Louisiana Lawmakers Vote Themselves a Raise

Louisiana's Teacher Pay Deadline, Seattle's Sober-Free Tiny Homes, and the Gator That Ended One Man's Escape Plan

We open with a Louisiana education funding decision that has a June 23rd deadline — Governor Landry's executive order to redirect $168 million from non-instructional school dollars into one-time stipends for teachers and support staff, preventing a de facto pay cut that kicks in July 1st. We work through the complications — the voters rejected the constitutional amendment that would have funded permanent raises, the legislature has to approve this by a two-thirds vote through an online ballot process, and nobody has yet explained what that $168 million was actually going to be used for before it got redirected. We also take a moment to acknowledge last year's legislative session, which produced insurance reforms that are now showing real results — 40 companies have asked to lower auto insurance rates, and 19 new companies have entered the Louisiana market. That's what impact looks like. In our Top 3, the Louisiana OMV experienced massive computer outages statewide after a software upgrade described as switching from a 1972 Pinto to a 2026 McLaren — problems expected to be resolved by Wednesday. Then the city of Shreveport approved Providence House's expansion in downtown, including a four-story apartment building and four single-family homes for people getting back on their feet after homelessness — with support from neighboring arts organizations. We call it exactly the right way to address the problem — nonprofits, not government programs. And the former mayor of Deridder was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being convicted of carnal knowledge of a juvenile and indecent behavior with a juvenile — two charges that each carried up to 17 years in prison but no minimum sentence. She said at sentencing she had made a lot of promises to put Deridder on the map. Not this way. We also cover a local story that could only happen in Louisiana — or possibly Florida — where a man pulled over on Interstate 310 on suspicion of DWI decided his best option was to leap off an elevated highway into a Louisiana swamp. A gator was waiting. The man survived both the bridge jump and the alligator attack, was eventually apprehended, and we offer this as a public service announcement — in Louisiana, the swamp is not an escape route. It is a food chain. And those odds come with teeth. We dig into Seattle's latest attempt to solve homelessness — a $16,000 tiny home program where residents are not required to be sober, not required to enter addiction treatment, and not required to participate in recovery programs of any kind. We contrast this with Habitat for Humanity, which requires sweat equity and sobriety because they understand basic psychology — people value what they work for and free housing without accountability enables the very addiction that created the homelessness in the first place. We also note that Seattle added a 10% income tax on households earning over $1 million this year, ensuring the people most likely to invest in the city will be the ones most motivated to leave it. We also push back hard on Ann Coulter's claim that the Iran conflict is starting to look exactly like the Iraq War. We run the numbers — 248,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq versus zero in Iran, 139 American military personnel killed in the first phase of the Iraq invasion versus 13 in the first phase of the Iran conflict, and zero casualties since the first 48 hours of the Iran operation compared to steady ongoing losses throughout the Iraq campaign. The goal in Iraq was regime change. The goal in Iran is a negotiated nuclear deal. These two things are not the same, and saying they are is either sloppy or dishonest. We also cover the Carmelo Anthony verdict — guilty of murder in the stabbing death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a Texas track meet — and contrast it with a North Carolina case where the man accused of brutally murdering an innocent Ukrainian immigrant on a train has been found incompetent to stand trial. We ask the question the victims' families are asking — when does the system focus on the people who were killed rather than accommodating the people who killed them? And in a development that genuinely surprised us, Whoopi Goldberg defended President Trump's right to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden — arguing he earned it as a lifelong Knicks fan. We accept the defense while pointing out that the president of the United States doesn't need to have been a fan of the team to attend a sporting event in his own country. He needs a ticket. That's it.

The Homelessness Crisis: Compassion, Accountability, or Both?

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 8, 2026. We open with a Louisiana law that raises an obvious question: why did it take so long? After the Orleans Parish jailbreak exposed a stunning 10-hour delay in notifying the public that violent inmates had escaped, Governor Jeff Landry signed legislation requiring correctional facilities to immediately alert the public when dangerous inmates are inadvertently released. We discuss why public safety should always come before public relations, why communities deserve timely information, and how the debate over crime, incarceration, and race often ignores the people who suffer most from violent crime. From there, we examine Louisiana's new Streets to Success Act, which would make unauthorized camping on public property a crime while creating the possibility of specialized homelessness courts. We explore the difficult balance between compassion and accountability, why simply allowing permanent homeless encampments is not a humane solution, and whether the state is prepared to provide the addiction treatment and mental health services needed to make the policy work. We also highlight one of Louisiana's biggest success stories. New education data shows dramatic improvements in reading proficiency among young students, continuing a trend that has made Louisiana one of the nation's leaders in post-COVID academic recovery. We break down the numbers, discuss the science-of-reading approach championed by State Superintendent Cade Brumley, and explain why getting children reading proficiently by third grade may be one of the most important investments a state can make. Later, we turn to energy policy and rising gas prices. As President Trump proposes suspending the federal gas tax, we welcome oil and gas expert Jay Young, CEO of King Operating Corporation, to explain what is really driving fuel costs, why events in the Middle East affect prices at American gas pumps, how refinery limitations complicate domestic energy production, and why the global oil market is far more interconnected than most people realize. And finally, we take a lighter turn with a conversation about President Trump's planned appearance at the NBA Finals, the criticism it has generated, and why presidents attending major sporting events has long been part of American culture. Along the way, we celebrate underdog stories, from teachers who invest in their students beyond the classroom to basketball legend Spud Webb, whose determination and perseverance embodied the belief that in America, people can accomplish extraordinary things despite the odds. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!

