Concealed Carry Backlog

 My current permit was due to expire on March 18. I took my training and submitted the renewal application on February 10, which I thought would be adequate time to process it. The state sent me the fee request and I paid it on March 9. This was all done on line so documents were sent electronically and the mail was not an issue. 

I just received notification that the new permit was approved on March 31. 

I can only assume that there are so many applications that the LSP cannot keep up.

Nutria Rodeo Unintended Consequences

A nutria rodeo was held last weekend. About 200 hunters showed up to join in the free fire zone against nutria, the rat that is eating the Louisiana marsh. In all, they bagged about 1500 nutria weighing in at about 10 tons. 

At first the zoo said they would be willing to take the carcasses to feed their alligators, but by the time the rodeo was over, the dead nutria had been sitting in the heat for too long and they became quite pungent. The zoo changed their mind and now the organizers were left with 1500 smelly water rats.

What do you do with 10 tons of rotting nutria? 

It turns out that a local crab fisherman took them to be used as bait in his crab traps. I bet that the next time they decide to hold a nutria shoot, they will plan the disposal a little better.

Local Swamp - Final Results

Federal grants are the cocaine of politicians. With a $45 million grant pending on the approval of a toll bridge that the locals did not want, a group of state representatives and senators who do not represent the area and in the face of vocal opposition, approved construction of the bridge and the imposition of 30 years of tolls on the population. Gotta get their fix of federal bucks. Sigh!

Local Swamp - Alligators, Oh my

Since I last checked in with a status, we (the No Tolls Bunch) have met with the Parish President, several council people, our state rep and state senator to discuss the response to the bridge proposal. I am happy to say that we must have had some influence as out Parish President, not know for having political cojones, has sent a rather direct letter stating that the Parish did not support the proposal as presented due to the tolls and their impact on the economy of the Parish. We now await the response from the DOTD.

In related news, I was always concerned that the private party of the Public Private Partnership did not have a contractors license as they are primarily a financial company even though published organization charts showed them in control of all subcontractors. I expressed this concern to the Licensing Board and expected a quick answer that all was OK because,..... but that didn't happen. Crickets were chirping. Seems like there is a little conflict in the Louisiana Statutes and the DOTD took it upon themselves to interpret them in the DOTDs favor. The issue is subtle but we all know that the law rests upon the details and as this is the very first PPP the details have not yet been tested. This went far enough to elicit a formal letter of explanation from the DOTD to the Licensing Board.

In a nutshell, one regulation says that any entity managing a construction project in any manner shall be licensed. Another regulation, written to allow "design-build" contracts, allows the project manager to use the license of a subcontractor. My opinion is that the law for these design-build contracts meant for the project to be managed by the DOTD and its staff of technical professionals. There is a third regulation dealing with Public Private Partnerships and allowing the DOTD to enter into a PPP. The DOTD feels that, even though their contract is with a non licensed private party, it's OK because it is a design-build contract. But the private party , unlike the DOTD, has no technical staff.

I am still trying to decide my next move. Any contract lawyers out there?

Tail Count

The results of the 2018-2019 Nutria bounty program are in. The State of Louisiana pays $5 for every nutria tail turned in. The state payed out $1,115,775 to 241 hunters. 78 of those hunters turned in 800 or more tails. In order to maintain interest by the hunters, they have raised the bounty to $6 per tail next season.

Before you go getting all PETA on Louisiana for killing these poor, defenseless rodents, they are responsible for a continuing problem by damaging marsh plants and destroying the wetlands. It is estimated that they damaged over 14,000 acres last year.

The Swamp - Local Edition

I live in a parish with a population of about 23,000. About 20% of that population lives below the poverty level. There is only one road in or out of the parish. The route in has a 2 lane tunnel under the Gulf Intercoastal Water Way. The way out has a 2 lane lift bridge. Somehow, the Louisiana Dept of Transportation and Development (DOTD) decided we needed a high rise bridge to eliminate traffic delays when marine traffic caused the bridge to lift and to eliminate maintenance costs on the leaky tunnel.

They went through an extensive process to evaluate options and gather public input. We were told that budgets were tight, therefore, the DOTD was going to offer this project as a Public Private Partnership (P3) and that the private entity would recover their investment by charging tolls to cross the new bridge. But don't worry, tolls will be as low as possible for the minimum amount of time.

