-Herald today, and I'm thinking something's rotten at the Omaha cop shop:

A woman said Thursday that she saw Omaha police officers hitting and kicking a 12-year-old boy as they held him on the ground.

Police officials, however, continue to say they have no evidence that officers did anything other than sweep Reinaldo Rodriguez's legs out from under him when he refused to stop for police and show his hands.

Janice Hazard spoke at a press conference Thursday called by Ben Salazar, publisher of Nuestro Mundo, a Spanish/English newspaper in Omaha. State Sen. Ernie Chambers also attended to demand that appropriate disciplinary action be taken against the officers involved.

Salazar provided photos of the boy, Reinaldo Rodriguez, that were taken at Children's Hospital several hours after police confronted him. The photos show scrapes on Reinaldo's face near one eye, on one cheek and on his forehead.

A medical report prepared by Dr. Alan Fuss at Children's Hospital states that Reinaldo also suffered multiple bruises on his head. Reinaldo's family took the boy to the hospital several hours after the incident.

Police Chief Thomas Warren said the injuries to Reinaldo's face resulted from when officers placed Reinaldo on the ground against his will.

"I wouldn't describe it as the result of a punch," Warren said. "I would describe it as more of a welt or abrasion."

The officers were in Reinaldo's neighborhood, near 27th and Harrison Streets, on Oct. 30 investigating a report of a boy walking down the street with a rifle. Reinaldo and several other boys ran from officers when they approached.

Reinaldo has said officers pushed him to the ground when he told them he wasn't doing anything wrong. They then punched his face three times, he said.

Hazard, a grandmother of another boy who was with Reinaldo that evening, said she tried to stop officers from punching and kicking Reinaldo by saying she knew he had done nothing wrong.

"They were beating him, hitting him, kicking him," she said. "I knew he was hurt because they hit him so many times."

The officers told her to get away and accused her of obstructing them, Hazard said. She stayed, she said, because she wanted to witness what was happening.

Warren said Reinaldo refused to stop or show his hands to prove he didn't have the rifle.

The officers also had no way of knowing whether Reinaldo potentially had discarded the weapon somewhere, Warren said.

Reinaldo was taken to his mother's apartment later, and he did not receive a ticket.

According to Salazar, the officers explained to the mother what had happened to Reinaldo by saying, "He was acting stupid." They did not apologize or seek help for Reinaldo, he said.

The family has not made a formal complaint at the Police Department. Reinaldo's mother told Salazar that she was scared and had no one to help her, Salazar said.

"When I went to see her . . . she was still in fear," he said.

Paul Landow, Mayor Mike Fahey's chief of staff, said the internal affairs unit would begin an investigation into Rodriguez's claims after the family filed a complaint.

NOT TO MENTION stories like this, also in the World-Herald today:

Jerome Clark Sr. asked a mayoral aide Thursday to look at his son's raw, battered face.

"He was arrested Tuesday night," Clark said of his son, 19-year-old Alejo Clark. "He was arrested and beat up."

Police Chief Thomas Warren said the injuries to Alejo Clark, who was arrested on suspicion of being a minor in possession of alcohol, occurred when Clark tried to run away. The arresting officers followed proper procedures, Warren said.

Clark said he did nothing to provoke the officers.

Clark was accompanied by his parents, Jerome and Marie Clark, to Police Headquarters on Thursday to file a formal complaint. They then went to the Mayor's Office, where Chief of Staff Paul Landow assured the south Omaha family that the complaint would be investigated.

Alejo Clark said he was with five friends about 9 p.m. Tuesday in a car parked at Brown Park near 15th and V Streets when a plainclothes officer approached on the driver's side and asked him for his license and registration.

"When I was handing it to him, he grabbed the registration," Clark said. "He then opened the door and pulled me out of the car and threw me to the ground for no reason."

Clark said the officer "stomped me on the back of my head" on the concrete, causing cuts and bruises. He said he was then arrested for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest, "but I never did anything wrong."

