September 18, 2025 • 42 mins
You're listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for September 17, 2025.
0:30 We dig into the New Orleans mayoral debate. Accusations of racism and divisive rhetoric took center stage in the debate between Royce Duplessis, Oliver Thomas, and Helena Moreno.
Plus, we cover the top 3 Things You Need to Know.
12:30 Ad Break
13:30 We break down the allegations that Caddo Parish commissioners may have illegally presented an unapproved resolution to Bernie Sanders, despite an ongoing investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrell.
23:00 We unpack the escalating racial rhetoric in the New Orleans mayoral race, focusing on allegations that leading candidate Elena Moreno has been referred to as the “white devil” by staffers of her opponents, Royce Duplessis and Oliver Thomas.
We Dig Deep into Louisiana’s new Office of Louisiana Highway Construction (OLHC), designed to accelerate bridge and highway projects across the state.
32:30 Ad Break
33:30 We disuss why smaller LSU campuses like LSUA and LSUS are attracting more students. Plus, we have a little fun guessing which states have the worst bridges.
40:30 We finish off today's episode with some good news—the barbecue crunch at Magnolia Pit BBQ is back!
Follow us:
americangroundradio.com
Facebook: facebook.com / AmericanGroundRadio
Instagram: instagram.com/americangroundradio
0:30 We dig into the New Orleans mayoral debate. Accusations of racism and divisive rhetoric took center stage in the debate between Royce Duplessis, Oliver Thomas, and Helena Moreno.
Plus, we cover the top 3 Things You Need to Know.
- New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is asking for permission to travel to Iceland.
- Jefferson Parish Residents will see a drop of 35% in their flood insurance.
- A teacher at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge was arrested yesterday after she was caught with cocaine on campus.
12:30 Ad Break
13:30 We break down the allegations that Caddo Parish commissioners may have illegally presented an unapproved resolution to Bernie Sanders, despite an ongoing investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrell.
23:00 We unpack the escalating racial rhetoric in the New Orleans mayoral race, focusing on allegations that leading candidate Elena Moreno has been referred to as the “white devil” by staffers of her opponents, Royce Duplessis and Oliver Thomas.
We Dig Deep into Louisiana’s new Office of Louisiana Highway Construction (OLHC), designed to accelerate bridge and highway projects across the state.
32:30 Ad Break
33:30 We disuss why smaller LSU campuses like LSUA and LSUS are attracting more students. Plus, we have a little fun guessing which states have the worst bridges.
40:30 We finish off today's episode with some good news—the barbecue crunch at Magnolia Pit BBQ is back!
Follow us:
americangroundradio.com
Facebook: facebook.com / AmericanGroundRadio
Instagram: instagram.com/americangroundradio
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crampton with genuine American parks, powered by patriots, driven by
the heart and soul of the American dream, and now
one hundred percent tariff free. We choose to go to
the moon and do the other thing, not because they
(00:22):
are eamy, but because they are odd. It is time
for us to realize that we're too great a nation
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Speaker 2 (00:32):
I have a dream that one day this nation will
rise up, live out the true meaning of its tree.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
American Ground Radio with Lewis r avalone and Stephen Proko.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
One. This is American Ground Radio, Stephen Parver, Lewis Well,
this New Orleans mayor's race, yea getting out of control.
Of course, it's coming down to control. Well, it's coming
down to race. The race card is being pulled out
because moreno, moreno. Apparently she's uh, she's white, she is
(01:24):
or fair skinned or well apparently one of the candidates'
staffers allegedly referred to her as a white devil. And
how they a white devil, Yes, a white devil that
was uh. And it and it erupted, all of this
(01:45):
really erupted and became public u During this week's w
w L TV may oral debate. Okay, I mean it
had all the fireworks and the absurdity that has come
to define politics as especially in Louisiana. You had Royce Duplessis,
Oliver Thomas in the front runner, Helena Moreno, who's pulling
(02:09):
like around fifty percent. They were all on stage and
in the middle of the shouting match, this phrase popped
up that should make every single Louisiana an American ears
perk up. And it was the white Devil. So allegedly,
one of Dupless's staffers referred to Moreno as a white devil.
(02:29):
And that's while the debates going on. No No in
an email in an email apparently, well that's dumb, and
so this was brought up. And look, this isn't just
an insult, and let's look at some of the history here. No,
it's a racial slur. It is a racial slur that
is dressed up in the language of nineteen sixties radicalism,
(02:52):
and it tells you everything you need to know about
where some of these campaigns are willing to go. So
this came to light in a very convoluted but telling way. Moreno,
who is under attack from Duplessis and Thomas.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Right, you know, because they're so far behind, they don't
stand a chance unless they can convince everybody else that
she's evil. Unless unless there's a huge, huge issue in
the race that just comes out of nowhere. Those two
are going to lose, and they're going to lose badly.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But see white devil. If it is true that it
was said, it's not just a generic insult, Okay, it
comes straight out of the Nation of Islam. It's black
nationalistic rhetoric, right militant activism from the nineteen seventies in
the nineteen sixties, and it was a phrase used by
preachers like Elijah Mohammad and Lewis Farakahn. Real, cook, what
(03:47):
do you do if there if someone's an actual devil?
What do you do with that person? Oh? Wait, I
unspeakable things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So because I mean in
the week where we've murdered Charlie Kerr because people kept
calling him a fascist and a racist and and all
these So Royce Duplessis he says he doesn't even know
(04:09):
this staffer. That's not how people talk and he doesn't
know anything about it. So he has denied this completely. Well,
what was the email written? That the email was written
and they do have they do have the receipts. Okay,
So he says he doesn't know this staffer, and I understand.
(04:30):
But in the week that Charlie Kirk is murdered because
of people on the left calling him a fascist, people
on the left calling him evil, people calling him a Nazi,
And now we've actually cranked it up because I would
argue that a devil is worse than a Nazi, isn't
I mean, in the pantheon of of awfulness, isn't a
(04:52):
devil worse than a Nazi? It was a Nazi worse
worse than a devil, which one because because either way,
you don't give a devil tea and crumpets, do you.
But see, here's the other part of this. Royce Duplessis,
whose staff member allegedly referred to Elena Moreno as the
white devil, and that that's going to be part of
their strategy and communicating with black voters, Black Democrat voters
(05:16):
in New Orleans. He has to to be part of
their strategy. But Duplessus himself has been on records saying
he won't ignore race. That's his promise to voters. I
am going to bet no, he says, that's that's why
you should vote for me.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I'm not going to ignore race. I'm not going to
just assume that everybody's created equal. No, I am gonna
double down on being racist. I'm going to be racist
against white people. That's why you should vote for me.
That's his campaigns.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Apparently, apparently he he's not going to pretend we're all
equal under the law. Why not we are? Because I
guess maybe he believes that New Orleans is a chocolate city.
I mean, and look, he's talking about fighting for black jobs.
And look, I've got nothing. None of us have anything
against black New Orleanians having jobs, no but or opportunities
(06:09):
or prosperities, God bless them all. But when you say
black jobs, what you are inherently saying is that you're
going to prioritize one racial group over others. You are
telling white New Orleanians, who still make up about thirty
one percent of the city, you are not my priority.
You're telling Hispanics somewhere between seven and twelve percent of
(06:32):
the population, depending on the estimate. You're not what he's
basically saying, You're not my concern. You're telling Asians, which
make up three to four percent of the city of
New Orleans. You're not part of my plan. That's not leadership.
That it's racism. That's that's really all it is. If
you're going to just focus on the jobs for and
I don't care what color race it is, I don't
(06:54):
care what black jobs, and I don't imagine I madgs
if you just come out, imagine if Atlanna Morine to
flip that around, she said, I'm going to focus on
white jobs.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
See, this is how you can really tell something's racist.