They pre qualified 3 bidders and sent out the RFP. Then, 2 of the potential bidders declined to bid leaving them with only a single bidder. The DOTD has determined that this single bid is viable and will proceed with that consortium of contractors.

There was a public meeting this week to introduce the toll amounts. We were told that tolls for residents would be $0.45 each way and that tolls would remain in effect for 30 years. Tolls would be increased by $0.01 per year plus being adjusted by the CPI. When the politicos heard the resistance from the public, they countered with the veiled threat that if we didn't want the bridge, there were plenty of other places that could use the money.

P3 contracts have a mixed history of success. Many P3 deals cost the public more than repaying a bond. Several examples can be found with a quick Google search. This the first one that Louisiana has done so I don't have much optimism about its success. I have had 40 years as a project manager in the oil industry, If I went to my management with only a single bid and 2 bidders who declined, I would be told in no uncertain terms to do it over.

 Unfortunately, it's too late to stop this piece of crap. BOHICA.

Harvey

This is the NOAA 7 day rain totals predicted for Hurricane Harvey. I sure hope that New Orleans gets their pumps working soon. But I guess it was more important to remove statues than maintain the pumping system.

Louisiana Weather and Signs of the Times

We woke up Sunday to a balmy 71 degrees. By 11:00 AM there had been a 20 degree drop in temperature. By sundown, the drop was 30 degrees and we had horizontal rain.

I went to Sam's last week to "make groceries" and witnessed the store crew pulling down the aisle with Christmas decoration stuff. I guess they think everyone has done their decorating. I then went to Rouse's and what did I find at the front door?........King Cakes. If it's Christmas, can Mardi Gras be far behind?

Mother's Day and Crawfish

The family tradition is to have a crawfish boil on Mother's Day. When you have a family as large as my wife's, that's the only way to feed all those people. My brother in law hosts it as he has the burners and the boiling pots. When the crawfish are done, he fires up a kettle of oil and fries fresh caught fish. It's a good day and everyone gets their fill. In all, four generations sat down to peel and eat and then the grand kids took the great grand kids to the pool and they all splashed to their hearts content.

We eat a lot of crawfish in Louisiana. LSU Ag center will tell you that we consume over 110 million pounds of the little critters. That's a lot of mud bugs.

Louisiana Taste Test

What do Californians think of Louisiana cuisine?

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary....

It seems that Mary Landrieu has got herself in a bit of hot water by putting out an election commercial showing herself in a Senate committee meeting. The problem is that the meeting footage is really a reenactment using actors and she did not put a disclaimer saying as much in the commercial. This is typical of Mary, she likes to reinvent history to suit her. The only thing voters need to know about her is that she voted with Obama 97% of the time.

Louisiana Politics

Edwin Edwards has announced that he will run for congress in Louisiana's 6th district. You might remember Edwin from his failed reality TV show, "The Governor's Wife". Or you might remember him as the governor who spent 8 years in a federal prison convicted of 17 counts of bribery. And then there's the time we all voted for the crook because the alternative was David Duke. Other than feeding Edwin's ego, it's not clear to me why he wants to spend the rest of his life (he's 86) in an office that could be considered a step down from the governors office. The district has voted Republican for the past several election and the incumbent would probably be a shoe in except for the fact that he is going to run against Mary Landrieu for the senate slot. If nothing else, we should get some funny one liners out of his race.

In other political news, Bobby Jindal is making speeches in New Hampshire. If asked, he will not admit that he is running for president in 2016, but why would he test the waters in New Hampshire otherwise? I'd just like to remind people that Bobby lost his first run for governor to Kathleen Blanco (AKA "Mee Maw"). People didn't vote for him because of racial and religious bias.(He was born in Baton Rouge and he's Catholic, BTW. He's also a Rhodes Scholar) Then came Katrina and we all learned that Mee Maws don't handle emergencies well and she became a one term wonder. Whether you like him or not, Bobby is decisive and knows his facts. We could do a lot worse. (and we have)

No Good Deed Etc.

Wal Mart stores in NW Louisiana made the decision to honor EBT cards even though they could not confirm the balance remaining on the cards due to the recent system failure. They didn't want to deny food to their shoppers.  It didn't take long for word to spread and shoppers emptied the shelves. These were not shoppers in a panic, but thugs who thought they could get something for nothing. When the system went back on line and people were caught with more than the card could pay for, they left their carts and Wal Mart employees had a fun time re-stocking the shelves.