Warren said the two plainclothes officers approached the car to investigate why the occupants were hanging out at the park. The officers saw open containers of alcohol inside and asked the occupants to get out.

"Several of the people cooperated, but Alejo Clark did not," Warren said. "He tried to evade officers and physically had to be restrained."

It would be proper procedure, Warren said, for an officer to take down a suspect by "using a knee in the back to establish or maintain control."

Clark also said the officers threatened to beat him up on the way to jail. The officers, he said, pulled over in an alley and asked him if he wanted the handcuffs on or off when they beat him up.

Clark said he was scared for his life and asked to go to jail, which officers did without further incident.

SEN. ERNIE CHAMBERS can be a pain in the butt a lot of the time. But he nailed it during Thursday's press conference on the Reinaldo Rodriguez case: It's time to bring in the FBI.

There's been too much smoke billowing out of the Omaha police headquarters for too long. And where there's smoke. . . .

Take that, Crunchy Guy!

Over at Crunchy Con, my friend Rod Dreher is nonplussed that his inner European is Swedish, not French. Sucks to be him!

I took the same test, and . . .

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

BEING THAT my mother's side of the family came to Louisiana from Paris and Canada in the 1700s, I'm not surprised. And this is a rare instance of a Gallic victory over les Allemands . . . the triumph of my French side over my dad's German-Dutch-Scots-Irishdom.

Or, as I tell folks, I'm quick to anger and then I carry it out with ruthless efficiency.

To be honest about the quiz, though, my dream car actually is a '65 Pontiac GTO or a 1964-and-a-half Ford Mustang. Since those weren't among the choices, I figured a classic Citroen would be kind of cool.

C'est la vie!

My reminder

This is my personal reminder.

It's a chunk of the basketball court in the Baton Rouge Magnet High School gymnasium, and I pocketed it from -- for lack of a better term -- a pothole, an indoor pothole on the floor where high school students attempt to carry out such activities as gymnastics, volleyball, physical education and . . . basketball.

This sits in my home recording studio, on a counter, atop a paperweight. I see it every day . . . many times every day. It doesn't let me forget how little some people in some communities in the richest nation in the world care for their children.

It reminds me that if we can physically abort our children while they're still fetuses, we sure as hell can civically abort them, politically abort them, educationally abort them and emotionally abort them long after they emerge from the womb unscathed.

THIS CHUNK of the Baton Rouge High gym floor -- where long ago I did calisthenics, played basketball and danced The Bump with a pretty redhead -- reminds me that while I take pride in my home state, I also am deeply, deeply ashamed of it.

This chunk of 57-year-old hardwood -- still painted Bulldog green, scoured loose by water from an ever-leaking roof -- reminds me of when my alma mater was still a really pleasant place to spend several years of your adolescence. When we never worried that we might be knocked silly by a falling ceiling tile in the middle of American history.

It reminds me of when BRMHS was the crown jewel of the city's schools physically as well as academically. Of when there was at least one school the perpetually lousy East Baton Rouge Parish school system didn't manage to taint in some way.

Funny, isn't it, that such an ordinary chunk of debris holds such meaning for a middle-aged man three decades removed from his glory days? Yes, but I imagine you have your totems, too.

But here it is, a new one of mine. A chunk of wood pilfered from a fetid gym as I took damning photographs and held back tears for what had become of my old school.

My totem. It reminds me that we can do so much better, but usually don't.

Forgive us, children, for we have sinned.

Not even a crumb from the rich man's table

I'm not going to comment on the following story about the East Baton Rouge (La.) Parish school system's huge budget surplus this past fiscal year. If I did, there wouldn't be a word fit for an even minimally family-friendly blog.

And if it were a movie, it'd probably get an NC-17. But I will run some pictures with this post -- pictures of the parish's "flagship" school, Baton Rouge Magnet High.

That ought to be comment enough.