Just change the colors and if it offends you, most
likely that's race.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But here's what's so interesting. You've ever President Trump when
he talked about black jobs, and all over the internet
folks got all up in arms and mocked him for saying,
what's a black job? What's a black job? And here
we got Royce, what's a white job? And here you've
got a black candidate running for mayor of New Orleans
(07:29):
talking about he's going to fight for black jobs. So
it's so it's only offensive. And by the way, what
President Trump was saying and what he was referencing was
not necessarily that these are jobs specifically people for black people,
but that that unemployment rate within the black community is
at his historic historic lows. Well it was in his
(07:52):
first term. In his first term, so when you talk
about black jobs, you're what you're talking about is unemployment
within the black community, right being very, very low. And
when he was president, black workers in the United States
saw not only their jobs increase, the number of Black
Americans who had a job increase, but they also saw
(08:12):
an increase in their wages, their growth in wages faster
than the top one percent. And I think you're going
to see that again in this second Trump administration. He's
having to do a lot of clean up, right, And
we don't see that data yet, it's too early to
have that data.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
But in the next year, I would expect to see
that data. And one of the things you will see
is that more Americans, folks born in this country are
getting jobs than people who came from other countries. During
the Biden administration, he had a whole bunch of illegal
immigrants coming in and taking American jobs, and that includes
black Americans too.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
See, it's really foolish for anyone that wants to lead
a city to insult at a racial demographic in that way.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Look, Royce you're going to lose this campaign. Don't lose
your credibility in the process. You're going to lose the campaign.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Who says he already hasn't. Well, yeah, and that's.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
That's the thing I'm if you double down on this
racial nonsense, hmm, you're gonna have to go to church
a little bit more. Let's get to the top of
the things you need to know before tomorrow. First, you
need before on.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is asking for permission to
travel to Iceland. Contrell has been banned from leaving the
country because she's currently under indictment for multiple counts of
wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and lying to a grand jury.
Cantrell pled not guilty to those charges earlier this month,
but was forced to give up her passport as a
condition of her plea. Unlike most of her international travel,
(09:44):
this trip was not supposed to be the result of
alleged official business, but rather a personal trip with family members. Girl, GERL, GARYL,
you have got to stay at home. Can you believe me? Seriously,
she's under the federal indictments. She wants to flee the
country and not on city business. She just wants to
go to Iceland. Is she going to charge the city
(10:06):
for transportation and protection because you know it's not safe
for her to fly coach?
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Second thing you need to before in all parish, Jefferson
Parish residents will see a drop of thirty five percent
in their flood insurance. That's because the National Flood Insurance
Program Community Rating System is increasing the rating on rural
parts of Jefferson Parish from a Level five to a
level three. The rating increase comes because the parish has
been putting into effect new flood plan management strategies. Jefferson
(10:32):
Parish President Cynthia Leisheng released a statement saying, I'm so
proud of our floodpain flood plane Management, and Hazard Mitigation team,
along with the many other Jefferson Parish departments, partners and
municipalities that work together to make this happen.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
What do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (10:49):
This is one of those things I talked about Government
should only do the things that only government can do.
And if there's things that have to happen government wide
for emergency management, and by doing those things you actually
end up blowing the insurance costs for the people, then
that's one of those things that government should be doing
and the third.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Thing you need before to while.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
A teacher at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge was
arrested yesterday after she was caught with cocaine on campus.
Forty seven year old Virginia Summers was caught when a
drug dog found the cocaine in her wallet during a
random search at the school. Police then searched her car
and found marijuana and marijuana pipes. Summers allegedly told police
that the cocaine belonged to her friend, who put it
(11:28):
in her wallet during the LSU game over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Why I guess that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah, I would just here hold my cocaine while I
go cheer for the LSU.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Those are excuse.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
She didn't explain the marijuana apparently. But you gotta choose
your friends better. Maybe you gotta choose your teachers better.
Maybe we'll be back.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
You are listening to American Ground.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
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Speaker 3 (13:12):
Welcome back to American Ground Radium, Stephen par I mean
calm on, all right, I mean calm on about what
apparently the Cattle Parish Commission, which is already under investigation
by Attorney General Liz Merle for violation of the open
(13:34):
meetings law. Right so far as they wrote a resolution
that they presented to Bernie Sanders when Bernie Sanders visited
our great state of Louisiana in Shreveport. They presented a
resolution to him that was not voted on the entire commission. Yeah,
(13:56):
just absolutely, First of all, it's illegal to do that
it is, and it is arrogant. It is. So this
was it's it's yeah, this was that he had a
car show in the main attraction in Louisiana State Fear Right,
So you got a.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Car show going on. Roy Burrell was there.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
He was allegedly, well, no, there's a there's a photo
of them there, there's multiple photos of them. I mean,
I guess unless it could be his doppelganger or or
they could be I guess made up. But he's he's
reading a proclamation. Doesn't appear to be AI generated. It
does not. Maybe maybe Apparently some reports say that he
posted that same photo on his own social media page,
(14:42):
but that's been since deleted. Yeah, I didn't see that
on his page when I went and looked. I don't
even know what the the the resolution was it. But
but apparently he presented some sort of resolution at the
Louisiana State Fear claiming or suggesting otherwise that it was
(15:02):
a resolution that had been voted upon by the Commission,
by all of the Cattle Piarish Commission.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And yet once again, it was never on an agenda item,
it was never voted on. Republicans didn't know about it
at all. So how do you have a resolution, how
do you have another proclamation claiming that the entire Cattle
Parish Commission voted on this thing. This is now what
the fourth one of these that they've done this summer. Well,
(15:30):
this is a pattern of disrespect. I mean, we've seen
this movie before. This is a pattern of criminal behavior.
This is a pattern of reception of the the people
of Cattle Parish. You are lying to the people of
Cattle Perish.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Allegedly, you have allegedly lied to the people. This is
a matter that's currently under investigation. It is.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
But if you have look, here's the facts. They read
a proclamation to Bernie Sanders. Yes, they presented, presented one
as if it had been and it was not on
an agenda item.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
There was no agenda item. It was wasn't voted on,
and it was yeah, that's what I'm saying. It wasn't voted,
It wasn't on an agendaem commissioners, and it wasn't voted on.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
All right, those are facts. I understand there's a court
case on this, but let's just deal with the facts.
That is illegal behavior. Well, and they didn't just do
it once. We've got multiple times of them doing this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
No, I mean, you think they'd stop breaking their own rules,
especially after they got sued by the Attorney General Liz Merle.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And and according to some reports in this I don't
know this maybe that this is an alleged part.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
They were in negotiations to settle the case with the
Attorney General.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
And you know what's ironic about that is they get
they get a vote, so the commissioners get a vote
in terms of the resolution or the settling this matter. Okay,
that seems kind of self serving there.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Yeah, wouldn't that have to be put onto an agenda
item if you're gonna vote on a settlement with the.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Attorney General's office. But if you're the Attorney General and
you're you're not going to take kindly to this latest stunt.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
If it is true, this is I wonder at this
point is are you able to remove anybody that signed this,
anybody that voted for this outside of the commission Are
you able to remove them from office for derection to do?
Because this is intentional At this point, this is intentional
deception of the people of Cattle Paris because you're lying
(17:39):
to them when you say we've passed a resolution.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
No you haven't.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
You have forged a resolution. But that's a lie. And
you've done it repeatedly, even after the Attorney General told
you you can't do that. You go, ah, screwt, We're
going to do it again.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And well the lawsuit from the Attorney General alleges three times. Yes,
this would be the four if if this by Roy Burrell,
if it in fact is correct, if it is a resolution,
If this was a fourth resolution, that would be a
fourth that would be a fourth time. And there's an
alleged part. We don't know if this was actually a
less because apparently there are three times documented in the
(18:19):
petition from the Attorney Generals.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
This was just people at the at the the event
said he was reading a petition. Now it's interesting if
he posted it to his social media pages.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And then pulled it down. Well, Roy, why why would
you do that? Roy? Why would why would you If it's.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Such a wonderful resolution and everything's above board, why would
you post it to your social media and then pull
it down?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And you know the bottom line to all of this,
You know, we say it on the show all the time.
