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New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

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81–90 of 92 posts

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#81
post #77

Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.

“One of the best descriptions of this political culture came from A.J. Liebling, who called Louisiana "the westernmost of the Arab states" and observed that its politics "is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the Republic of Lebanon. Louisiana is part of the Hellenistic—Mediterranean littoral—sensual, seductive, speculative, devious." - The Book of America, Hagstrom and Peirce

Allow me to elaborate on the political culture. I lived in LA in the early 90s when the governors race was between a former KKK Leander and Edwin Edward’s who once said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Louisiana_gubernatorial_e....

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#82
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably none? I certainly didn’t mean to imply there is significant investment.

I follow local politics in my own city of similar means. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for bigco corporate developers (though they're not above doing something if perfect circumstances pop up) and the long tail of mom and pop investors, slumlord and "maybe you can rent my cousin's vacant storefront for your shop" type investment activity that would normally make those investments and over time uplift a community…

In the 1970s the East was a lot of couples working in the booming oil industry so a lot of the housing stock dates from then. When the oil bust happened they decamped to the Northshore or Houston.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#83
post #50

My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.

update from my bud:

> Almost all of the references to the “law firm hired by trucking companies” refer to my firm.

He's been telling me about this scammy former stunt woman attorney since before covid.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#84
Lots of blame to go around

"60 Minutes, the storied investigative news program of CBS, Sunday night turned its cameras on one of the growing problems within the U.S. trucking industry: chameleon carriers."

These companies quickly shed any record of accidents and safety violations simply by changing their names and slapping new DOT numbers on their trucks. https://www.truckersnews.com/videos/video/15822044/60-minute...

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#85

Harrowing. That said, excellent journalism. I loved the artwork.

skipped the byline and halfway through realized the voice felt familiar. if you like this and are unfamiliar with Radden Keefe then check out The Snakehead and Say Nothing. im sure everything he writes is great but can personally recommend those

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#86
post #50

My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.

Just so everyone here knows, any LA lawyer is a darn smart person.

LA has kinda a dual legal system that it inherited from the French and Spanish codified law system out of Napoleon (yes that one), and ultimately from Roman law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana

Just the first paragraph there is a confusing mess and the rest of the article doesn't get any better (to me at least).

Suffice to say, having to pass the bar is tough enough, but having to do it while 'speaking two languages' in terms of law systems is so much more harder.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#87
post #86
post #50

My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.

Just so everyone here knows, any LA lawyer is a darn smart person. LA has kinda a dual legal system that it inherited from the French and Spanish codified law system out of Napoleon (yes that one), and ultimately from Roman law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana Just the first paragraph there is a confusing mess and the rest of the article doesn't get any better (to me at least). Suffice to say, having t…

From my source:

> Things that are not true: not every Louisiana lawyer is smart. Some of them are very dumb.

> You don’t have to speak 2 languages.

> Louisiana has a mixed jurisdiction, just like everywhere else in the United States. The difference is that common law relies on stare decisis, and Louisiana relies on the civil code as the basis for law.

> It is true that Louisiana originally took different parts of the law from historical bases that are uncommon for America. Our property law comes from the visigoths or something.

> However, the Napoleonic code did not actually arrive in Louisiana until two or three years after the civil code of Louisiana was officially adopted, so it is not based on Napoleon code, though that is frequently asserted.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#88
post #87
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so everyone here knows, any LA lawyer is a darn smart person. LA has kinda a dual legal system that it inherited from the French and Spanish codified law system out of Napoleon (yes that one), and ultimately from Roman law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana Just the first paragraph there is a confusing mess and the rest of the article doesn't get any better (to me at least). Suffice to say, having t…

From my source: > Things that are not true: not every Louisiana lawyer is smart. Some of them are very dumb. > You don’t have to speak 2 languages. > Louisiana has a mixed jurisdiction, just like everywhere else in the United States. The difference is that common law relies on stare decisis, and Louisiana relies on the civil code as the basis for law. > It is true that Louisiana originally took different parts of the…

Alright, well your buddy just got extra smart points from me then!

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#89

The "three people in car" is a very useful tell for criminal activity. I've seen in home burglar rings (one driver, one lookout, and one person to enter the home), catalytic converter thieves (driver, lookout, and "saw man"), etc. Not sure why they need the same patter of three here, but I guess one person will be the one who goes to the hospital, etc. It's like they all read the same "criminal" forums to learn techn…

The main reason these fraudsters do 3 people in the car is it allows them to up the payout, bodily injury claims are per-incident/per-person, which means more people is a larger payout that they then share with each other. Stuff like this is why I have dashcams in all directions on my car and conceal carry (if you catch them in the act, these fraudsters are known to get violent against the innocent driver).

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#90
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median real wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Yes, which proves the point, no? In Q1 of 1979 the real median wages were 335. In Q3 of 2014 they were 336. Which means that from 1979 to 2014 workers did not see any increase in their salary. In that same period, GDP per capita (and thus the economic output of the country and thus the economic output of its workers) almost doubled. The country became richer, workers became more efficient, but they did not get any pa…

No?

The point was > but wages were dropping in real terms throughout that period

> And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades that followed, America was booming

There are economic cycles but the trend is clearly up. Funny enough, the 80's and the 90's which I think many people recall as great times were maybe more flat overall and the last 15 years feel worse. To be honest we also need to look at unemployment and perhaps other metrics. But the story that real wages were dropping is not supported by the data.

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