The Official MyBossier Blog about Bossier and North Louisiana since 2007! We've been holding local people, events, and politicians accountable ever since. :-)
Saturday is a big day for voters in Bossier and Webster Parishes. Not only will congressional candidates be selected in closed primaries, but we will choose between Judge Dewey Burchett and Michael Craig for judge.
The closed primaries have confused some people. Since Judge Burchett and Mr. Craig are of opposite parties and are the only candidates, there is no need for a primary. You may vote across party lines in the judge's race, although in the congressional races, you can vote only for those candidates of your party.
This means that Saturday is your final vote for judge and that the person with the most votes will win outright. I have heard some confusion over this and hope that it is clarified for our readers.
Judge Dewey Burchett has served the people of Bossier and Webster Parishes for the last twenty years.
He currently teaches seminars on legal subjects to judges, lawyers and law enforcement officers. Judge Burchett has been married for 41 years to his wife Pat. The Burchetts have two sons and a granddaughter.
Judge Burchett understands public service for what it should be. He is an upstanding individual, an extremely capable Judge, and is deserving of our support to continue in that capacity.
Re-elect Judge Burchett.
Barack, you who speak so eloquently of education, why don't you help your 26 year old brother obtain an education? He lives on $1 per month. If it would stretch your budget too far to send him $100 now and again, at least offer to subsidize his education so he can be productive. Your brother is ashamed of his circumstances; when asked if he is related to you, he answers no. Oh, he is proud of you, he is just ashamed of himself for being destitute. Your father died when he was 6 months old and he has had no advantages in life, and he asks for none. What kind of man offers no help to a brother who is in such circumstances?
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi. Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender. "No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month." According to Italy's Vanity Fair his two metre by three metre shack is decorated with football posters of the Italian football giants AC Milan and Inter, as well as a calendar showing exotic beaches of the world. Vanity Fair also noted that he had a front page newspaper picture of his famous brother - born of the same father as him, Barack Hussein Obama, but to a different mother, named only as Jael. He told the magazine: "I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist." Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation. "If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he said. For ten years George Obama lived rough. However he now hopes to try to sort his life out by starting a course at a local technical college. He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi. The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head". Of their second meeting, George Obama said: "It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger." George added he was no longer in contact with his mother and said:"I have had to learn to live and take what I need. "Huruma is a tough place, last January during the elections there was rioting and six people were hacked to death. The police don't even arrest you they just shoot you. "I have seen two of my friends killed. I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists."
House Republicans balked at the $700 billion giveaway, insisting that the government not do the bailout, but that Wall Street itself come up with the money and that Treasury Secretary Paulson's powers be restrained. The government wanted the taxpayers to foot the entire bill and for Paulson to have broad powers to implement the bailout. Due to the hard work of the house conservatives, a compromise was reached. The taxpayers will foot the $700 billion dollar bailout and Paulson will have broad powers.
From The Washington Post: Congressional leaders and the Bush administration this morning said they had struck an accord to insert the government deeply into the nation's financial markets, agreeing to spend up to $700 billion to relieve Wall Street of troubled assets backed by faltering home mortgages. House and Senate negotiators from both parties emerged with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. at 12:30 a.m. from a marathon session in the Capitol to announce that they had reached a tentative agreement on a proposal to give Paulson broad authority to organize one of the biggest government interventions in the private sector since the Great Depression.
There is coverage of the Bossier/Webster judge's race in The Times this morning.
excerpts: The race ultimately boils down to a contest between Marvin and Burchett, said Elliot Stonecipher, a political and demographic analyst with Evets Management Services. "You quite literally have the DA who has a personal ax to grind, well, let me restate that, an ax to grind at least as a DA to a judge, and that is not terribly unusual by the way; it happens in a lot of parishes," Stonecipher said. "When the DA decides a judge needs to go, which is what happened in this case, someone like a Mike Craig ends up running." .................. "The thing you have to understand about incumbent judges with a challenger is that there's usually something more going on than meets the eye," said Jeffery Sadow, an associate professor of political science at LSU-Shreveport. "It's very unusual for a sitting judge to be challenged because the incumbent very often wins. ... So, in this instance, it's largely because a certain set of people are unhappy with the incumbent for various reasons."