Words have meaning, right m M. Well, so do votes,
so do rules. I mean, you can't just this is
the law. Okay, but I understand, but you can't just
discard rules or the law or procedures when they get
(19:06):
in your way. Because once you start ignoring the rules,
once you start pretending process does not matter, you don't
have a government anymore. You've got chaos. You've got rule
by decree. You get cowboy Roy Burrell riding roughshod over
the Commission here allegedly presenting unauthorized proclamations, allegedly as though
(19:30):
they were official perish or Commission documents. I don't see
how that's not democracy. That's arrogance, it's disrespectful. It is
it is ridiculous. I don't see how.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
The repeated behavior of that isn't malfeasan's in office. That
I don't understand. When when the attorney you do it once,
oh gosh, my bad. Sorry, we completely just you know,
met it at a restaurant and decided to do it
on our own, and gosh, we just didn't know. But
the Attorney General comes back and says, no, you can't
do that. I'm suing you over this, and you're in
(20:04):
negotiations with the Attorney General of settling that matter, and
you're like, hey, guys, remember when we did that petition
and we didn't tell the Republicans were doing it, and
we didn't put it on the agenda and nobody actually
voted on that. Let's do that again for a car show,
and everybody goes, yeah, that's a great idea. How dumb
do you have to be? Or worse, how dumb do
you think the people of Catto Parish are?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
But how many times is this happening all across the state? Folks?
Are there some folks that aren't Maybe this is being
hidden from more citizens Louisiana's then might appear. How many
times has this happened on the Commission before? Now? Yeah?
(20:45):
Before now? I mean because really, the only reason, I say,
the only reason, one of the reasons that this has
drawn such attention is because you had this extremist, Bernie Sanders,
being given this resolution and the Republican members of the
Commission were like, wait a minute, we're endorsing the policies
(21:09):
of a socialist and that might.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Actually make a little bit of an explanation as to
why they continue doing this. If they've been able to
do this with impunity for years if they've just been
handing out resolutions to all their friends.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Or proclamations or that have never been voted on, recognizing
this person and that person, and they're just like.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Screw it, we're the majority, and we just get to
we just get to issue these proclamations out of the public,
ever knowing that we've done it. Here here, buddy, my friends,
have one of these. Let's see when you campaign, donor
here have a resolution. Let's see here's and a resolution. Look,
that is important because when you pass a resolution, you're
not just making a statement. You're making a declaration on
(21:49):
behalf of every citizen that the Commission represents.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And in the name of them. And here's the thing.
The Decoration of Independent says that any action by a
government body that doesn't have the consent of the govern
is by definition and unjust action. It doesn't have the
consent of the government if you don't do it in
an open meeting, it doesn't, which means every one of
these actions is unjust, and it means we the people
(22:16):
have the right to abolish that form of government and
institute a new one. That's what the Decoration of Independence says.
So wherever you're listening in Louisiana, maybe you ought to
check out your local governing body.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You're listening to American ground radio.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
When you're hungry or the truth, you're just not you
think clearly again by grabbing American ground and get back
to being yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Welcome back to American Groun Radium. Stephen Paul. I just
can't get over the fact that this mayor's race in
New Orleans is devolving into racial epithets. I mean they're
actually calling Elena Moreno, who is who is white and
the leading candidate for mayor in New Orleans, the white devil.
(23:21):
I mean, and look again, I'm going to go back
to this is that kind of language. See, it's very specific,
and it's very deliberate, because if you're losing.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Which which they and Oliver Thomas is, and if that
is part of your campaign strategy, alleged and it again
it is alleged because he has since denied even knowing
the staffer who may have.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Suggested suggested basically attacking Elena Moreno as the white devil.
I mean, this is the rhetoric of the nation of
his and Lewis Ferrikhn. I mean they described white people
as devils, inherently corrupt, irredeemably wicked. And it was a turn.
(24:12):
It was a term designed not to persuade, but not
to debate, but to separate, to say they are evil,
they are beyond saving. It's like Colin people are the enemy.
It's like Colin trumpet fascists. It's designed to turn these people,
these candidates, these political opponents, into something less than human.
(24:35):
Calling Lana Moreno a devil is turning her into something
that's less than human. You know, if you go and
in our cancel culture turning into assassination culture? Is is
that what's going on in New Orleans? But historically, if
you look go back to the Middle Ages, you look
at all the religious wars that were fought, it was
(24:57):
because one side called the other a tanic. Yes, I
mean in the twentieth century, Hitler painted Jews as evil,
as parasitic, as devilish. Right A. Stalin and Mao described
their enemies as devils as well. But again you don't
have to go back that far.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Just go back one week they were calling Charlie Kirk
a fascist, a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Full of hate. Well, wait, is a devil in a
devil full of hate. Didn't then they kill Charlie Kirk
as they said he had hate speech.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
So if we're saying Alana Moreno is a devil, a
white devil, well, what message are you really trying to
send it?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
You're not You're not. Is the campaign trying to say?
You know what? She should be shot? But it paints all, well,
it paints whole groups when you refer to a group
of people as the devil. Yeah, I mean and and
would Hillary Clinton when she said that Trump's supporters were irredeemable, Well, yeah,
but they belong in a basket of deplorable. This is
(26:00):
worse than that. It's not right that the languge is
in its charged. It's still wrong, but it's still it's
still painting an entire group of people with the same
broad brush. Let's stick deep.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Going down, down, down.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So this year, the Louisiana Legislature created a new office,
the New Office of Louisiana Highway Construction. And the point
of this office is to build highways and bridges faster
than the DOTD can or has.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
So the legislature took one hundred million dollars from some
other accounts. They moved him around to fund this new
office and its projects just for the next year. Archie Chase,
on the third was appointed by Jeff Landry to be
the new head of the LHC, and Landry once results quickly.
So the office is planning on fixing or replacing sixty
(26:55):
two different bridges across the state by the end of
next year. Basically, they're hoping to repair or replace five
bridges in Louisiana every single month.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Oh, that's a big change. That sounds very ambitious.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It does sound ambitious. Now to temper that these aren't
big bridges. These aren't bridges across the Mississippi or the
Red River. These are generally two lane bridges that span
about one hundred feet. But they're still very important bridges
because most of these are in rural areas. So in
some of those cases where you have a bridge that's
(27:31):
out or a bridge that's not strong enough to handle,
especially say eighteen wheelers, when you have that bridge out,
instead of just driving across it and you're able to
get to where you want to be in ten fifteen minutes,
now you have to drive around, go find another bridge
you can cross, and then come back down. And now
you're looking at a two or a three hour trip
(27:51):
for something that should have just been twenty thirty minutes. Right, absolutely,
So this is a big, big deals hours of wasted time.
One of the benefits that the LHC has over the
DOTD is how they have to bid out the projects.