Get to the Gym, Get to Church, and Get Out of AI Chats — Dr. Abloh's Warning About AI

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 5, 2026. We open with Governor Jeff Landry's first veto of the legislative session — and it's a surprising one. A bill that passed both chambers of the Louisiana legislature unanimously, with zero opposition votes, would have increased compensation for wrongfully convicted and later exonerated citizens from $400,000 to $600,000 and extended the payout period from 10 to 15 years. The governor vetoed it, citing concerns about double recovery and the cost to taxpayers at a time when teacher raises went unfunded. We examine both sides — the legitimate conservative concern about safeguarding taxpayer dollars, and the equally legitimate conservative principle that it is better for a guilty person to go free than an innocent one to rot in prison. We also explain Louisiana's unusual veto override process, and ask whether the legislature will actually show up for a session to override it. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, the governor vetoed the wrongful conviction compensation increase. Then DeSoto Parish Schools approved a 6.8% pay raise for all full-time employees — making northwest Louisiana suddenly the most interesting real estate market in the state for teachers looking for districts that want to keep them. And a bill sitting on the governor's desk would retroactively wipe out an ethics fine for Democratic state Representative Steven Jackson of Shreveport, who has racked up thousands of dollars in fines for repeatedly failing to file required financial disclosures on time. We suggest the governor decline to sign that one too.  We dig into the economic case for data centers in Louisiana — specifically Amazon Web Services building a data center just north of Benton in Bossier Parish that is expected to generate $12 million a year in water revenue alone, with Amazon also agreeing to help fund upgrades to the city's aging infrastructure. We make the case that data centers are the railroads of the 21st century — not because they're glamorous but because they generate enormous private investment in communities that might otherwise be waiting for government bonds and tax hikes. We also address the fear that data centers will take jobs and destroy the economy, and explain why every new technology in history, from the factory to the computer, created more jobs than it displaced. We sit down with Dr. Keith Abloh — author and AI expert — for one of the most important conversations we've had on this show. His central warning: AI is not just a productivity tool. It is gradually coaxing us to deposit ourselves into machines, to stop thinking for ourselves, to outsource our judgment, our direction, our creativity, and eventually our identity to systems that have no soul. He talks about the GPS problem — we don't navigate anymore and we've lost the capacity — and how AI is doing the same thing to our minds at a much larger scale. He says the first signs are already visible in younger people with shorter attention spans and less willingness to think critically. His prescription: get to the gym, get to church, get grounded in something real, because the alternative is evaporating into a chatbot. KeithAbloh.com. The Chicago Bears have voted to move forward with a stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana — just across the Illinois border — after the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois failed to offer meaningful incentives to keep them. Mayor Brandon Johnson says it's not a done deal, but we disagree. We also explain why this is not a football story — it's an economic story about what happens when you run a city in a way that makes businesses want to leave.  We also get into the World Cup arriving in the United States, Canada, and Mexico — the first time in history the tournament has been co-hosted by three countries simultaneously. We work through which professional soccer leagues have the most players in this year's cup — English Premier League at 165, Bundesliga at 90, France's Ligue 1 at 79, La Liga at 76, Serie A at 65, and MLS at 44 — and make the case that Major League Soccer has arrived as one of the top six leagues on the planet. The last time the U.S. hosted a World Cup, we didn't even have a professional league. And a freshman Democrat congresswoman from Arizona has called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against President Trump — because in a video he appeared to have his eyes briefly closed while someone else was speaking at his desk. We ask whether she ever called for the 25th Amendment against Joe Biden. We already know the answer. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!