Judge Dewey Burchett has raised twice as much money through contributions as Mike Craig, according to reports on the Louisiana Ethics Commission website. Burchett has topped $100,000 in contributions, while Craig has not, at time of filing, reached $50,000. Craig does have loans topping $50,000, to even the playing field. Both candidates have commissioned polls. Judge Burchett paid Evets $7,250, and Craig has paid McRei Inc more than $15,000 for polling. It would be interesting to see the results made public. As a side note, Craig paid $1,375 to The Inquisitor for advertising. The Inquistor came out last week with a picture of a local attorney who was arrested for DUI and had Judge Burchett's picture on the front page too. The Inquisitor said that 'reliable sources' told them that the attorney was Burchett's hatchet man. Wonder who those 'reliable sources' were? You can see the disclosure forms on the Ethics Board website.
Article by Sam Hanna, Jr in The Ouachita Citizen. You can read the complete story there.
It's not often two congressional candidates get together and simultaneously issue news releases criticizing a third candidate. That's especially true when the candidates in question are all Republicans who are running against one another in a party primary election. But that's exactly what transpired this week in the 4th District congressional race in northwestern Louisiana where Congressman Jim McCrery, a Republican, opted not to run for re-election. McCrery's decision to bow off the elected scene in lieu of a more lucrative one as a lobbyist opened the door for a host of Republicans who desire to succeed him. The possible successors include Dr. John Fleming of Minden, businessman Chris Gorman of Shreveport and Jeff Thompson, an attorney from Bossier City. It was Fleming and Thompson who jointly decided they were fed up with Gorman's campaign tactics, dispatching separate news releases on Monday in which they called out Gorman for running a negative, misleading campaign in the 4th District race. The party primary election is Oct. 4. Armed with a family fortune, Gorman has spent a boat load of his daddy's money on campaign television advertisements and the like. He claims he's a Ronald Reagan Republican who's created some 500 jobs in the private sector. He also says he's pro-life and pro-gun, key talking points for any Republican candidate in the Deep South. Yet, telephone calls and direct mail pieces 4th District Republicans received from Gorman's camp in recent weeks apparently angered Fleming and Thompson enough to prompt them to respond, questioning Gorman's integrity, or lack thereof. Of the two candidates—Fleming and Thompson—it was Thompson who was a bit more pointed in his criticism of Gorman, according to the news releases filtered to the media.
Chesapeake Energy has announced that they are cutting back on their natural gas production so the market can catch up with the supply. This could mean a lull in leasing in Northwest Louisiana for a period of time, and some of the larger bonuses that have been paid in the 'sweet spots' may be a thing of the past.
Aubrey K. McClendon, Chesapeake's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "During the past ten years, Chesapeake has led the E&P industry in production growth, and through our efforts and those of other leading independent producers, there are now abundant supplies of natural gas in the U.S. market. In fact, we believe there is now sufficient domestic natural gas supply growth to satisfy a growing percentage of the U.S. transportation fuel market through the use of CNG-fueled vehicles. However, until the market has sufficient incentives for service station owners to build out CNG infrastructure, for auto manufacturers to offer new CNG vehicles in large quantities and for consumers to install home refueling devices, retrofit existing vehicles and purchase new CNG vehicles, insufficient natural gas demand exists to prevent periodic declines in wellhead natural gas prices below the industry's breakeven profitability levels. "Therefore, we believe it is in the best interests of Chesapeake's shareholders to temporarily curtail a portion of our natural gas production, reduce the company's drilling capex and lower our production growth to provide time for rising natural gas demand to catch up with increasing natural gas supply. We have made these decisions even though Chesapeake is well hedged, has one of the lowest cost structures in the large-cap E&P industry and has a substantial portion of its capex budget during the next few years carried by other companies. We will monitor market conditions and bring curtailed natural gas production volumes back on stream as prices improve. We remain confident that natural gas is the single best solution to meeting America's energy, transportation and environmental challenges in the years ahead and we will continue our industry-leading efforts to increase both supply and demand for clean, affordable and abundant American natural gas.
Maybe he should try snatching purses from old ladies . . . . Caddo Sheriff Steve Prator found himself a victim of theft when a Shreveport man stole pipe from his farm. Johnny Henderson Jr., 51, is charged with stealing more than $7,000 from Prator’s property on state Highway 3049 on Sunday, the sheriff said. Prator was on his way to Shreveport when he passed by the farm and saw the gate was closed. A few minutes later, the sheriff passed a truck and trailer loaded with aluminum pipe that looked like property belonging to him. Prator drove ahead to check the gate again and this time found it open. He put out a broadcast for the truck and trailer, then stopped the vehicle himself south of the George Road. The driver had pulled over to tighten the rope around the pipe.
Saturday is a big day for voters in Bossier and Webster Parishes. Not only will congressional candidates be selected in closed primaries, but we will choose between Judge Dewey Burchett and Michael Craig for judge.