So basically, if you're gonna build a bridge and you're
(28:12):
working for the DOTD, you got to put out a
request for proposal, gotta wait, got to get those back,
got to evaluate them, and then you gotta to award
the bid, right, and that can take thirty days, sixty days,
ninety days, whatever. Well, the legislature suspended the state bid
law for one year for the LHC, the Office of
(28:37):
Highway Construction, office of it. Oh my gosh, I'm forgetting
the Office of Louisiana Highway Construction so they don't have
to send stuff out for bid. This is according to
the Streetport Poser Advocate talked to. They talked to Shayson
about the fact that they already have hired eight different
contractors to work on those sixty two different bridge projects
(28:58):
across the state. So again they didn't have to forbid,
They've already hired eight contractors. He said, we have the
ability to pick a contractor pick an engineer and speed
that process up. He said, we don't have to necessarily
play by the same rule book as DOTD does. DOTD
likely would not have been able to award the design
contracts until the end of the year. Jason said, we
(29:21):
did that in a couple of days.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So basically it's an end run around the rules and
regulations that apply to the Louisiana Department of Transportation, because,
as you know Sean Wilson, who he was DOTD secretary
from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three, right and in
that eight year period, there was not a single major
(29:45):
Louisiana highway project that was started and completed in an
eight year period. And of course I don't believe he
was qualified to be Governor of Louisiana either. But nevertheless,
do you feel like that this what you're taught talking
about right now that's coming to light right now with
regards to the efficiency or the speed ambitiousness of this
(30:07):
new Office of Louisiana Highway Construction. Do you think that
maybe we were a little too hard on Sean Wilson
in terms of his noductivity.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
No eight years for him to have not come up
with a solution in eight years for how to actually
get roads built. That that's just incompetence or worse, dereliction
of duty because he doesn't care. He's either incapable or
he's just not concerned.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And I think the other part of this is is
that if you look at where we rank right in
terms of bridges and stuff, I think we're like in
the bottom, in the bottom five.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Well, there are benefits to this new Office of Louisiana
Highway Construction, and there are potential drawbacks. I mean, the
point of bid laws is to cut down on corruption. Right,
scratch my back, I'll scratch your back here, tell you
what you tell me.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
They're skirting the Louisiana bid laws as well.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's essentially what they're doing with this.
They can just they can just put they've already hired
contractors that they didn't have to put.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
In a bill. But are they declaring an emergency?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
The legislature signed a law that for one year gives
them the right to go around the bid laws.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So then we get all this done well hopefully the
Legislative auditor, though, would you know, at some point come
back and audit the books to make sure.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Yeah, bid laws do increase red tape and they can
slow everything down, but they're supposed to stop corruption and
they're supposed to make sure that we're getting the best
price we can. So we may be able to fix
a whole bunch of bridges across the state and quickly.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
That would be good. But if the legislature gets in
the habit of dropping bid laws, that might be bad.
But if we do have an emergency situation at crisis.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Well we kind of do, given that for eight years
we didn't do it at anything.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
You're listening to American ground.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
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Speaker 3 (33:14):
Welcome back to American grad Radio. Stephen Parmer Lewis, I
don't know what to make of this exactly, but okay,
LSU and Alexandria. Yeah, the alex ls u A. Okay,
you know there's l s US Yeah, us U A,
there's U l M ls l s U E in Unis. Okay,
all right, Okay, l s U A in Alexandria is
(33:39):
reporting enrollment has grown to just under seventy seven hundred students. Great.
That is the eleventh consecutive semester of enrollment growth.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You know, the same thing's going on at l s
u S. They've they're over to thousand students now and
again the largest number and again consecutive months are consecutive
semesters of growth at LSUS, highest number of enrolled students,
highest number of graduating students each semester. So you're seeing
that with these these smaller LSUS no schools.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
This is huge. This is more than double. Look in
just six years they've they've more than doubled their enrollment.
In fact, in twenty nineteen, enrollment at LSUA was just
under thirty three hundred, and now we're sitting on top
of seventy seven hundred.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
But this makes a lot of sense because these smaller
schools are often less expensive, they're often closer to where
folks are already living, so they're able to get their
education there. That with the cost of school going up
so much across the country and even here in Louisiana,
it makes a lot of sense to try and get
your education closer to home and in some of these
smaller schools. Now there are folks that say, well, that's true.
(35:00):
Enrollment is up.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Yeah, but more than half of those seventy seven hundred
students are online. So remember this is the two percent online.
Forty five hundred students take their classes entirely online. However, Well,
but still even so, even if you might say, well,
(35:23):
that doesn't count, that doesn't can you say that? Well,
I think part of it is this is the same
age group that went through COVID and high school. The
high school one, But at the same time, you do
want to grow the campus, the physical footprint of the campus.
You want to bring these kids on onto a physical campus.
They can't just because there's a lot of socialization. I
(35:44):
get all. That is important. But the leadership skills by
by being part of organizations and extracurricular activities, that's all
nice and all.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
But if you can't, if you can't afford extra housing
because you have to go to the school, I have
to be on the campus.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
No, no, I get it. I get it.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
And the school actually makes higher profit on the online
stuff because they don't have to be using the facilities
with all the air conditioning and all the electricity and
all that.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
And it's not out of state, folks. Seventy or at
least the majority is not. Seventy percent of the online
students are Louisiana residents, and for LSUS, a lot of
their online students are out of state. But again, so what,
They've got to get an education somewhere. If their money's
coming into Louisiana and they're staying in Louisiana and we're
(36:32):
able to pay professors to do it, so what why not?
I think it's a good thing. I just think. I agree.
I agree one hundred percent. I just want to see
leadership opportunity. That's good. To develop leadership and socialization, that's good.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
But the degree is more important than anything else. You
got to get the degree so that you can get
the job.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Let's play game.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Black battleship, shall we say so?
Speaker 4 (37:03):
We're just talking about building sixty two new bridges across
the state of Louisiana. Which there's a new survey out
which states have the highest percentage of bridges that are
in poor condition across the country. Which states are the
highest percentage of bridges in poor condition? Louisiana number eight,
fourteen percent of bridges in the state of Louisiana are
(37:24):
in poor condition. Mississippi, Mississippi not on the list at all.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Come on, no, you pull in my leg. I pull
on your leg. Arkansas, Arkansas, Oh man, I'm really.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Michigan, Michigan number number nine. Twelve percent of bridges are
in poor condition in Michigan.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Minnesota, Minnesota, No, Alabama, Alabama. It's not a southern thing, apparently, Tennessee, No, Kentucky. No,
I'm really striking out all over the place.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Let me go through the list number one, Iowa twenty
three percent, South Dakota twenty one percent, West Virginia twenty percent,
Main sixteen percent, Rhode Island sixteen percent, North Dakota fifteen percent, Pennsylvania,
Louisiana fourteen percent, Michigan at twelve, and Nebraska at eleven.
So we're still rhyme or reason too that there were
a lot of Central Plain states that had problems, but
other than that, not really so.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Which states have the highest percentage of bridges in good condition?
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Texas number ten, forty eight percent are in good condition?
In in Florida, Florida, Oh, I'm sorry, yes, number two,
number two, sixty two percent in Florida are in good condition.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Okay. South Carolina, South Carolina. No, North Carolina, North Carolina No.
In honor of Senator the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Okay,
Massachusetts no, you know, because sure, you know, he drove
(39:05):
off them. Okay, maybe that's importaste a little bit, possibly
because yeah Mary, Joe, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, Becky Okay,
not to get off topic, which you did, we're right
out of time. Number one Georgia's seventy percent of bridges
in Georgia are in good condition, Florida sixty two, Ohio
(39:26):
sixty one, Nevada fifty seven, New Hampshire fifty one, Wisconsin
fifty one, Vermont fifty Mississippi forty percent of the bridges
in Mississippi are in good condition, number eight on the
list Missouri forty nine percent and Texas at forty eight percent.
So we got two states on the other side of
bless you, Mississippi. They have made a remarkable turnaround. Louisiana
can't count on them anymore. Right, we can't be below us,
(39:49):
We can't be like fiftieth. Right, we got we got
to up our game. We'll bear back.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You're listening to American Ground Radio.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Welcome back to American Grand Radium. Stephen Pop with lewisar Avaloni.
It is back baby.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
The barbecue crunch wrap at Magnolia Pit Barbecue making an
appearance once again.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Well you got chopped brisket right then? What mac and cheeseyy?
You mix that in? You're like, well that's kind of
a neat common Volipino chip. Sure, just for a little
flavoring crunch shredded cheddar, because who doesn't like cheese cheddar?
