re: Will the national media descend on Baton Rouge to make st George a racial issue?

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RightHook

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if people want to live like animals, kill each other, etc, then let em. just let em starve to death too, stop supporting it

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RightHook

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Yep, that checks

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Can someone briefly explain this St. George situation for an out of towner.

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Imagine that 70 years ago, the people who lived in your house and that the people lived in you neighbor’s house agreed to combine budgets for things like landscaping and road maintenance. Now, in the present day, your neighbor uses that 70 year old agreement and takes $500 from you every year for things like cable and internet which you don’t get to use.

When you bring up the fact that this is a bullshite situation, he says you’re a racist and you need shut up and keep paying.

It’s like that but quite literally multipled by 100,000.

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kingbob

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Standing ovation. Captured it perfectly. And I can’t wait to cease being part of SWB’s tax colony.

Back to OP. It has captured national attention. Together Baton Rouge are out of state, paid rabble rousers, on Soros payroll. The very definition of Carpetbaggers, and they’ve waged war on St. George, Exxon, and others since they rolled into town, spreading lies and misinformation through a complicit media, especially the liberal idiot that now owns The Advocate and Picayune. Richard Lipsey is also all up in the middle of the opposition, for reasons unclear to me.

Here’s the thing, St. George excludes the areas last time that didn’t want to incorporate. Those areas happen to be majority African American. Isn’t it racist to force AA’s to incorporate into a city they don’t want to incorporate into?

I am still trying to fathom why this vote should be news ANYWHERE outside East Baton Rouge parish.

It shouldn’t be

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I am still trying to fathom why this vote should be news ANYWHERE outside East Baton Rouge parish.

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Because St. George has the moral high ground and the only way for the City of BR to keep their cash cow is to muddy the waters by fake claims of racism.

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No one gives a flipping shite about st George. Go home grandpa.

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Is this a melt?

Sounds like a melt.

I would expect it. They sort of set a trap for SG with the removal of select neighborhoods. It'll be the focus of the investigation and claim. They will push the white nationalist angle.

Doesn't help you that a couple of Baton Rouge baws and LSU grads are high up at Media Matters.

For those not fully versed on the issue: here’s a synopsis I posted in another thread:

In the 1980’s, a federal court ordered a radical desegregation order that forced public school students to be bussed to the opposite side of town to go to school. Students could no longer go to the school near where they lived. Predictably, this triggered massive middle class exodus from the school system and the parish as a whole as those with means began sending their kids to private schools and those with slightly less means moved to Ascension and Livingston parishes. Baton Rouge’s public school system went from being one of the best in the state to one of the worst.

Fast forward to the 2000’s, the forced bussing deseg order is partially lifted, allowing for a return to some form of neighborhood schooling. Over the previous 20 years, massive population growth had occurred on the southeast side of EBR parish, but those neighborhoods had never been incorporated into the city of Baton Rouge for two reasons:
1. Federal voting rights act prohibits annexation of new areas into a city if doing so would dilute “minority” voting power (even if “minorities” are the majority). The Southeast side is overwhelmingly white and middle class.
2. The city and parish moved to a merged form of government where there was one “metro” counsel rather than a city counsel and a parish counsel and the mayor/parish president is elected parish wide. Parks, libraries, schools, and public works are all managed by the parish with police and fire protection provided by the city.

This arrangement made sense because once Scotlandville (a minority majority town north of the city where the airport and Southern University is located) merged with Baton Rouge, there was only one incorporated area in the parish. However, Baker wanted to be their own city and incorporated nearly immediately afterwards and managed to, by incorporating, get their own Baker School District. This wasn’t fought against too hard because Baker is majority black.

So, when that deseg order was lifted in the 2000’s, the southeast side of the parish. demanded new schools be built so their children wouldn’t have to be bussed as far away to go to school. They were told to pound sand by the school board.

The area of Zachary responded by incorporating and forming its own school district on the north side. It’s schools are now among the best in the state. Central followed a few years later by voting to incorporate and create their own school district, which despite heavy opposition, managed to happen. Central High, as a result, went from being a D rated school to one of the best high schools in the state.

The southeast side of the parish then tried to form an independent school district, but were told no, that they had to incorporate to do that. They then tried to incorporate all of the unincorporated areas on the southeast side of the parish, but between the race-baiting of the media and Baton Rouge government, a massive smear campaign, targeting of petition signers, and major shenanigans in the vetting process of the petition, it was denied a chance to make incorporating go to a ballot initiative. As a response, the city gerrymandered some boundaries to avoid incorporating any new people, but took control of several major businesses including the hospitals and most of the Mall of Louisiana as a way to starve any newly formed city of sales tax revenue.

The St. George supporters then proposed an olive branch. They would drop their support for incorporation and forming a new school district if the school board agreed to build a new high school and a few new primary and middle schools on that side of the parish. Once again, they were told to pound sand.

After waiting the requisite time, the St. George supporters circulated a new petition to incorporate, but with more refined boundaries and a smaller footprint to make the signature threshold for the petition more obtainable. They purposely excluded many black neighborhoods on the southeast side of town as well as many large apartment complexes. Despite more calls of racism and personal threats to petition signers, this second attempt was successful at getting St. George on the ballot. While some shenanigans managed to delay the vote from the spring to the fall, it will be up for popular vote in the St. George area this fall. If successful, St. George will then be able to start the next fight to form their own school district.

The reason BR is fighting incorporation so strongly is that sales taxes collected in the unincorporated areas are, for some crazy reason, being put into the city’s general fund which is used to fund police, fire, etc. So, despite them being taxed for these services, they’re not being provided them. Basically, the unincorporated areas are being used as a tax colony by the city while being passed over for improvements to schools and infrastructure because f$&k whitey. If the St. George revenue starts flowing into a St. George city general fund instead of to Baton Rouge’s city fund, the ponzi scheme will collapse and the city government will be forced to cut spending dramatically. There’s all kinds of duplication of services going on in the city with these “rec centers” in poor neighborhoods that perform all of the same services as the parks, but are owned by the city, funded by the city, and managed by family members of counsel members. They’re used as a jobs, money-laundering, and vote-buying program. The corrupt city government is facing serious repercussions for their incompetence.

So, now that the city has passed, nothing much will change in the short term (other than $60 million dollars no longer flowing into the city of Br’s general fund). They will need to continue to fight before they can get the independent school district they want.