FOR YOU FOLKS down in Baton Rouge, you poor souls who haven't fled the Gret Stet . . . yet . . . here is your government at work, as reported by Charles Lussier of The Advocate:

The East Baton Rouge Parish school system is still reaping the benefits of the post-hurricane economy and in the process amassing one of its biggest surpluses ever, according to its annual audit released Wednesday.

The school system finished fiscal 2006-07, which ended June 30, with $66.1 million in undesignated money left in the bank. That’s $8.6 million more than it had left over the previous fiscal year.

New revenue grew by 2.3 percent last year, barely outpacing spending, which grew by 2.1 percent for the same period.

The annual audit was conducted by the firm Postlethwaite & Netterville and was presented Wednesday to the School Board’s Finance Committee.

The auditors gave an unqualified high opinion, finding no material weaknesses in the system’s internal controls. They gave special credit to the finance staff, which, year after year, wins awards for the quality of its accounting work.

Mike Schexnayder, a partner in the firm, said the big surplus, or fund balance, is especially good news.

He noted the surplus equals 20 percent of the system’s general operating expenses. Just four years ago, the system had only the equivalent of 5 percent in reserve. The state Department of Education recommends that the school district keep the equivalent of 10 percent in reserve.

Later in the meeting, the committee recommended immediately dipping into the surplus to finance a midyear, across-the-board pay raise for all employees.

The higher surplus, however, makes the parish system a bigger target for lawyers from the new Central school district, which began operating July 1. Central claims it deserves 5 percent of the parish’s surplus, but State District Judge Wilson Fields rejected that argument last month. The case is on appeal.

The conclusion of the audit means the lawyers will have precise numbers to argue about rather than projections, and the actual numbers are much larger than those projections.

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:

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?

That's a lot of money for something you poop in

Revolution 21 does not have a $23,000 crapper.

Revolution 21 does not have a $230 crapper.

Revolution 21 has two crappers, and we might get $23.00 for both of them as scrap. But they do the job.

Revolution 21 does not understand why anyone, much less an alleged servant of God, would need much more than your basic, white $99.95 crapper.

BUT IF YOU walk into the offices of any "ministry" and find a $23,000 crapper after excusing yourself to use the facilities, be assured of this -- those folks are, first and foremost, ministering to themselves. With other people's money.

And God is not pleased. A-tall.

OF COURSE, when you're talking $23,000 commodes -- and the document did say "Commode with Marble Top" -- chances are you could be talking about this:

That's very different. But it's no less obscene an expenditure for a ministry headquarters, an expenditure made with other people's money in the name of a Savior who had no home to lay His head.

Rich dessert would be an understatement

This is so wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to start a decent rant.

Let's just suggest that the Serendipity 3 restaurant in New York -- of course -- serve up a good $3.98 chocolate sundae and encourage those of its patrons who have more money than sense to donate $24,996.02 to the poor.

Or AIDS research.

Or the homeless.

Or cancer research.

Or toward renovating a crumbling public school.

BUT THEY WON'T, so read this instead and puke. But not after eating a $25,000 dessert:

A day after New York City came up with a $1,000 bagel, a local restaurateur unveiled a $25,000 chocolate sundae on Wednesday, setting a Guinness world record for the most expensive dessert.

Stephen Bruce, owner of Serendipity 3, partnered with luxury jeweler Euphoria New York to create the "Frrozen Haute Chocolate," a blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the most expensive and exotic from around the globe.

The dessert, spelled with two Rs, is infused with 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home.

"It took us a long time to experiment with all the ingredients and flavors, and more than three months were needed just to design the golden spoon," Bruce told Reuters.

CAN ANYONE think of a more insane waste of money and resources? It boggles the mind. The Bolshevik Revolution happened for a reason, you know.

Writing checks today that tomorrow can't cash

You're looking a little sleepy.

Oil prices hit a record high of $97 a barrel on Tuesday, but the next generation of consumers could look back on that price with envy. The dire predictions of a key report on international oil supplies released Wednesday suggest that oil prices could move irreversibly over the $100 a barrel threshold in the not too distant future, as the global economy faces a serious energy shortage.