And then it's topped with ranch and they've got their
signature barbecue sauce and then it's all wrapped up and
grilled to this golden perfection.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Right, so you get this nice crunchy and then you
get the mac and cheese and the brisket, all kind
of in one bite. I mean, it is just delicious,
but it's not gonna last long, so make sure you
check them out. Seven twenty nine Jorden Street in the
street port right off of Line Avenue.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
All right, and we'll be talking about this in the
next hour of American Ground Radio, which, by the way,
you can also subscribe to our podcast. You can subscribe
to both podcasts, both the Louisiana Hour American Ground Radio
right as well as the National Hour American Ground Radio.
(41:23):
Get their two podcasts out there. You may not have
even known that you can go get them. And then
we told people about this. You just did, but we
should have done this before. Well, yeah, that's true. We've
been very busy. Anyway, we're gonna be talking about this
next hour. But apparently the head of one of the
nation's largest teachers' unions is back to calling conservatives fascists
(41:49):
and authoritarian Randy Weingarten, and boy, she's a peach and
making comparisons to Nazis. And this is just days after,
obviously Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder was assassinated. Teachers Union.
The man isn't even buried yet. What's the teachers' union start?
(42:10):
What's teacher suposed to be? Union is supposed to be
doing education of our children? Focusing on representing teachers or
are we just supposed to be picking political fights and
trying to get people killed. Well, ultimately should be about
the kids. Well yeah, yeah, I know they're representing the
teachers interest.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
That's part of our problem with education America is we
don't have a student's union.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
That's part of the problem. Oh, maybe we should start one. Well,
it needs to be the parents. The parents are supposed
to be the students' union. But yeah, it's a problem.
We'll be back Instagram.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
The second hour of the fastest growing radio show in
America is coming up next
Crampton with genuine American parks, powered by patriots, driven by
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Speaker 2 (00:32):
I have a dream that one day this nation will
rise up, live out the true meaning of its tree.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
American Ground Radio with Lewis r avalone and Stephen Proko.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
One. This is American Ground Radio, Stephen Parver, Lewis Well,
this New Orleans mayor's race, yea getting out of control.
Of course, it's coming down to control. Well, it's coming
down to race. The race card is being pulled out
because moreno, moreno. Apparently she's uh, she's white, she is
(01:24):
or fair skinned or well apparently one of the candidates'
staffers allegedly referred to her as a white devil. And
how they a white devil, Yes, a white devil that
was uh. And it and it erupted, all of this
(01:45):
really erupted and became public u During this week's w
w L TV may oral debate. Okay, I mean it
had all the fireworks and the absurdity that has come
to define politics as especially in Louisiana. You had Royce Duplessis,
Oliver Thomas in the front runner, Helena Moreno, who's pulling
(02:09):
like around fifty percent. They were all on stage and
in the middle of the shouting match, this phrase popped
up that should make every single Louisiana an American ears
perk up. And it was the white Devil. So allegedly,
one of Dupless's staffers referred to Moreno as a white devil.
(02:29):
And that's while the debates going on. No No in
an email in an email apparently, well that's dumb, and
so this was brought up. And look, this isn't just
an insult, and let's look at some of the history here. No,
it's a racial slur. It is a racial slur that
is dressed up in the language of nineteen sixties radicalism,
(02:52):
and it tells you everything you need to know about
where some of these campaigns are willing to go. So
this came to light in a very convoluted but telling way. Moreno,
who is under attack from Duplessis and Thomas.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Right, you know, because they're so far behind, they don't
stand a chance unless they can convince everybody else that
she's evil. Unless unless there's a huge, huge issue in
the race that just comes out of nowhere. Those two
are going to lose, and they're going to lose badly.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But see white devil. If it is true that it
was said, it's not just a generic insult, Okay, it
comes straight out of the Nation of Islam. It's black
nationalistic rhetoric, right militant activism from the nineteen seventies in
the nineteen sixties, and it was a phrase used by
preachers like Elijah Mohammad and Lewis Farakahn. Real, cook, what
(03:47):
do you do if there if someone's an actual devil?
What do you do with that person? Oh? Wait, I
unspeakable things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So because I mean in
the week where we've murdered Charlie Kerr because people kept
calling him a fascist and a racist and and all
these So Royce Duplessis he says he doesn't even know
(04:09):
this staffer. That's not how people talk and he doesn't
know anything about it. So he has denied this completely. Well,
what was the email written? That the email was written
and they do have they do have the receipts. Okay,
So he says he doesn't know this staffer, and I understand.
(04:30):
But in the week that Charlie Kirk is murdered because
of people on the left calling him a fascist, people
on the left calling him evil, people calling him a Nazi,
And now we've actually cranked it up because I would
argue that a devil is worse than a Nazi, isn't
I mean, in the pantheon of of awfulness, isn't a
(04:52):
devil worse than a Nazi? It was a Nazi worse
worse than a devil, which one because because either way,
you don't give a devil tea and crumpets, do you.
But see, here's the other part of this. Royce Duplessis,
whose staff member allegedly referred to Elena Moreno as the
white devil, and that that's going to be part of
their strategy and communicating with black voters, Black Democrat voters
(05:16):
in New Orleans. He has to to be part of
their strategy. But Duplessus himself has been on records saying
he won't ignore race. That's his promise to voters. I
am going to bet no, he says, that's that's why
you should vote for me.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I'm not going to ignore race. I'm not going to
just assume that everybody's created equal. No, I am gonna
double down on being racist. I'm going to be racist
against white people. That's why you should vote for me.
That's his campaigns.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Apparently, apparently he he's not going to pretend we're all
equal under the law. Why not we are? Because I
guess maybe he believes that New Orleans is a chocolate city.
I mean, and look, he's talking about fighting for black jobs.
And look, I've got nothing. None of us have anything
against black New Orleanians having jobs, no but or opportunities
(06:09):
or prosperities, God bless them all. But when you say
black jobs, what you are inherently saying is that you're
going to prioritize one racial group over others. You are
telling white New Orleanians, who still make up about thirty
one percent of the city, you are not my priority.
You're telling Hispanics somewhere between seven and twelve percent of
(06:32):
the population, depending on the estimate. You're not what he's
basically saying, You're not my concern. You're telling Asians, which
make up three to four percent of the city of
New Orleans. You're not part of my plan. That's not leadership.
That it's racism. That's that's really all it is. If
you're going to just focus on the jobs for and
I don't care what color race it is, I don't
(06:54):
care what black jobs, and I don't imagine I madgs
if you just come out, imagine if Atlanna Morine to
flip that around, she said, I'm going to focus on
white jobs.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
See, this is how you can really tell something's racist.
Just change the colors and if it offends you, most
likely that's race.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But here's what's so interesting. You've ever President Trump when
he talked about black jobs, and all over the internet
folks got all up in arms and mocked him for saying,
what's a black job? What's a black job? And here
we got Royce, what's a white job? And here you've
got a black candidate running for mayor of New Orleans
(07:29):
talking about he's going to fight for black jobs. So
it's so it's only offensive. And by the way, what
President Trump was saying and what he was referencing was
not necessarily that these are jobs specifically people for black people,
but that that unemployment rate within the black community is
at his historic historic lows. Well it was in his
(07:52):
first term. In his first term, so when you talk
about black jobs, you're what you're talking about is unemployment
within the black community, right being very, very low. And
when he was president, black workers in the United States
saw not only their jobs increase, the number of Black
Americans who had a job increase, but they also saw
(08:12):
an increase in their wages, their growth in wages faster
than the top one percent. And I think you're going
to see that again in this second Trump administration. He's
having to do a lot of clean up, right, And
we don't see that data yet, it's too early to
have that data.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
But in the next year, I would expect to see
that data. And one of the things you will see
is that more Americans, folks born in this country are
getting jobs than people who came from other countries. During
the Biden administration, he had a whole bunch of illegal
immigrants coming in and taking American jobs, and that includes
black Americans too.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
See, it's really foolish for anyone that wants to lead
a city to insult at a racial demographic in that way.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Look, Royce you're going to lose this campaign. Don't lose
your credibility in the process. You're going to lose the campaign.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Who says he already hasn't. Well, yeah, and that's.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
That's the thing I'm if you double down on this
racial nonsense, hmm, you're gonna have to go to church
a little bit more. Let's get to the top of
the things you need to know before tomorrow. First, you
need before on.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is asking for permission to
travel to Iceland. Contrell has been banned from leaving the
country because she's currently under indictment for multiple counts of
wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and lying to a grand jury.