These people belong to the same class that loot stores in times of disaster and spend their Hurricane Katrina money on bling. They were raised in a system that failed to teach them personal integrity. They are Obama voters.

Elbert Guillory - Why I Became a Republican

U-505

Several bloggers have posted that today is the anniversary of the capture of U-505. She is now a museum boat in Chicago. Go pay her a visit.

But what happened to the crew? All but one was captured alive. They had to be kept isolated so that they couldn't alert the Germans that they had been captured and the naval codes compromised. They were sent to a POW camp in Ruston, Louisiana. It so happened that their guards were members of the US Navy baseball team. These guards taught the German submariners how to play baseball and that story can be found in "Playing with the Enemy". Evidently a movie based on the book was in development but it never got into production.

Welcome to Louisiana

Book Review - Creole Belle

Fans of Dave Robicheaux will be pleased to learn that he is alive and well in James Lee Burke’s latest novel in the series. I was disappointed after his last novel, Feast Day of Fools, which featured Hackberry Holland, but he is back in top form when writing about Louisiana.


I love his descriptions of Louisiana and would carry his books when travelling overseas because they reminded me of home. He is a master of the similie and a philosopher of life and the human condition. I enjoyed his writing and the action so much that I lost track of the overall plot. I realized after finishing that he never did develop a good reason for all the mayhem and murder he committed in the novel.

The story starts with Dave having a morphine dream about a young singer coming to his hospital room (he was shot in the last installment) and asking him for help. Somehow, her problems are related to evil industrialists who may have had a hand in the Macondo blowout. It gets serious when her younger sister is found encased in a block of ice that drifted to shore. In the meantime, Clete Purcell, Dave's friend and escapee from the cardiac ward, has found out he has a daughter who also may be a contract killer. Throw in a Louisiana beauty queen and a Nazi war criminal and the story takes off like a duck busting from cover on a cool fall morning.

Happy Birthday, Louisiana

200 years ago Louisiana was made a state.

Dem Cajuns is Clever

I once worked on a project where we negotiated a Right of Way for a pipeline to cross a farmers field. Everything was fine until the construction crew arrived and found the rice field covered in water. This, of course, threw the monkey wrench into the gears and we went to the farmer to ask WTF? He informed us that he now intended to raise crawfish and if our construction prevented him from doing so, he wanted compensation. As you can guess, he got paid for crawfish that never existed, the field was drained and construction began.

And if you want a lesson on negotiation, sit down with some people who have rented out their plantation homes for movies. You could learn a lot about how business is done in Hollywood.

Now it seems some Yankees thought Swamp People's Troy Landry could be taken advantage of. He got them good, I think.

Alligator Diesel

A researcher at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette is proposing that alligator fat is an ideal feed stock for conversion to biodiesel. Evidently, the high lipid content of alligator fat makes it a better candidate than other animal lards. The information on the paper and its abstract is below.

Potential of Alligator Fat as Source of Lipids for Biodiesel Production
Srividya Ayalasomayajula
Ramalingam Subramaniam
August Gallo
Stephen Dufreche
Mark Zappi
Rakesh Bajpai

Chemical Engineering Department and Chemistry Department
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Lafayette, Louisiana 70504
United States

Large amount of alligator fat (AF) is produced by alligator meat processing industry and disposed in landfills or discarded as waste. The AF can be used as a potential feedstock for biodiesel production due to its high lipid content. In this work, recovery of lipids from the AF tissue was studied by solvent extraction as well as by microwave rendering. Microwave rendering resulted in AF oil recovery of 61% by weight of the frozen AF tissue obtained from producers. The fatty acid profile of the lipid showed that palmitic acid (C16:0), palmitoleic acid (C16:1), and oleic acid (C18:1) were the dominant fatty acids accounting for 89–92% of all lipids by mass; 30% of the fatty acids were saturated and 70% were unsaturated. The biodiesel produced from AF oil was found to meet the ASTM specifications of biodiesel concerning kinematic viscosity, sulfur, free and total glycerin, flash point, cloud point, and acid number.

Currently, alligator fat is a waste byproduct from processing alligator skins. Approximately 15 million pounds (7,500 tons) is produced annually and disposed of in landfills. This amount of fat could produce 1.25 million gallons (29,762 Bbls) of biodiesel. This is about 1/50 (2%) of the amount of diesel fuel that is consumed in the State of Louisiana.

Me, I still prefer Alligator Sauce Piquant!