SO REPORTS Time magazine. All awake now?

Good. Here's what else the piece says:

This gloomy assessment comes from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization representing the 26 rich, gas-guzzling member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The agency is not known for alarmist warnings, and its World Energy Outlook is typically viewed by policy wonks as a solid indicator of global energy supplies. In a marked change from its traditionally bland, measured tones, the IEA's 2007 report says governments need to make urgent, bold decisions on energy policy, or risk massive environmental and energy-supply crises within two decades — crises and shortages that could spark serious global conflicts.

"I am sorry to say this, but we are headed toward really bad days," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told TIME this week. "Lots of targets have been set but very little has been done. There is a lot of talk and no action." .

The reason for the IEA's alarm is its expectation that economic development will raise global energy demands by about 50% in a generation, from today's 85 million barrels a day to about 116 million barrels a day in 2030. Nearly half that increase in demand will come from just two countries — China and India, which are electrifying hundreds of cities and putting millions of new cars on their roads, most driven by people who once walked, or rode bicycles and buses. By 2030, those two countries will be responsible for two-thirds of the world's carbon gas emissions, which are the primary human activity causing global warming .

India and China have argued against enforcing strict emission controls in their countries, on the grounds that these could hinder their economic growth and prompt a global economic slowdown. But the new IEA report says working with China and India on alternative energy sources and curbing emissions is a matter of global urgency.

The bad news is not only environmental. As the world scrambles to boost energy supplies over the next two decades, an ever-greater percentage of its supplies of oil and gas will come from a dwindling number of countries, largely arrayed around the Persian Gulf, as the massive North Sea and Gulf of Mexico deposits are finally exhausted. That will leave the industrialized countries far more dependent on the volatile Middle East in 2030 than they are today, and the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran will dictate terms to companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, which increasingly operate as contractors to state-run oil companies in many producer nations.

"Most of the oil companies are going to be in an identity crisis, and need to redefine their business strategies," Birol says. The soul-searching may have already begun, as oil executives begin sounding the alarm about the supply crunch that lies ahead. Last week, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of the French oil giant Total, told the Financial Times that even the target of 100 million barrels a day is an optimistic one for an industry that currently produces 85 million — far short of the 116 million barrels a day the IEA projects will be needed by 2030 to fuel the global economy.

And in a sharp departure from the usually reassuring comments offered by Big Oil executives, De Margerie said companies and governments now realize that they have overestimated the amount of oil that could be extracted from places difficult to reach and costly to explore. "It is not my view, it is the industry view," he said. In other words, the message is that the current sky-high oil prices may not be a temporary burden on the world economy.

IF YOU'RE not much worried, try reading what Georgetown professor Patrick Deneen has to say. And remember, it's his job to study this stuff:

Declining oil production does not solely imply more costly commutes; indeed, when considering the profound effects of higher energy costs (i.e., less net energy in the world), higher commuting costs seem to be of comparatively negligible importance. The effects of peak oil throughout the economic system (including in the most obvious form of higher transportation costs) have far-reaching and world-altering consequences.

First, declining amounts of energy raises serious questions about the viability of “globalization.” This phrase, taking the descriptive form of a process, implies an apparently inevitable and irreversible set of actions that no human activity can resist or prevent....

Globalization, simply put, describes a world in which ever-greater interpenetration of culture and peoples has occurred as a result, at base, of economic expansion and interconnections. These economic interconnections themselves have been the consequence of the spread of free market economic system worldwide, a system that has depended essentially upon thoroughgoing mobility and ease of transportation. The current form of global capital rests on a worldwide labor market in which low-cost markets produce goods for more wealthy high-cost labor markets, which in turn trade for developments in technology and what Robert Reich has called the “products” of “symbolic analysts.” We inhabit a world almost unthinkable, if nevertheless attributable at least in theory, to Adam Smith, in which extremely low cost markets, producing goods largely made of plastic and chemical derivatives (i.e., petroleum), supply high-labor markets with products produced more cheaply than if those same products were produced in the same town as the consumer. The low cost of the raw materials (forms of petroleum) and the overall low cost of bulk transport (shipping and air-freight, propelled by petroleum), result in the cheap production of a nearly unimaginable array of products, all of which rest significantly on a platform of cheap and ample fossil fuels. Peak oil implies higher costs. However, higher prices are themselves a signal of a more fundamental phenomenon, namely less overall energy and less overall material. To the extent that the material form of globalization rests upon this base, the arrival of peak oil means that this basis of globalization will begin to unwind.