Cantrell pled not guilty to those charges earlier this month,
but was forced to give up her passport as a
condition of her plea. Unlike most of her international travel,
(09:44):
this trip was not supposed to be the result of
alleged official business, but rather a personal trip with family members. Girl, GERL, GARYL,
you have got to stay at home. Can you believe me? Seriously,
she's under the federal indictments. She wants to flee the
country and not on city business. She just wants to
go to Iceland. Is she going to charge the city
(10:06):
for transportation and protection because you know it's not safe
for her to fly coach?
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Second thing you need to before in all parish, Jefferson
Parish residents will see a drop of thirty five percent
in their flood insurance. That's because the National Flood Insurance
Program Community Rating System is increasing the rating on rural
parts of Jefferson Parish from a Level five to a
level three. The rating increase comes because the parish has
been putting into effect new flood plan management strategies. Jefferson
(10:32):
Parish President Cynthia Leisheng released a statement saying, I'm so
proud of our floodpain flood plane Management, and Hazard Mitigation team,
along with the many other Jefferson Parish departments, partners and
municipalities that work together to make this happen.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
What do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (10:49):
This is one of those things I talked about Government
should only do the things that only government can do.
And if there's things that have to happen government wide
for emergency management, and by doing those things you actually
end up blowing the insurance costs for the people, then
that's one of those things that government should be doing
and the third.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Thing you need before to while.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
A teacher at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge was
arrested yesterday after she was caught with cocaine on campus.
Forty seven year old Virginia Summers was caught when a
drug dog found the cocaine in her wallet during a
random search at the school. Police then searched her car
and found marijuana and marijuana pipes. Summers allegedly told police
that the cocaine belonged to her friend, who put it
(11:28):
in her wallet during the LSU game over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Why I guess that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah, I would just here hold my cocaine while I
go cheer for the LSU.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Those are excuse.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
She didn't explain the marijuana apparently. But you gotta choose
your friends better. Maybe you gotta choose your teachers better.
Maybe we'll be back.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
You are listening to American Ground.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
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Speaker 3 (13:12):
Welcome back to American Ground Radium, Stephen par I mean
calm on, all right, I mean calm on about what
apparently the Cattle Parish Commission, which is already under investigation
by Attorney General Liz Merle for violation of the open
(13:34):
meetings law. Right so far as they wrote a resolution
that they presented to Bernie Sanders when Bernie Sanders visited
our great state of Louisiana in Shreveport. They presented a
resolution to him that was not voted on the entire commission. Yeah,
(13:56):
just absolutely, First of all, it's illegal to do that
it is, and it is arrogant. It is. So this
was it's it's yeah, this was that he had a
car show in the main attraction in Louisiana State Fear Right,
So you got a.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Car show going on. Roy Burrell was there.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
He was allegedly, well, no, there's a there's a photo
of them there, there's multiple photos of them. I mean,
I guess unless it could be his doppelganger or or
they could be I guess made up. But he's he's
reading a proclamation. Doesn't appear to be AI generated. It
does not. Maybe maybe Apparently some reports say that he
posted that same photo on his own social media page,
(14:42):
but that's been since deleted. Yeah, I didn't see that
on his page when I went and looked. I don't
even know what the the the resolution was it. But
but apparently he presented some sort of resolution at the
Louisiana State Fear claiming or suggesting otherwise that it was
(15:02):
a resolution that had been voted upon by the Commission,
by all of the Cattle Piarish Commission.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And yet once again, it was never on an agenda item,
it was never voted on. Republicans didn't know about it
at all. So how do you have a resolution, how
do you have another proclamation claiming that the entire Cattle
Parish Commission voted on this thing. This is now what
the fourth one of these that they've done this summer. Well,
(15:30):
this is a pattern of disrespect. I mean, we've seen
this movie before. This is a pattern of criminal behavior.
This is a pattern of reception of the the people
of Cattle Parish. You are lying to the people of
Cattle Perish.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Allegedly, you have allegedly lied to the people. This is
a matter that's currently under investigation. It is.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
But if you have look, here's the facts. They read
a proclamation to Bernie Sanders. Yes, they presented, presented one
as if it had been and it was not on
an agenda item.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
There was no agenda item. It was wasn't voted on,
and it was yeah, that's what I'm saying. It wasn't voted,
It wasn't on an agendaem commissioners, and it wasn't voted on.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
All right, those are facts. I understand there's a court
case on this, but let's just deal with the facts.
That is illegal behavior. Well, and they didn't just do
it once. We've got multiple times of them doing this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
No, I mean, you think they'd stop breaking their own rules,
especially after they got sued by the Attorney General Liz Merle.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And and according to some reports in this I don't
know this maybe that this is an alleged part.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
They were in negotiations to settle the case with the
Attorney General.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
And you know what's ironic about that is they get
they get a vote, so the commissioners get a vote
in terms of the resolution or the settling this matter. Okay,
that seems kind of self serving there.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Yeah, wouldn't that have to be put onto an agenda
item if you're gonna vote on a settlement with the.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Attorney General's office. But if you're the Attorney General and
you're you're not going to take kindly to this latest stunt.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
If it is true, this is I wonder at this
point is are you able to remove anybody that signed this,
anybody that voted for this outside of the commission Are
you able to remove them from office for derection to do?
Because this is intentional At this point, this is intentional
deception of the people of Cattle Paris because you're lying
(17:39):
to them when you say we've passed a resolution.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
No you haven't.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
You have forged a resolution. But that's a lie. And
you've done it repeatedly, even after the Attorney General told
you you can't do that. You go, ah, screwt, We're
going to do it again.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And well the lawsuit from the Attorney General alleges three times. Yes,
this would be the four if if this by Roy Burrell,
if it in fact is correct, if it is a resolution,
If this was a fourth resolution, that would be a
fourth that would be a fourth time. And there's an
alleged part. We don't know if this was actually a
less because apparently there are three times documented in the
(18:19):
petition from the Attorney Generals.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
This was just people at the at the the event
said he was reading a petition. Now it's interesting if
he posted it to his social media pages.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And then pulled it down. Well, Roy, why why would
you do that? Roy? Why would why would you If it's.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Such a wonderful resolution and everything's above board, why would
you post it to your social media and then pull
it down?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And you know the bottom line to all of this,
You know, we say it on the show all the time.
Words have meaning, right m M. Well, so do votes,
so do rules. I mean, you can't just this is
the law. Okay, but I understand, but you can't just
discard rules or the law or procedures when they get
(19:06):
in your way. Because once you start ignoring the rules,
once you start pretending process does not matter, you don't
have a government anymore. You've got chaos. You've got rule
by decree. You get cowboy Roy Burrell riding roughshod over
the Commission here allegedly presenting unauthorized proclamations, allegedly as though
(19:30):
they were official perish or Commission documents. I don't see
how that's not democracy. That's arrogance, it's disrespectful. It is
it is ridiculous. I don't see how.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
The repeated behavior of that isn't malfeasan's in office. That
I don't understand. When when the attorney you do it once,
oh gosh, my bad. Sorry, we completely just you know,
met it at a restaurant and decided to do it
on our own, and gosh, we just didn't know. But
the Attorney General comes back and says, no, you can't
do that. I'm suing you over this, and you're in
(20:04):
negotiations with the Attorney General of settling that matter, and
you're like, hey, guys, remember when we did that petition
and we didn't tell the Republicans were doing it, and
we didn't put it on the agenda and nobody actually
voted on that. Let's do that again for a car show,
and everybody goes, yeah, that's a great idea. How dumb
do you have to be? Or worse, how dumb do
you think the people of Catto Parish are?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
But how many times is this happening all across the state? Folks?
