The Prison of Progressivism – Ideology Over Accountability - with Jeff Crouere – [Ep. 258]

P101-ep-258-podcast-transcript

Linda J Hansen:  Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 Breakroom Economics® Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101, Job Security Through Business Prosperity, the Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck® and the creator of the Breakroom Economics® Online course.

The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to breakroom and policy to paycheck. By empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful®.

I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit prosperity101.com.

Thank you so much for joining with me today. It is a joy to have you join with us and there's so many interesting things to discuss today regarding our current situation in America with crime, devastation in our inner cities, and what we can do about it as we work to promote positive policies for change.

But before we do that, I do want to say thank you to our prosperity partners, those who contribute financially to help keep the podcast on the air. Thank you so much. And if you'd like to be a prosperity partner, please go to prosperity101.com and hit the prosperity partner link. And the link is also in our show notes.

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Now on to the episode. As I said last week, I focused on inner city Chicago as we interviewed the rooftop pastor Corey Brooks. You may want to listen to that interview as well. But today we're looking at another city that has been ravaged by crime, hopelessness, illiteracy, despair, poverty, and it's New Orleans.

You know, so often we think of New Orleans being this beautiful city and Mardi Gras and all of that, but there is so much happening in New Orleans that is not positive. And just like in other urban cities, we can see the policies that have led to this decay.

My guest today is a repeat guest and someone I've learned to appreciate so much, Jeff Crouere. He is a political analyst, a columnist, author, and show host. I have highlighted his show before, Ringside Politics, which can be seen on Real America's Voice and can also be heard on WGSO 990 AM.

So you want to visit Real America's Voice and WGSO and learn from Jeff and his guests. And I've been blessed to be a guest, so thank you, Jeff. But it's great to have you back. And I really wanted to bring you in because you wrote a column recently entitled Escape from Accountability: How Progressive Policies Fueled New Orleans Prison Break Nightmare.

Now I know that more recently we had this prison break in New Orleans and people were aghast that these prisoners just could escape. And so I'd like for you to enlighten us a little bit about how this happened in New Orleans, but also a little bit about why you know so much about New Orleans and your history.

Jeff Crouere: Thank you, Linda. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to be with you. So I'm a native of New Orleans. My family has been in New Orleans for seven generations. So we've been there for a long, long time.

I grew up there, had my kids in New Orleans, and had to leave the city when there was a drug deal that happened right outside my child's bedroom window. We had some criminals that were posing as police officers pull over a motorist right in front of our house. They called them the Blue Light Bandits and they robbed them. Once that happened right in front of our house—we had two small kids—we moved to the suburbs on the North Shore and have not lived in the city since.

But my business is in New Orleans, WGSO Radio. So I'm there constantly. Our radio station is right between where the terror attack occurred in January, where 14 innocent people were killed by a terrorist who was able to evade one little car blocking Bourbon Street and ride down the sidewalk and mow down 14 innocent people. We're right between that and the prison where the latest catastrophe occurred the other day, where 10 inmates were able to break out of the prison. Right now, five have been apprehended and five are still on the loose.

My column was all about how New Orleans is inflicted with—well, New Orleans is a great city. Let's just say this. It's a unique, beautiful city that's unlike anywhere in the world. You have attractions in New Orleans you have nowhere else. It is truly a unique American city, which is something that attracts so many people here.

But at the same time, we are a city that has been run by progressive politics literally for decades. The last Republican mayor of New Orleans was elected in 1872. So we've had Democrat rule for 153 years.

And the result is dysfunction. We've got a police force that is hundreds of officers too small. We've got streets that are dilapidated, but they make sure that they change the name of the streets so you don't have anybody with Confederate ties—but they don't worry about fixing the streets. 

They changed the name of the school. So there's no more George Washington public school. But the product in the schools is not good. So they changed the name, but they haven't done anything about the substance.

And then the prison where the sheriff was a very—I interviewed her, I know her—Susan Hudson, very left-wing woman, former police monitor. She's very anti-police. She was elected sheriff, far-left candidate.

In the aftermath of George Floyd, every far-left candidate in New Orleans got elected and the results are catastrophic. She was all about transformative justice, gender equity, making sure that we had sustainability and all these buzzwords. And the only thing that she didn’t do was make sure the prisoners stayed in their jail cells.

So they busted out because nobody was watching. The cameras weren’t working. The one civilian monitor on duty at the time went for a food break at the time that they decided to escape. It was like an Epstein case.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah, I was just thinking of… 

Jeff Crouere: Cameras on. And then they busted through the wall because one of their accomplices in the prison turned off the water. So they were able to bust out behind the toilet. And before they left, they wrote some graffiti saying, “Too easy. Catch us if you can.” And off they went.

