Who’s News In New Orleans Escorts.

View full sizeMelanie Bennett photoAaron Bennett and his father, Bill, were photographed in 2007.
On Sept. 28, just a week before he was charged with bribing Hingle and after sources close to the case say he’d already fielded at least one plea offer from U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office, Bennett went into his company Benetech’s general fund and intercepted the majority of a $719,000 payment from the Army Corps of Engineers before it could go into an account shared by Benetech and its partners on the $12.2 million pump station project.
That same day, financial records filed in court show that Bennett transferred $600,000 to a film production company registered to his fourth wife, Martha Russell. Russell, a former strip club employee and manager of a local Playboy golf tournament, later put up the $50,000 bond to keep her husband out of jail.

See the full article from “NOLA.com”

I’m hoping the new year brings better communication and cooperation between the mayor and Metro Council. Relationships were rough in 2011, and it was not pleasant to watch. I wonder if this election year will bring performance or posturing. (I will call it like I see it.)
I was glad to see the Metro Council override Mayor Kip Holden’s veto of the proposal by Councilman Bones Addison to end the monopoly by city police on escorts for large vehicles that haul. This was a sham, and businesses should be able to choose among qualified competitors to allow a free market. Certainly the sheriff’s department, State Police, and even private escort services are capable of providing such services—and for a lot less. I was disappointed in City Police Chief Dewayne White for trying to defend this long-running racket and in Holden for his veto to try and save it.

See the full article from “Greater Baton Rouge Business Report”

A new law passed in New Orlean’s French Quarter sets an 8pm curfew for kids who are 16 and younger, setting it earlier than the previous curfew which had been fixed at 11pm. Councilwoman Kristen Gisleson Palmer, who promoted the law, says her goal in changing the curfew is to protect kids within her district from violence and underage drinking. The French Quarter is awash with liquor stores, strip clubs, and other tourist attractions and “If we can, in any way, protect children from that, I think it’s very reasonable,” Palmer said.

See the full article from “Your Black World”

Some New Orleans residents are up in arms criticizing their city council for adopting a law they believe was passed to keep low-income Blacks out of sight of tourists.
On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council approved a strict curfew for people 16 and younger in the French Quarter. The ordinance revises a long-standing 11 P.M. curfew on Friday and Saturday nights to 8 P.M. in the area. In the rest of the city, an 11 P.M. curfew remains. 
To many, it may seem like a good idea: Children are restricted from areas with strip clubs, a large nightlife zone and 350 places to buy booze. But on further inspection, to others, the ban doesn’t appear as harmless. 
In numerous emotional meetings, a large number of participants, mainly African-Americans, criticized the idea, alleging that the lawmakers simply do not want Black teens to be viewed by tourists. 

See the full article from “BET”

Just down the river is the French Quarter, the oldest part of New Orleans and the most famous; people come to the French Quarter from all over the world to drink and eat and listen to music. It’s full of neon signs and bars with the doors and windows wide open so you can hear the music, and incredibly bright bars that make incredibly strong drinks in to-go cups. Tourists walk around holding these drinks in plastic cups. In the doorways of the strip clubs, bored-looking women in lingerie lean against the wall while loud men rush at anyone who looks at the women, calling for them to come inside, come inside.
…
In the mornings, small trucks with large tanks of lemon-scented water drive through the Quarter, spraying the streets and gutters clean so that the new day’s drinkers will start fresh. A fine lemon mist hovers behind the trucks for a while. It’s quiet for a few hours in the Quarter; the jazz musicians, bartenders, strippers, and tourists are mostly asleep.