Are there some folks that aren't Maybe this is being
hidden from more citizens Louisiana's then might appear. How many
times has this happened on the Commission before? Now? Yeah?
(20:45):
Before now? I mean because really, the only reason, I say,
the only reason, one of the reasons that this has
drawn such attention is because you had this extremist, Bernie Sanders,
being given this resolution and the Republican members of the
Commission were like, wait a minute, we're endorsing the policies
(21:09):
of a socialist and that might.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Actually make a little bit of an explanation as to
why they continue doing this. If they've been able to
do this with impunity for years if they've just been
handing out resolutions to all their friends.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Or proclamations or that have never been voted on, recognizing
this person and that person, and they're just like.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Screw it, we're the majority, and we just get to
we just get to issue these proclamations out of the public,
ever knowing that we've done it. Here here, buddy, my friends,
have one of these. Let's see when you campaign, donor
here have a resolution. Let's see here's and a resolution. Look,
that is important because when you pass a resolution, you're
not just making a statement. You're making a declaration on
(21:49):
behalf of every citizen that the Commission represents.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And in the name of them. And here's the thing.
The Decoration of Independent says that any action by a
government body that doesn't have the consent of the govern
is by definition and unjust action. It doesn't have the
consent of the government if you don't do it in
an open meeting, it doesn't, which means every one of
these actions is unjust, and it means we the people
(22:16):
have the right to abolish that form of government and
institute a new one. That's what the Decoration of Independence says.
So wherever you're listening in Louisiana, maybe you ought to
check out your local governing body.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You're listening to American ground radio.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
When you're hungry or the truth, you're just not you
think clearly again by grabbing American ground and get back
to being yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Welcome back to American Groun Radium. Stephen Paul. I just
can't get over the fact that this mayor's race in
New Orleans is devolving into racial epithets. I mean they're
actually calling Elena Moreno, who is who is white and
the leading candidate for mayor in New Orleans, the white devil.
(23:21):
I mean, and look again, I'm going to go back
to this is that kind of language. See, it's very specific,
and it's very deliberate, because if you're losing.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Which which they and Oliver Thomas is, and if that
is part of your campaign strategy, alleged and it again
it is alleged because he has since denied even knowing
the staffer who may have.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Suggested suggested basically attacking Elena Moreno as the white devil.
I mean, this is the rhetoric of the nation of
his and Lewis Ferrikhn. I mean they described white people
as devils, inherently corrupt, irredeemably wicked. And it was a turn.
(24:12):
It was a term designed not to persuade, but not
to debate, but to separate, to say they are evil,
they are beyond saving. It's like Colin people are the enemy.
It's like Colin trumpet fascists. It's designed to turn these people,
these candidates, these political opponents, into something less than human.
(24:35):
Calling Lana Moreno a devil is turning her into something
that's less than human. You know, if you go and
in our cancel culture turning into assassination culture? Is is
that what's going on in New Orleans? But historically, if
you look go back to the Middle Ages, you look
at all the religious wars that were fought, it was
(24:57):
because one side called the other a tanic. Yes, I
mean in the twentieth century, Hitler painted Jews as evil,
as parasitic, as devilish. Right A. Stalin and Mao described
their enemies as devils as well. But again you don't
have to go back that far.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Just go back one week they were calling Charlie Kirk
a fascist, a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Full of hate. Well, wait, is a devil in a
devil full of hate. Didn't then they kill Charlie Kirk
as they said he had hate speech.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
So if we're saying Alana Moreno is a devil, a
white devil, well, what message are you really trying to
send it?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
You're not You're not. Is the campaign trying to say?
You know what? She should be shot? But it paints all, well,
it paints whole groups when you refer to a group
of people as the devil. Yeah, I mean and and
would Hillary Clinton when she said that Trump's supporters were irredeemable, Well, yeah,
but they belong in a basket of deplorable. This is
(26:00):
worse than that. It's not right that the languge is
in its charged. It's still wrong, but it's still it's
still painting an entire group of people with the same
broad brush. Let's stick deep.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Going down, down, down.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So this year, the Louisiana Legislature created a new office,
the New Office of Louisiana Highway Construction. And the point
of this office is to build highways and bridges faster
than the DOTD can or has.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
So the legislature took one hundred million dollars from some
other accounts. They moved him around to fund this new
office and its projects just for the next year. Archie Chase,
on the third was appointed by Jeff Landry to be
the new head of the LHC, and Landry once results quickly.
So the office is planning on fixing or replacing sixty
(26:55):
two different bridges across the state by the end of
next year. Basically, they're hoping to repair or replace five
bridges in Louisiana every single month.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Oh, that's a big change. That sounds very ambitious.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It does sound ambitious. Now to temper that these aren't
big bridges. These aren't bridges across the Mississippi or the
Red River. These are generally two lane bridges that span
about one hundred feet. But they're still very important bridges
because most of these are in rural areas. So in
some of those cases where you have a bridge that's
(27:31):
out or a bridge that's not strong enough to handle,
especially say eighteen wheelers, when you have that bridge out,
instead of just driving across it and you're able to
get to where you want to be in ten fifteen minutes,
now you have to drive around, go find another bridge
you can cross, and then come back down. And now
you're looking at a two or a three hour trip
(27:51):
for something that should have just been twenty thirty minutes. Right, absolutely,
So this is a big, big deals hours of wasted time.
One of the benefits that the LHC has over the
DOTD is how they have to bid out the projects.
So basically, if you're gonna build a bridge and you're
(28:12):
working for the DOTD, you got to put out a
request for proposal, gotta wait, got to get those back,
got to evaluate them, and then you gotta to award
the bid, right, and that can take thirty days, sixty days,
ninety days, whatever. Well, the legislature suspended the state bid
law for one year for the LHC, the Office of
(28:37):
Highway Construction, office of it. Oh my gosh, I'm forgetting
the Office of Louisiana Highway Construction so they don't have
to send stuff out for bid. This is according to
the Streetport Poser Advocate talked to. They talked to Shayson
about the fact that they already have hired eight different
contractors to work on those sixty two different bridge projects
(28:58):
across the state. So again they didn't have to forbid,
They've already hired eight contractors. He said, we have the
ability to pick a contractor pick an engineer and speed
that process up. He said, we don't have to necessarily
play by the same rule book as DOTD does. DOTD
likely would not have been able to award the design
contracts until the end of the year. Jason said, we
(29:21):
did that in a couple of days.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So basically it's an end run around the rules and
regulations that apply to the Louisiana Department of Transportation, because,
as you know Sean Wilson, who he was DOTD secretary
from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three, right and in
that eight year period, there was not a single major
(29:45):
Louisiana highway project that was started and completed in an
eight year period. And of course I don't believe he
was qualified to be Governor of Louisiana either. But nevertheless,
do you feel like that this what you're taught talking
about right now that's coming to light right now with
regards to the efficiency or the speed ambitiousness of this
(30:07):
new Office of Louisiana Highway Construction. Do you think that
maybe we were a little too hard on Sean Wilson
in terms of his noductivity.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
No eight years for him to have not come up
with a solution in eight years for how to actually
get roads built. That that's just incompetence or worse, dereliction
of duty because he doesn't care. He's either incapable or
he's just not concerned.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And I think the other part of this is is
that if you look at where we rank right in
terms of bridges and stuff, I think we're like in
the bottom, in the bottom five.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Well, there are benefits to this new Office of Louisiana
Highway Construction, and there are potential drawbacks. I mean, the
point of bid laws is to cut down on corruption. Right,
scratch my back, I'll scratch your back here, tell you
what you tell me.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
They're skirting the Louisiana bid laws as well.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's essentially what they're doing with this.