So they go out, they go down a loading dock, they climb a fence, and then they cross Interstate 10. Now imagine if you're driving on Interstate 10 at 1 a.m. in the morning and you see 10 people crossing in orange jumpsuits. Wouldn't you call the police? Nobody called the police.

So nobody knew for another seven and a half hours. The prison didn’t even bother to do a roll call until 8:30 the next morning. And they had almost an eight-hour head start. And we’re still looking for five.

Linda J. Hansen: It’s crazy. And before we go further, though, I do stand corrected. The title of your recent article was actually NOLA: Prison Break Is a Product of Progressivism. So I stand corrected. So sorry about that. But I want to make sure I got that corrected.

But it really is a product of progressivism. And it’s these progressive policies—the woke policies—that we’re trying to get away from. We see it in the Department of Transportation, where these pilots and air traffic controllers were hired based on their skin color or gender.

We see it in the medical community. We see it in higher education. And we see it all over. And it’s just bringing about incredible decay and problems in not only our cities, but then that spreads out.

And especially, you talked about how they changed the name of a school, but the content of what is taught is not helping anyone. So that just goes into generations of decay. So is there something positive happening in New Orleans that we can report on?

Jeff Crouere: Well, I mean, New Orleans does a fantastic job hosting events. We just hosted the Super Bowl and it was a fabulous success. We host Mardi Gras every year and millions come here. So New Orleans is a city known for special events, big attractions.

We have the Jazz Fest, the French Quarter Festival. So people come here, they enjoy themselves. We just hope they leave without being a victim of crime because there are a lot of criminals roaming around.

We were the murder capital of the nation in 2022. And although they’ve been making progress bringing the murder rate down, we’ve had two major incidents in the past few months which have brought negative attention to New Orleans—the terror attack and now the prison break.

Both of those were record-shattering events that just exposed the incompetence. The mayor’s office runs the NOPD, and the mayor is a far-left progressive. We call her “Latoya the Destroyer” Cantrell. She goes to climate change conferences all over the world, doesn’t focus on her job, and is very distracted by liberal ideology.

We elected a DA who is a George Soros–funded candidate who is very soft on crime. And the sheriff—super progressive. So all these far-left people that are in place are really doing damage.

The one thing I would say is there’s always hope springing eternal. There are elections coming up in a few months, and maybe the voters there will say, “Hey, enough is enough.” I hope so.

Linda J. Hansen: We hope so. And yes, there are positive things happening. I mean, every time I've been to New Orleans, I've loved it. It's been great.

I've been for many conferences, events, political things, as well as just doing things with family over the years and business conferences and stuff. So it's a great place to visit. So I don't want to discourage people from visiting New Orleans because you need the tourism to really help the city thrive.

Jeff Crouere: That that's the number one industry, Linda. I mean, you've seen some headquarters over the years for oil and gas leave and move to Houston. So more and more focus on tourism. We have the port. There are other industries there, high tech and health care become sort of drivers of the economy. But number one is tourism, hospitality.

So all of these stories and criminals on the loose, terror attack, all of those things are not good for trying to attract big events, which is what the city's lifeblood is. 

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it truly is. And you've also had weather disasters over the years. I mean, I know people who were displaced due to hurricanes and things. New Orleans just has just a churning cycle of problems and growth and problems and growth. And it's great that there's people like you there who are working hard to bring to light the problems, but also to bring some solutions.

So what would you say are things that are being done in New Orleans by those who really want to promote the make America great again policies, make New Orleans great again policies? What's being done by those who are working so hard to really bring life back to New Orleans?

Jeff Crouere: Well, I'll say a few good things are coming from the state. So New Orleans is a blue island in a red sea. So you've got the conservative state of Louisiana and then you've got this liberal city of New Orleans.

So the governor is sort of a MAGA Republican, Jeff Landry, and he has boosted the state police presence in New Orleans. So that's helped bring the crime rate down. He got involved in the terror investigation.

We've got an excellent attorney general who's a Republican, Liz Murrell, who's now going to be getting very involved in this investigation of the prison. So at the state level, I think we've got very good leadership in contrast to the pathetic leadership in the city of New Orleans. So we are benefiting from the state taking an active role in trying to fix these problems.

I know the state police is spearheading the search for the inmates, and that gives me a little more comfort because they have more resources and the NOPD is undermanned and the NOPD has got to deal with everyday crime. And the state police, I think, can do a better job of trying to track these people down. So those are some positive things.

Obviously, there are some local business leaders. There's a group called Grid New Orleans Inc., which is very pro-business, and they have tried to push forward more pro-economic development policies. So they're trying to do their best.

But we need to get through to voters so that this upcoming election puts in place people that can work in tandem with the state because you don't want to be opposing everything the state is doing. Like our DA is so left wing, he's mad the state is getting involved. And there's sort of a conflict going on. We need people that are going to be working with the state partners. And that's why these elections are so important. 

