T he annual cheerleading session for Livingston Parish is always enjoyable. There are some impressive sales people that will make you believe in the future of Livingston Parish – they’ll make you want it, need it, eat, sleep, and breathe it.
You ain’t nobody in Louisiana politics until somebody works for you.
I grew up in Austin, Texas. At least that’s what we called it then. I’ve often said that after all the growth it has experienced, I barely recognize the city I once called home. If a new proposal goes anywhere, though, I won’t be able to call it home or Austin.
A war with Iran would define, consume and potentially destroy the Trump presidency, but exhilarate the neocon never-Trumpers who most despise the man.
Just under three months remain until the “Super Tuesday” primary elections, which will bring an assortment of local, parish and state items to voters on Nov. 6.
We’re less than one week from the two-year anniversary of the worst natural disaster in the history of Livingston Parish, a benchmark which will likely make many of us look at where we have come in the period since the storm.
Editor’s note: The News asks readers and commenters to remember that local comments only will be accepted and published. A column on April 26, 2018, explained The News is moving away from national commentary, focusing on local, community-based banter. The News will accept national comments o…
It’s been almost two years since water covered most of Livingston Parish. The Great Flood of 2016 saw 31 inches of rain fall over the Comite and Amite river basins in a short amount of time, which covered areas on both the eastern and western sides of the parish.
Donald Trump, who assembled a winning coalition that included manufacturing workers, farmers, ranchers, people who ride Harleys and capitalists resentful of Barack Obama, is now doing his best to turn them all against him. His insistence on levying tariffs on a wide range of products is perf…
“Make America Great Again!” will, given the astonishing victory it produced for Donald Trump, be recorded among the most successful slogans in political history.
George Burns coined one of my favorite quotations about memory.
State and federal lawmakers have cleared a few major hurdles to improve recovery efforts for homeowners affected by the 2016 floods, but none may prove as beneficial – or as critical –as what lies ahead.
I am very upset over the derogatory comment made about the Denham Springs-Walker Library. The staff is very courteous. The facilities are great. They try to accommodate any request you make.
The status of development, commercial or residential, in Livingston Parish is on shaky ground.
For an election cycle that’s expected to be bland, last week’s qualifying process opened up an impressive spread of statewide, regional and multi-parish positions — 68 total, not including local-level posts.
In 1967, Pete Seeger composed a protest song that said: “We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on.” It was a poke at President Lyndon Johnson, in an allegory about Vietnam. That war is long past. But Johnson led us into another, more literal Big Muddy that we have …
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to mind in this time of Trump.
The term “surreal” often applies to those events one could not imagine outside the realm of a dream.
It’s no secret the National Flood Insurance Program is a broken system.
Editor’s note: The News asks readers and commenters to remember that local comments only will be accepted and published. A column on April 26, 2018, explained The News is moving away from national commentary, focusing on local, community-based banter. The News will accept national comments o…
Entrepreneurs and business development experts look for opportunities in what are called consumer pain points. These are the issues in a process that cause the most problems and most stress. Of the many painful points in the real estate process intrepid innovators seek to improve, none are m…
Time, like a river, moves ever forward – making its own path, even when things are in the way. Sometimes the strength of the current seems different – less powerful, or more powerful as we get older – but, invariably, all things come to pass and are deposited at whatever place the river, our…
With 2018’s session-palooza out of the way (hopefully), Gov. John Bel Edwards can begin focusing on re-election. He’s not on the ballot until next fall, but for all practical purposes Edwards has been in campaign mode since his last bid ended in 2015. Such is the non-stop nature of modern el…
Beginning his news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump declared U.S. relations with Russia have “never been worse.” He then added pointedly, that just changed “about four hours ago.”
A comment at the start of the Laurel Ridge Levee extension public meeting summed the problems residents in south Livingston Parish face with flooding issues.
Call Livingston Parish the “sleeper hit” among high-performing school systems.
Editor’s Note: The News asks readers and commenters to remember that local comments only will be accepted and published. A column on April 26, 2018, explained The News is moving away from national commentary, focusing on local, community-based banter. The News will accept national comments o…
The release of Louisiana Checkbook (checkbook.la.gov) shows a move in the right direction for Louisiana government – a fiscally responsible path.ng.
The Legislature held forth from Baton Rouge for five consecutive months this calendar year, from Feb. 19 to June 24. Throughout the Memorial Day and Easter holidays, and just as most families were taking summer vacations, Louisiana’s senators and representatives were holed up inside the Capi…
In 1989, a New York businessman worried about chronic federal budget deficits erected the National Debt Clock in midtown Manhattan to keep a running tally of how much the U.S. government owes. The total had reached $2.7 trillion, and Seymour Durst wanted “to call attention to the soaring deb…
If Mitch McConnell’s Senate can confirm his new nominee for the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump may have completed the capture of all three branches of the U.S. government for the Republican Party.
Progress brings development, which often lures hundreds, or thousands, to an area. In the process, the other elements that make change a smooth transition do not always coincide.
Announcement that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will fully fund the remaining construction of the Comite River Diversion Canal brought a new sense of hope that the project may finally come to fruition.
Editor’s Note: The News asks that readers and commenters remember that local comments only will be accepted and published. A column on April 26, 2018 explained that the News is moving away from national commentary, focusing on local, community-based banter. The News will accept national comm…
When I was a young teenager my southern grandmother gave me some dating advice that has stuck with me all these years later - Don’t listen to a word men say, but watch everything they do. While I may not have followed that advice as closely as I should have in my dating history over the year…
With the Fourth of July in the rearview mirror, the parish with some of the best schools in the state prepares for yet another year of education, sports and community building.
This fall’s congressional elections may not present Louisiana with many opportunities for change, but the buildup to qualifying has been entertaining nonetheless. From celebrity appearances to national media attention, the developing election cycle has certainly been anything but boring.
Republican appointees dominate the Supreme Court. Donald Trump had more appeals court judges confirmed in his first year in office than any previous president. And he will go on filling judicial vacancies with the help of the GOP-controlled Senate. If it was not obvious before this week, it …
“No Borders! No Nations! No Deportations!” “Abolish ICE!”
During the five years I’ve worked here at Livingston Parish News, one of the most important things I’ve learned has not come directly from the office, or even the stories I’ve written.
A different type of war could loom for our nation, one that does not involve the traditional round of troops and weaponry.
One of the most foolish things that our federal government has ever done is to implement Daylight Saving Time, and now the Louisiana legislature is considering having this ridiculous idea of saving daylight year round. The federal government gives states the right to opt out of Daylight Savi…
Last week we talked about pricing your home too high. Of course there is also such a thing as pricing your house too low. So how do you find that sweet spot where you aren’t leaving money on the table because you priced it too low or too high?
As has become customary for the Fourth of July, I’m going to drop into a first-person account of one of our wild family trips. As with last year’s tale, this one will revolve around the beach, but it will be a look into one of the epic battles my father and I had over the years.
If you believe political trends from recent history routinely repeat themselves, then what we’ve seen from this current crop of state legislators may be all we’re going to see.
In 1729, an Irish political writer named Jonathan Swift noted with sorrow the large number of hungry children in Ireland and offered “a modest proposal” to solve the problem. His suggestion was for people to buy and eat them.
If Trump’s supporters are truly “a basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them?
During the five years I’ve worked here at the Livingston Parish News, one of the most important things I’ve learned has not come directly from the office, or even the stories I’ve written.
With less than one week left before the end of the current fiscal year, state lawmakers responded to the panic button.
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