They can just they can just put they've already hired
contractors that they didn't have to put.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
In a bill. But are they declaring an emergency?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
The legislature signed a law that for one year gives
them the right to go around the bid laws.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So then we get all this done well hopefully the
Legislative auditor, though, would you know, at some point come
back and audit the books to make sure.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Yeah, bid laws do increase red tape and they can
slow everything down, but they're supposed to stop corruption and
they're supposed to make sure that we're getting the best
price we can. So we may be able to fix
a whole bunch of bridges across the state and quickly.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
That would be good. But if the legislature gets in
the habit of dropping bid laws, that might be bad.
But if we do have an emergency situation at crisis.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Well we kind of do, given that for eight years
we didn't do it at anything.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
You're listening to American ground.
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Speaker 3 (33:14):
Welcome back to American grad Radio. Stephen Parmer Lewis, I
don't know what to make of this exactly, but okay,
LSU and Alexandria. Yeah, the alex ls u A. Okay,
you know there's l s US Yeah, us U A,
there's U l M ls l s U E in Unis. Okay,
all right, Okay, l s U A in Alexandria is
(33:39):
reporting enrollment has grown to just under seventy seven hundred students. Great.
That is the eleventh consecutive semester of enrollment growth.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You know, the same thing's going on at l s
u S. They've they're over to thousand students now and
again the largest number and again consecutive months are consecutive
semesters of growth at LSUS, highest number of enrolled students,
highest number of graduating students each semester. So you're seeing
that with these these smaller LSUS no schools.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
This is huge. This is more than double. Look in
just six years they've they've more than doubled their enrollment.
In fact, in twenty nineteen, enrollment at LSUA was just
under thirty three hundred, and now we're sitting on top
of seventy seven hundred.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
But this makes a lot of sense because these smaller
schools are often less expensive, they're often closer to where
folks are already living, so they're able to get their
education there. That with the cost of school going up
so much across the country and even here in Louisiana,
it makes a lot of sense to try and get
your education closer to home and in some of these
smaller schools. Now there are folks that say, well, that's true.
(35:00):
Enrollment is up.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Yeah, but more than half of those seventy seven hundred
students are online. So remember this is the two percent online.
Forty five hundred students take their classes entirely online. However, Well,
but still even so, even if you might say, well,
(35:23):
that doesn't count, that doesn't can you say that? Well,
I think part of it is this is the same
age group that went through COVID and high school. The
high school one, But at the same time, you do
want to grow the campus, the physical footprint of the campus.
You want to bring these kids on onto a physical campus.
They can't just because there's a lot of socialization. I
(35:44):
get all. That is important. But the leadership skills by
by being part of organizations and extracurricular activities, that's all
nice and all.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
But if you can't, if you can't afford extra housing
because you have to go to the school, I have
to be on the campus.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
No, no, I get it. I get it.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
And the school actually makes higher profit on the online
stuff because they don't have to be using the facilities
with all the air conditioning and all the electricity and
all that.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
And it's not out of state, folks. Seventy or at
least the majority is not. Seventy percent of the online
students are Louisiana residents, and for LSUS, a lot of
their online students are out of state. But again, so what,
They've got to get an education somewhere. If their money's
coming into Louisiana and they're staying in Louisiana and we're
(36:32):
able to pay professors to do it, so what why not?
I think it's a good thing. I just think. I agree.
I agree one hundred percent. I just want to see
leadership opportunity. That's good. To develop leadership and socialization, that's good.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
But the degree is more important than anything else. You
got to get the degree so that you can get
the job.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Let's play game.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Black battleship, shall we say so?
Speaker 4 (37:03):
We're just talking about building sixty two new bridges across
the state of Louisiana. Which there's a new survey out
which states have the highest percentage of bridges that are
in poor condition across the country. Which states are the
highest percentage of bridges in poor condition? Louisiana number eight,
fourteen percent of bridges in the state of Louisiana are
(37:24):
in poor condition. Mississippi, Mississippi not on the list at all.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Come on, no, you pull in my leg. I pull
on your leg. Arkansas, Arkansas, Oh man, I'm really.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Michigan, Michigan number number nine. Twelve percent of bridges are
in poor condition in Michigan.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Minnesota, Minnesota, No, Alabama, Alabama. It's not a southern thing, apparently, Tennessee, No, Kentucky. No,
I'm really striking out all over the place.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Let me go through the list number one, Iowa twenty
three percent, South Dakota twenty one percent, West Virginia twenty percent,
Main sixteen percent, Rhode Island sixteen percent, North Dakota fifteen percent, Pennsylvania,
Louisiana fourteen percent, Michigan at twelve, and Nebraska at eleven.
So we're still rhyme or reason too that there were
a lot of Central Plain states that had problems, but
other than that, not really so.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Which states have the highest percentage of bridges in good condition?
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Texas number ten, forty eight percent are in good condition?
In in Florida, Florida, Oh, I'm sorry, yes, number two,
number two, sixty two percent in Florida are in good condition.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Okay. South Carolina, South Carolina. No, North Carolina, North Carolina No.
In honor of Senator the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Okay,
Massachusetts no, you know, because sure, you know, he drove
(39:05):
off them. Okay, maybe that's importaste a little bit, possibly
because yeah Mary, Joe, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, Becky Okay,
not to get off topic, which you did, we're right
out of time. Number one Georgia's seventy percent of bridges
in Georgia are in good condition, Florida sixty two, Ohio
(39:26):
sixty one, Nevada fifty seven, New Hampshire fifty one, Wisconsin
fifty one, Vermont fifty Mississippi forty percent of the bridges
in Mississippi are in good condition, number eight on the
list Missouri forty nine percent and Texas at forty eight percent.
So we got two states on the other side of
bless you, Mississippi. They have made a remarkable turnaround. Louisiana
can't count on them anymore. Right, we can't be below us,
(39:49):
We can't be like fiftieth. Right, we got we got
to up our game. We'll bear back.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You're listening to American Ground Radio.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Welcome back to American Grand Radium. Stephen Pop with lewisar Avaloni.
It is back baby.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
The barbecue crunch wrap at Magnolia Pit Barbecue making an
appearance once again.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Well you got chopped brisket right then? What mac and cheeseyy?
You mix that in? You're like, well that's kind of
a neat common Volipino chip. Sure, just for a little
flavoring crunch shredded cheddar, because who doesn't like cheese cheddar?
And then it's topped with ranch and they've got their
signature barbecue sauce and then it's all wrapped up and
grilled to this golden perfection.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Right, so you get this nice crunchy and then you
get the mac and cheese and the brisket, all kind
of in one bite. I mean, it is just delicious,
but it's not gonna last long, so make sure you
check them out. Seven twenty nine Jorden Street in the
street port right off of Line Avenue.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
All right, and we'll be talking about this in the
next hour of American Ground Radio, which, by the way,
you can also subscribe to our podcast. You can subscribe
to both podcasts, both the Louisiana Hour American Ground Radio
right as well as the National Hour American Ground Radio.
(41:23):
Get their two podcasts out there. You may not have
even known that you can go get them. And then
we told people about this. You just did, but we
should have done this before. Well, yeah, that's true. We've
been very busy. Anyway, we're gonna be talking about this
next hour. But apparently the head of one of the
nation's largest teachers' unions is back to calling conservatives fascists
(41:49):
and authoritarian Randy Weingarten, and boy, she's a peach and
making comparisons to Nazis. And this is just days after,
obviously Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder was assassinated. Teachers Union.
The man isn't even buried yet. What's the teachers' union start?
(42:10):
What's teacher suposed to be? Union is supposed to be
doing education of our children? Focusing on representing teachers or
are we just supposed to be picking political fights and
trying to get people killed. Well, ultimately should be about
the kids. Well yeah, yeah, I know they're representing the
teachers interest.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
That's part of our problem with education America is we
don't have a student's union.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
That's part of the problem. Oh, maybe we should start one. Well,
it needs to be the parents. The parents are supposed
to be the students' union. But yeah, it's a problem.
We'll be back Instagram.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
The second hour of the fastest growing radio show in
America is coming up next
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