Louisiana public schools have made major advances in reading and math, yet still lag behind other states in educational achievement.  Could the International Baccalaureate (IB) program service as the solution?Seven Louisiana schools, including the French Quarter-bound Lycée Francais use the IB, but the internationally-recognized,  integrated educational system has a significantly small presence in Pelican State. Robert Kelty, the North American Head of Outreach and Development for IBO.org joins us to find out why the program may be the key to bettering our schools, and how his foundation is opening a pilot school to provide educational resources in Louisiana—to help acceptance of the IB program.  For the Louisiana born and LSU-educated US & Canada Director of the International Baccalaureate Organization, the issue is deeply personal.Hy and Christopher then chat with Ned Canty, the director of “Elixir of Love” premiering on April 4 & 6 at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre in the Armstrong Park.  He tells us how a Chinese audience made him reinterpret the Donizetti comic opera into an “Old West” version, and how here in New Orleans, the Opera will take on a Cajun Cowboy theme.  Fiddler and Acadian Country star Amanda Shaw will be appearing in the opera and headlining a Fais Do Do afterwards.  A special date night package is available for $95.00 (for two) at The New Orleans Opera website.We then mention that Mississippi is phasing out its income tax even faster than anyone expected. The MS legislature was supposed to approve income tax cuts only when revenue increases meet at 85% threshold, thus phasing out the tax over years.  A misprint in the final bill put it at .85%, though, which would mean that Mississippi loses its income tax by 2030–at the latest.  With Texas, Florida, and Tennessee also having no income tax, will Louisiana have phase it out next just to remain competitive?Hy and Christopher also talk about the legacy of US Rep. Mia Love and the impacts of the Signal scandal.  It suffices to say that our hosts disagree.Here are both Christopher’s columns in this coming edition of The Louisiana Weekly.Love When It CountedBy Christopher TidmoreThe first Black woman Republican Congressman passed away last week at the age of 49.  Mia Love began her public life a neighborhood activist who got involved in politics for all of the right reasons, just as she stood up as a voice of integrity against Donald Trump’s hijacking of the moral center of the GOP.The daughter of Haitian immigrants, she understood—and articulated— the critical importance of those who come to this country seeking a better life.  She took on the President when he denigrated immigrants— in particularly Haitians—who shared the same color of skin as she.  Mia Love fearlessly pointed out the racist underpinnings of some of Donald Trump‘s rhetoric, and she paid a huge political price for her integrity.Love started out as a community activist in Saratoga Springs, Utah, in an effort to persuade the developer of her neighborhood to spray against flies.  Then, in 2003, she won a seat on the Saratoga Springs City Council. She was the first female Black elected official in Utah County, fixed a massive budget deficit, and went on to become Mayor of the town.  She ran twice for Congress, winning on her second bid in 2014.When Trump won the presidency, Love very openly questioned his rhetoric and policies.  As a direct consequence of the hostility emanating from the Oval Office, she lost her reelection in 2018 to Salt Lake Democratic Mayor Ben McAdams by just 694 votes or razor thin margin of .258%—due to GOP defections.  Following her defeat, President Trump mocked Love, saying, "Mia Love gave me no love, and she lost."In her concession speech, Love hit back at Trump, saying that he and others in the Republican Party had not done enough for minority voters, arguing, "This election experience...shines a spotlight on the problems Washington politicians have with minorities and Black Americans — it's transactional. It's not personal. Because Republicans never take minority communities into their home and citizens into their homes and into their hearts, those voters stay with Democrats and bureaucrats in Washington because they do take them home, or at least make them feel like they have a home."Congresswoman Love observed how far her party had come from Reagan’s “city upon a hill” inspirationalism as well as George W. Bush’s welcoming attitude towards immigrants by embracing MAGA and Trump.  To the dismay of some liberals, she also observed that denigrating decent men like Reagan and the Bushes as ‘fonts of selfishness and malignancy on the republic’ made Democrats seem to be “crying Wolf “ when they used the same arguments  against Donald Trump.  At the historical moment when those warnings were most needed, few swing voters were willing to believe them since they had been so overused and abused by progressives.Mia Love stood out as one of the only major Black politicians who could make that argument consistently, as both a supporter of both Reagan and Bush as well as a child of minority immigrants herself.  The personification of American exceptionalism, her death at the age of 49 to brain cancer leaves the American body politic far poorer.Not worthy to text from behind the Resolute DeskRonald Reagan and George HW Bush must be rolling in their graves so consistently—in horror to which their party’s national security apparatus has been reduced—that the shades of the former presidents must resemble perpetual motion machines at this point. Maybe that’s Donald Trump’s secret plan to revive the economy, tapping the free centripetal energy from the troubled souls of leaders past.If any Democratic administration had shared critical intelligence information via a commercially available app, the calls for impeachment as well as termination of senior officials would be deafening from the GOP leadership.  After all, the emails that were downloaded onto Hillary Clinton‘s personal computer constituted such a national security scandal in Donald Trump‘s mind that she deserved “to go to prison”.Now, Trump will not even fire National Security Advisor Mike Waltz for including the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in the group chat discussing the nation’s secrets on an unsecured Text chain… in the editorial section of The Louisiana Weekly

Ver todos los episodios