“Symbolic analysts” and hence advanced modern economies will be also adversely affected. In the simplest form, declining energy (as was evidenced in 1971) will result in less overall economic activity. A contraction of the economy will occur, and with it, the basis of many of the jobs that now result from an economy based upon growth. Much of the financial services industry will unravel; indeed, banking itself will come under extreme stress as fiat currencies loose value worldwide, and inflation makes existing and future loans increasingly worthless and dries up sources of investment. Material and technological development itself will stall as there is less overall investment, and the basic platform of modern high-tech communication and computing – electricity – will become increasingly expensive. High electrical costs may be forestalled with the increased reliance upon nuclear energy, but that very increased reliance will quickly manifest itself in the form of higher prices due to limited worldwide supplies of uranium.

Movement of products and people will become more difficult and less frequent. There is significant question about the future viability of commercial aviation. Once exclusively the privilege of a wealthy elite, it is likely that commercial aviation will again become the province of the very well-off and a rare experience for a middle-class that has come to take it for granted – but only after significant contraction in the number of existing carriers and, accordingly, flight routes. Many parts of the country and the world that were once isolated will find themselves again less accessible, and less easily departed from. Inasmuch as globalization has particularly rested on the long-term expansion of aviation, with the imminent arrival of peak oil, its future is deeply in question.

Domestically, the national economic system depends extensively upon trucking. This industry will become increasingly strained with the arrival of peak oil, most immediately in the form of higher energy costs which will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services. The interstate highway system will come under stress, inasmuch as the primary ingredient of pavement – petroleum – will make repairs on roads more costly and therefore rare. Higher prices will mean less ability to afford even what have come to be regarded as the necessities of civilization. These include not only “necessities” such as labor-saving devices, pharmaceutical products (many of which are themselves based on petroleum products), household items and the like, but perhaps most importantly of all, food. Indeed, the implications of peak oil upon food costs, and food production itself, border on the apocalyptic.

The imminence of peak oil directly and adversely impacts our ability to grow and transport sufficient quantities of food. The amount of fossil fuels used to grow basic agricultural commodities, and hence, to provide feedstock and ultimately fill our supermarkets, in the form of fertilizers, fuel for farm equipment, refrigeration and food transportation, is enormous. It is estimated by some that it takes approximately the fossil fuel equivalent of ten calories to put one calorie of food on our tables – significantly higher if one considers a meat diet. Another way of considering this equation: the equivalent of approximately 300 gallons of petroleum or its derivatives are necessary to produce our annual diet. Still another way to consider this fact: our daily diet would require the equivalent of 111 hours, or three weeks, of human labor. With the arrival of peak oil, our capacity to continue to produce adequate food supplies for a planet of 6 billion people will increasingly come into question. Already it has been noted that the demand for corn for the processing of ethanol has led to a steep increase in food costs, particularly given the extent to which corn lies at the root of much of the modern industrial world’s diet. Some of the gloomiest prognosticators of the peak oil phenomenon foretell the horrors of a global “die off.”

THE PARTY'S OVER, people, and we're going to wake up to one hell of a hangover.

We, particularly in the United States, have been living like there's no tomorrow, what with all our obnoxiously huge houses in obnoxiously far-flung "communities" from which we commute to our jobs in obnoxiously large SUVs.

