Four Years Ago …

Four years ago, I was sitting on a pink futon on the floor of a motel in Lake Charles, LA with two blond labs and a cat named after Miles Davis wondering if I still had a place called home. In the bed on the right was a finance Phd student from Macao and [...]

Louisiana Senator Vitter Declares War on Canadian Users of Viagra

Okay, that headline is way misleading, but it’s Friday and I’m in a wrascally mood. Actually, what Republican Senator David (the Diaper) Vitter is suggesting is that we overwhelm the Canadian Prescription Drug Market via re-importation to drive prices up there and prices down here. It’s a strategy to break a system where [...]

Do NOT Buy A Used Health Care Program from This Man!

I’m going to bring out some information I put out on Bobby Jindal in December of last year so you’ll know exactly how little to pay attention to this man. Jindal is obviously positioning himself for a run at national office which doesn’t surprise me at all, because the guy’s been a bigger [...]

Unraveling the Greed

I remember during my Hurricane Katrina Exile from New Orleans that I was invited by a good friend and colleague to attend a gathering of social workers and others to discuss the impact of being “unbanked” and hearing about predatory lending practices. For about two years, I did several research papers and gathered quite [...]

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

I moved to New Orleans sight unseen about 14 years ago.  It’s a city with much charm and beauty, tons of eccentricities and eccentrics, and it’s own brand of food, architecture and music that make you feel like you’re not quite in the US.   For as much culture shock as I experienced when I first [...]

Jindal puts Ideology before Facts (Yet Again)

When I first moved down here to New Orleans I went through culture shock on many levels.  I came from places where there was no viable private education because public education is so excellent that private schools are reserved for the hyper-religious or the hyper-rich with hyper-idiot children.  I was used to good roads.  I [...]

It’s Mardi Gras: You know, the Party before Penitence?

I’m sitting here watching the kids get their costumes together for the big day of celebration called Fat Tuesday.  That’s the day when you pull out all the stops because you know lean days (no meat, no alcohol, no fun) starts tomorrow.  I guess I must be in hyper-metaphorical mode because it’s really striking me [...]

Obama Team Announces TARP Plan: Market Crashes

I hope you weren’t planning on using any of those savings that you may still have left sitting out there in anything market-related soon.  The Dow Jones ( at this writing) is off  over 350 points.  All of the blue chip components tumbled.  The S&P and OTC markets aren’t faring any better.  This is how [...]

Party like it’s 1929!

The economy may be in recession, but the Champagne flowed freely at Tuesday’s celebrations of the inauguration of Barack Obama — thanks in large part to donations from some movers and shakers on Wall Street.
Those figures don’t include the $124 million that federal, state and local governments are providing to pay for security and the [...]

Fear and Loathing in Algier’s Point

Algier’s Point has a history of racism.  It’s a small neighborhood and mostly white enclave located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans.  It  started as the place in New Orleans where human beings were bought and sold.  The Slave Market was placed far across the river from the main part of the [...]