BR citizens disserved by catering to racist myth

This week provides a reminder of how a few Baton Rouge-area politicians and administrators buckled to political correctness reminiscent of the city’ racist past.

During this time, the city has hosted the Southeastern Homicide Investigators Association 2018 Training Conference. The group seeks to educate on a range of issues involving homicides, with the conference covering areas such as cold cases, DNA searches, serial killers, and mass shootings.

However, although having announced the event as one of its centerpieces, the conference canceled a presentation headed by Betty Shelby, now of Oklahoma’s Rogers County Sheriff’s Office. She would have given her perspective on her experience, when with the Tulsa Police Department, of unfortunately mistakenly shooting to death an unarmed man at a traffic stop.

Desisting better serves careers of LA GOP stars

One Louisiana politician made the right call. If the other gets a call, he should desist as well.

National politics churned unusually in the last week and a day. Election results prompted an unwise change in U.S. House of Representatives leadership, and Republican Pres. Donald Trump asked for a received a change of leadership in the Department of Justice.

With the GOP losing its House majority, Rep. Steve Scalise will take on a diminished role in the chamber’s governance, with any real influence over its coming business in the next two years a consequence of his relationship with Trump. This downgrading has led to speculation that Scalise might take a stab at Louisiana’s governorship, which wouldn’t require him to leave his congressional post to run.

LA partisanship still mediated by personalism

Of course a no-party designation costs candidates elections, because voters aren’t fools.

After election results came out, my Baton Rouge Advocate colleagues noted that a seemingly-popular incumbent for a Livingston Parish school board spot, running without a party label, lost to a Republican (although one with vast schools experience). In another school board matchup there, Republican Devin Gregoire defeated a no-party candidate who appeared to do more campaigning, although neither apparently raised or spent enough to have to file a campaign finance report.

This prompted a political consultant based in Baton Rouge to proclaim “The politics of Livingston Parish is changing in that not only the Democratic Party label, any label but the Republican party has become toxic.” While the first part is valid, the second misunderstands the nature of Louisiana politics.

Veterans' Day, 2018

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Wednesday, Nov. 12 being observed Veterans' Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

The Advocate column, Nov. 11, 2018

Louisiana elections yielded few surprises ... except in these races 
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_e6f65914-e396-11e8-ad0d-df225229c508.html

Links:
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/elections/article_23430d28-e251-11e8-a43e-c7fa1fa4bac4.html
https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2018/11/06/tyler-perkins-advance-runoff-election-shreveport-mayor/1904583002/
https://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2018/11/shreveport-poised-for-major-immediate.html