Linda J. Hansen: They really are. And it really highlights how important it is for people to be engaged and involved and educated regarding all levels of government. We often cover national issues, but the local issues are so important to our safety and security in our local communities and to the business climate. I'm so glad you brought that up because that was going to be my next question.

How is this affecting the businesses in New Orleans? Obviously, it makes it hard to grow your business and to keep a workforce and to be able to thrive when you're constantly worried about crime or you can't get a highly educated workforce that understands how to work or why these issues are important.

And so that goes into what I— my passion is—making sure employers talk to their employees about these issues at the overall level, like helping them understand our system of government and the importance of being an involved citizen and just how it affects the business generally.

But how important it is for these businesses in New Orleans to take it a step further and explain this matters to your job. This matters to your paycheck and help them understand. And you can do that in a nonpartisan way. I really hope these business leaders step up to continue to make a difference because those local level policies make an incredible difference for business.

Jeff Crouere: Well, I'll tell you, some of the business leaders can do a good job of maybe helping reform the prison because the sheriff there gets a budget of about 90 million dollars a year, and she wasn’t doing the basics of making sure that the cells close correctly and lock, making sure that you don’t have prisoners on the first floor that are dangerous, making sure they have enough staff whereby you don’t have one person in control of all the prisoners late at night and goes on a food break. There’s no one making sure the cameras are working.

So there's 14 million dollars in the reserve fund that hadn't been spent by the sheriff that could have fixed all these problems. So I would love to see the business community help the financial mess over there with the Justice Center and really take a more active role in the city itself, which has a lot of mismanagement and it's just not run very efficiently. We had a mayor, who I'll call the LaToya the destroyer, who during COVID locked down everything so aggressively that a lot of businesses were forced to close.

And you compare that with Florida that was open for business and did such a great job during COVID. We took the opposite approach, the sort of the San Francisco and New York approach where they were just very hesitant to keep anything open and kept people out and it hurt the business climate. So we need more pro-business leadership that just realizes that you can't tax people to death. You can't grow government. There has to be accountability. And let's keep in mind the small business owners.

I'm a small business person with a radio station right there. We've had people gunned down right on the street where we have our station. So we've had to deal with people that have been shot dead on the street right in front of our offices. So it is hitting home for us big time.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely and it isn't just New Orleans. So, as I mentioned at the top of the broadcast, we are talking about crime and how it affects all these cities. And the one thing about these cities, too, there's always the creep. I know this.

I live in the Milwaukee area, right? And there has been such a creep out to the suburban areas, the car thefts, the robberies, burglaries, the assaults, things that have crept out into the more suburban areas. And I'm curious, too, the immigration issue in New Orleans. Has the illegal immigration issue affected the New Orleans population?

We didn't really talk about that at all, but I'm wondering— now we're seeing ICE deport people and things—but I'm wondering about the crime, if the drug cartels and things have had a part in all of this in New Orleans.

Jeff Crouere: We've got a lot of local gangs that are really the problem with the crime in the city and the suburban areas. Actually, you do have more of a problem with illegal immigrant criminal organizations in Jefferson Parish and the surrounding area. Our police department in Kenner, which is a suburban area, is working closely with ICE to try to identify and remove these illegals. But there was just a vote in one of our other suburban areas, St. Tammany Parish, where they voted down a proposal to encourage the sheriff's department there to work with ICE to remove illegals.

I wonder how in the world could they have done that? You want the local law enforcement to work with ICE, identify and remove people that are here illegally. So you had some left wing protesters who came to the meeting and shouted about discrimination and the council got intimidated and they voted down the proposal. 

It's really—it goes to show you how powerful some of these activists can be and how intimidating it can be, even in a Republican parish, which is our version of a county Republican area.

But in New Orleans, the crime is mostly local gangs, local criminals who have been preying on innocent people for generations and it's just generational. You have people on government assistance and it just gets passed down from one generation to the next.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah, it's heartbreaking and we can bring about lasting change—not only like I was talking last week with Coery Brooks about bringing lasting change in Chicago. They touched on the spiritual aspect of it too, with his organization. There's really, I would say, a spiritual revival happening in America, especially among young people. Hopefully it'll get to New Orleans soon.

But also that brings about a cultural change. We see the big cultural changes with this current administration. I hope and pray for New Orleans and other big cities and a lot of these blue states that people begin to understand.

You were talking about not working with ICE. I mean, our governor has said not to work with ICE. I mean, it's like, what are you thinking? Like when you were talking about different ways that they did not secure the jail, like wouldn't you do that in your own house? Lock the doors? It seems so common sense, lock the doors.