The Debit Card Surcharge Bill, the Recall That Has No Case, and a Mom Who Took on TikTok

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 4, 2026. We open with a Louisiana bill sitting on Governor Landry's desk that sounds great on the surface and is actually terrible policy — Senator Beth Mizell's bill to ban retail surcharges on debit card transactions. We explain why this is not a conservative principle, why it will not save consumers a single dollar, and why all it will actually do is raise the price of everything for everyone, hurt the small businesses least able to absorb the cost, and prove once again that Milton Friedman was right — there is no free lunch, there is only a free lunch you can't see the bill for.  In our Top 3, Louisiana AG Liz Murrell announced the arrest and indictment of two women — including a state Department of Health employee — for a $156,000 Medicaid and SNAP fraud scheme involving reinstating benefits for someone who had been kicked off the program for lying about her income and marital status. The DOH employee is now a fugitive. Then St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith was arrested for second-degree battery and disturbing the peace after allegedly attacking a frequent critic at a steakhouse in Madisonville — and we say if the allegations are true, he should resign. And the deadline to register for Louisiana's upcoming Senate runoff elections is Saturday online only — so if you haven't registered, go to la.sos.gov or download the GoVote app right now. We also discuss another bill on the governor's desk — the Streets to Success Act — which criminalizes homelessness and allows someone sleeping on a park bench to be arrested and jailed for up to six months. We explain why we have serious problems with this bill, why designating public encampment zones is exactly the policy that turned Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco into disaster zones, why homelessness is fundamentally a mental illness and substance abuse crisis rather than a housing problem, and why a bill with no funding for the programs it creates is not a solution — it's a sentence. We dig into the Louisiana governor's recall petition — Louis was just interviewed about it by a local TV station — and we walk through each of the three stated grounds for the recall. Undermining fair representation? The governor was doing what the Supreme Court ordered him to do. Misaligned priorities? The legislature votes on the budget. Emphasis on punishment over root causes? Crime in Louisiana has gone down in every major city since Landry took office and focused on incarceration. We apply the principle that you don't recall a governor for doing what they were elected to do — you recall them for doing the opposite. We sit down with Sarah Standiford, author of Citizens Pray, whose son was killed when a semi truck driver watching TikTok live — going 68 miles per hour — slammed into the vehicle he was a passenger in. The truck burned for four hours. The driver was not convicted of distracted driving. Sarah took on the trucking company, the state of Arizona, and the legal system — and has written about all of it. We talk about why enforcement of distracted driving laws is nearly impossible, why she believes the accountability has to come from phone carriers and social media platforms themselves, and why a road in Arizona where 500 people died in six years still hasn't been fixed. That conversation leads us into a broader discussion about why no law can substitute for character — why the more people govern their own behavior, the less government they need, and why the inverse is also true. If you want government out of your life, you have to be the kind of person who can be trusted to run it. We also cover an illegal immigrant from Brazil who was driving the wrong way on a Massachusetts highway while allegedly intoxicated, crashed into a state trooper, and was back on the street in two days because of Massachusetts sanctuary state law. And a British Labour Party lawmaker is suing Elon Musk because someone used Grok to generate an AI image of her in a bikini — we discuss why the complaint, if legitimate, is against the person who created the image and not against the platform, and why Britain's hostility toward Musk has far more to do with his criticism of the British government's silence on a recent murder than it does with artificial intelligence. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!

Performative Politics: When Government Stops Governing

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 3, 2026. We open with a local Caddo Parish controversy that reveals something much larger about modern American politics: the rise of performative government. After a parish commissioner vowed to keep reintroducing a resolution opposing Louisiana's congressional maps "until kingdom come," we examine the growing obsession with symbolic political gestures that accomplish nothing while real problems go unaddressed. From overcrowded jails and neglected infrastructure to endless political posturing, we explore the difference between governing and simply making statements. We also break down the latest legal challenge to Louisiana's congressional maps, a major federal investment in rare earth mineral extraction that could strengthen America's domestic supply chain, and the troubling financial situation in New Orleans as city leaders take on another massive loan while struggling to balance the budget. Then we turn to Louisiana's newly signed Safe Haven awareness law, requiring high schools to display information about legal alternatives available to mothers facing crisis pregnancies. We discuss why simply making people aware of options can save lives and why supporters see the measure as an important pro-life initiative. From there, we shift to a story that illustrates the power of civic pride and visible improvement. Shreveport's renovated water tower isn't just a fresh coat of paint — it's part of a broader conversation about maintenance, infrastructure, community standards, and what cities communicate about themselves through the condition of their public spaces. We also look at Victoria's Secret's dramatic financial turnaround after moving away from the activist-driven branding that alienated many of its traditional customers, sparking a larger discussion about what happens when companies lose sight of the audience they serve. Later, we examine claims surrounding conditions at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility after a member of Congress toured the center and reported conditions that sharply contradict many of the narratives promoted by activists and political opponents. We discuss the importance of transparency, media scrutiny, and separating facts from political messaging. We also dive into the debate over presidential war powers as Congress considers efforts to limit President Trump's authority regarding Iran, explore how state corporate tax rates are driving business migration across the country, and examine Florida's effort to hold organizers of violent "teen takeovers" accountable alongside the participants themselves. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!