See the full article from “Stay Thirsty Media”

A new ordinance passed last Thursday in New Orleans places a curfew on the popular, tourist-attracting French Quarter section of the city. The law, which applies to youths 16 and under, creates an 8 p.m. curfew on Fridays and Saturdays, from its long-standing 11 p.m. curfew. It also applies to the nearby Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.
The main backer of the law, Councilwoman Kristen Gisleson Palmer, whose district includes the French Quarter, said this was to protect children from violence and liquor. The popular open-air nightlife zone has more than 350 places to buy liquor and an abundance of strip clubs. “If we can, in any way, protect children from that, I think it’s very reasonable,” Palmer said.
But many African Americans in the city believe that this new law isn’t about protecting children from liquor and violence but about protecting tourists from them. “There is this desire not to have these black males in the French Quarter,” Tracie L. Washington, an attorney who heads the Louisiana Justice Institute, a nonprofit civil rights group, told the Boston Herald. Washington has called for an African-American boycott of the French Quarter to begin on Jan. 16, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

See the full article from “The Root”

My favorite novel is Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. In the book, Louisiana governor Willie Stark is a fictional rendering of Huey P. Long, the corrupt, benevolent populist governor of Louisiana. The best line in the book is Stark talking about the broken nature of humanity, and how the most dishonest people in politics are those who pretend that anyone can outrun their worst impulses: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”
This quote lives at the heart of Louisiana politics. When I began reciting it to Carville last week, he finished it with me. The state has always elected folk heroes who did naughty things: hookers, affairs with Bourbon Street strippers, freezers of money, and an endless rap sheet of boring felony charges. The two biggest folk heroes are Long and Edwards.

See the full article from “Grantland”

… If you’re running these bowls, it’s an opportunity to do good, not to do well,” Dean Zerbe, who investigated charitable exemptions while on the staff of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), told HBO Real Sports. “You can pay yourself a reasonable salary…and after that it has to go to a charitable purpose.”
Charitable purpose, however, likely doesn’t include lavish trips for executives and guests, another area that has drawn criticism. Executives at the Fiesta Bowl spent more than $100,000 on a corporate golf trip, and former CEO John Junker spent more than $1,200 at a strip club, according to an investigation into the Fiesta Bowl after a scandal enveloped the bowl in 2009. The bowl spent $3.3 million on The Fiesta Frolic, an annual trip for sponsors, executives, and others involved in the game, since the start of the BCS. In the same time frame, the Orange Bowl hosted a similar trip, The Summer Splash, at an average annual cost of more than $111,000.

See the full article from “ThinkProgress”

View full sizeNaomi Martin, The Times-PicayuneNOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas and State Police Col. Michael D. Edmonson present a poster of the 32 people arrested in the month-long Operation Rip N Run.
Edmonson said the operation, which ended nearly three weeks ago, was an “aggressive” collaboration between NOPD, State Police, St. John the Baptist Parish sheriff’s deputies and drug task-force officers.
Police said the arrests were made with the help of CrimeStoppers tips. Having “new faces” in the form of State Police and St. John Parish deputies also helped cops infiltrate relationships between dealers and sellers, NOPD spokeswoman Remi Braden said.
Of the 38 arrestees, 31 had outstanding warrants. Twenty-six were booked for drug crimes, five for prostitution and three for illegal weapons. The bulk of the drug arrests were for marijuana, although there was a handful for cocaine and crystal meth as well, police said.

See the full article from “NOLA.com”

Ti-ara Roberts, 22, San Antonio, Texas, was arrested Jan. 4 in the 3400 block of South Interstate 10 Service Road in Metairie and booked with prostitution and possession of marijuana.
Sade Jackson, 18, 22 Davis Blvd., Jefferson, was arrested Jan. 5 at Metairie Road and Labarre Road in Metairie and booked with three counts of simple burglary and three counts of illegal possession of stolen property $500-$1,500.
Kevin Abboud, 40, 5028 Utica St., Metairie, was arrested Jan. 5 Interstate 10 and Causeway Boulevard in Metairie and booked with DWI.
Catholine Hammett, 20, 2118 Marengo St., New Orleans, was arrested Jan. 5 in the 3400 block of South Interstate 10 Service Road in Metairie and booked with prostitution and possession marijuana.
Vanessa Rivera, 18, Allentown, Pa., was arrested Jan. 5 in the 3300 block of South Interstate 10 Service Road in Metairie and booked with prostitution and crime against nature.

See the full article from “NOLA.com”