Jeff Crouere: Well, and if you have security cameras and you make sure they're working right, especially if you have murderers. Now, one thing about this, I mean, some of the people that are on the loose still are murderers. 

Linda J. Hansen: They are. Yes. 

Jeff Crouere: But have been charged with murder. So we're talking about the most dangerous type of folks that are back out onto the streets.

So it's an issue that has really taken over. I mean, the whole city is focused on it. It is really the number one story in the local news, a local newspaper for the past eight days. It has been. It will be until they're apprehended. And hopefully they will be seen before they commit any more crimes. More innocent victims. 

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah. Before they hurt others. And for people across the nation, my guess is they're probably not hanging around New Orleans either. So they're probably not hanging around New Orleans saying, they did say, catch us if you can. But they probably wanted to get away.

Jeff Crouere: Well, the interesting thing is, Linda, five of these people that have been apprehended were in New Orleans.

Linda J. Hansen: I saw that. 

Jeff Crouere: They didn't leave. Now, that's probably because they had resources here. They had their family and friends who were helping them. Three people have been arrested for helping them. And they had money probably that they could access. But the other five, I mean, you would think if they were smart, they would get out of the city. But then, where do you go? How do you make a living? I mean, it's just that's why I think they're confident that they're going to eventually catch them.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, this just—you said, if they're smart. A lot of these things are common sense and the progressive woke policies do not lead to common sense. I mean, they are just upside down and backwards. So we really want to help change that. And that comes through education and it comes through really helping people understand, which I appreciate so much what you do on Ringside Politics, both your radio show and your television show.

I encourage, obviously, employers, especially to educate employees and contact me. I'd love to work with any of the employers in New Orleans, even we can help that business community to have resources to speak to their employees. So the employees start to connect the dots saying, this isn't working. What might work and how can I make a difference when I go to vote?

I just think it's so important that we educate and not in a partisan way, but we do that. So for people who—you have something to say, go ahead.

Jeff Crouere: I was just going to say one thing. There is hope that we see in other parts of Louisiana because two cities that have historically been run by Democrats, Shreveport and Baton Rouge, just elected Republican mayors. These are cities that don't have a history of voting Republican and the voters in both cities said, hey, we want to try something new, try fresh leadership, fresh ideas.

I think these two are going to be a lot more pro-business for those communities. So maybe we can see that kind of a change in New Orleans. That would be more historic since it's been since 1872. But maybe there can at least be, if there is going to be another Democrat elected, someone that is more pro-business, pro-common sense, more moderate, more willing to work with a variety of people.

And it's not just—you can't just solve everything through the public sector. You've got to have private sector partnerships. You've got to be cognizant of helping to grow the private sector. And New Orleans had a population of 627,000 in 1960. It's down to 350,000 now. And a lot of that is because of the high taxes and the high crime that has really driven the residents and businesses out.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it goes to show people think that the government can pay for everything and solve all the problems but you need that business base. The government has nothing till we give it to them first. And so you need those healthy businesses. And when they leave because of crime or policy issues and they leave the area, obviously there's going to be economic issues and others. It's like a vacuum is created. 

So what would you say just before we close? One last thing. What would you say to employers who need to educate their employees about all of these issues, especially related to how it affects their local areas?

Jeff Crouere: Well, I would encourage them to be truthful with their employees about the risks that are involved in working in a city like New Orleans, where you do have public safety risks. Encourage them to look beyond the local media, which tends to be more liberal. Go to sources like yours, sources like mine, which has more independent news, more news that they can trust, more information they can trust. So I think they've got to be very honest about that.

There's some great things with working in New Orleans. You have access to a lot of fabulous events and the best food in the world and culture and history and everything. But then, you do have serious risks that you have to deal with brought about by very poor leadership. So another thing they could do is encourage their employees to get involved in the political process and try to help bring some change to the local government.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. That's just great advice. So listeners, please do that. And especially if you are a business leader, encourage your employees to learn more, to look beyond the headlines and to seek out sources like Jeff’s Show Ringside Politics, where he goes into a lot of things and you can not only hear it on Real America's Voice or watch it on Real America's Voice, but also hear it on the radio, WGSO.

So how can people contact you if they want to reach out to you?

Jeff Crouere: Well, again, thanks for having me, Linda. The best way is my website, which is my last name, crouere.net and on there you have links to columns, my videos, and the different shows and a contact form where they can contact me with thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestions they have. I always love hearing from people. And my links to social media. So it’s just my last name crouere.net I’d love for them to check it out.

Linda J. Hansen: Well that would be very good and I hope that they do. So listeners please just keep following Jeff and you’ll learn a lot about not only politics in the New Orleans area but nationally. So thank you, I look forward to having you back. 

Jeff Crouere: Thanks Linda.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity101® podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library, to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity, the Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck®, or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics® online course.

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