In our land of the everlasting today, we no longer can distinguish between "want" and "need." We have a choice: We can stop the madness, or we can continue on like there's no tomorrow. But if our self-indulgent lifestyles keep writing checks today that our futures can't cash tomorrow, there's this one little problem.

Tomorrow.

Let's all 'pull a Rose' for America

What if an entire country "pulled a Rose" this week?

Would that be it? Would America fall apart, descend into chaos, plummet into an economic death spiral?

Or would we regain a slight semblance of national sanity for the first time since, oh . . . about 1938.

SO, WHAT'S "pulling a Rose"?

This is "pulling a Rose" -- Jim Rose being the now-former radio play-by-play announcer for Nebraska football and baseball -- as reported by the Lincoln Journal Star:

Jim Rose spent Saturday at home with his family, watching the Nebraska-Kansas game on TV.

It was strange, yet it wasn’t, he said.

He missed announcing the game on the radio, but relished the time he had with his wife and two children, ages 11 and 7.

“I enjoyed it … really enjoyed it” the “Voice of the Huskers” said Tuesday.

In the end, it was his family and his health that prompted Rose to give up his “dream job.”

Rose, 44, resigned after six years as play-by-play announcer for the Nebraska football team, citing personal reasons.

“I think the demand of the job, of six years of getting up at 4:30 in the morning and working until late at night … it was beginning to take its toll on me,” Rose said. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”

Rose made the announcement on Omaha radio station KFAB, where he co-hosts a morning show.

Greg Sharpe replaced Rose on Saturday’s Nebraska-Kansas football broadcast and also handled Rose’s duties as host of Sunday’s televised Bill Callahan Show.

“Last week, it got to the point that there was really something tragically wrong with me,” Rose said. “I had to stop everything and figure out what it was.

“I wasn’t ready for the KU broadcast. I put in the time, but I wasn’t ready.”

Sharpe will handle Rose’s duties for the rest of the season, said David Witty, vice president and general manager of the Husker Sports Network.

(snip)

Rose will remain with Husker Sports Network in the sales department. He also will continue to co-host the KFAB morning show.

He has given up all his on-air responsibilities for the network. In addition to calling Husker football games, he appeared on various pre- and post-game shows and handled play-by-play for the Nebraska baseball team.

(snip)

Adrian Fiala, who worked with Rose as a color analyst, said he understood Rose’s decision.

“His health and well-being is much more important than the sports things we’re talking about,” he said. “I told him last night he needs to get some balance back in his life and get better.”

Rose called his time as Nebraska’s announcer rewarding and exciting.

“But I was always doing a little of this and a little of that,” he said. “There always was a phone call coming in, an interview to do, a banquet to emcee …”

“I loved doing that stuff. It wasn’t work for me. I just regret the toll it was taking on me and my family.”

GOOD ON JIM ROSE. Our status-obsessed and materialistic American culture tells us -- told him -- that he's losing money, losing prestige, losing the chance to climb to greater "heights."

Even now, the Nebraska rumor mill is debating what really caused Rose to walk out on a sweet gig. That very conventional "wisdom" says Jim Rose switched on his mic this morning, then lost face.

I guess you could look at it that way. Even if you do, good on Jim Rose.

And I think that great quartet of philosophers -- John, Paul, George and Ringo -- will back me up on that. In a seminal work on the socio-psychological underpinnings of Western anomie amid great material wealth and professional achievement, the four opined in "Can't Buy Me Love" that absent spiritual and emotional fulfillment, great wealth and achievement -- to use the rather crude American vernacular here -- "ain't all it's cracked up to be." To wit:

Can't buy me love, love
Can't buy me love

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
'Cause I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

I'll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can't buy me love, no no no, no

Say you don't need no diamond rings and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can't buy me love, no no no, no

Say you don't need no diamond rings and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of things that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Can't buy me love, love,
(Can't buy me) love

THE WORLD SAYS Jim Rose: Husker Play-by-Play Guy, threw away a great job. I say Jim Rose: Husband and Dad regained a better family.