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Janice Hebert McNeil

Wed, 07/05/2023 - 4:09pm

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 8, 2023 in Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist for Janice Hebert McNeil, 87, who met her eternal reward on July 3, 2023.
Fr. Chester Arceneaux, Pastor of Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, will be Celebrant of the Mass and will conduct the funeral services. Lectors will be Ashley deClouet and Katy Durrette. Serving as gift-bearers will be Noah Chappelle, Logan Dubois, and Ella Dubois
Burial will take place in Lafayette Memorial Park.
Mrs. Janice, a resident of Lafayette, was the daughter of the late Joseph Didier Hebert and the former Edmonia "Mona" Claire Webb.
Janice was a lifelong resident of Lafayette. She was a member of the 1952 LHS graduating class and a graduate of USL. As a college freshman, she was chosen as the first Cotton Queen of Ville Platte and served as pageant judge and honored guest over the years. She was a first grade teacher for 32 years; 7 years at St. Genevieve and 25 years at L. Leo Judice. Mrs. McNeil delighted in every child she was privileged to teach, and encouraged the best from each of her students. She was a member of Alpha Delta Kappa and was “Teacher of the Year” twice for Lafayette Parish School System. After retiring from teaching, she was able to travel extensively and also began her second career as volunteer curator of the museum at St. John’s Cathedral where she served for 25 plus years. Both in French and in English, she shared her knowledge and memories of her precious Acadiana and beloved Cathedral. A tour with Miss Jan was an experience not soon to be forgotten. She was featured on the cover of Acadiana Catholic with her Museum Ministry: “Bridging the Past with the Future” article. She was recipient of the Lois Wyatt Bannon “Heart and Soul” Service Award, as well as the Bishop’s Service Award. She also served as a Eucharistic minister and taught catechism.
Janice lived her life focused on faith and family, and was an inspiration to all who knew her. She was a true servant of the Lord, and her life was a lesson in grace and compassion. Her legacy will live on in those who called her Mom, Mamaw, Chook, Aunt Janice, Mrs. McNeil and Miss Jan. She was a cancer survivor and fought a courageous battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Left to cherish her memory are her five children, Bonnie Louvierre (Michael), Beth Stoelzel (Dan), Julie McNeil-Sagrera (Danny), Van Teryl McNeil Jr. (Michele) and Jan Daigle (Barry); thirteen grandchildren, Jason Brown (Courtney), Ashley deClouet (Andre’), Jordan Smith, Barret Chappelle (Ana), Joseph Gary LeBlanc Jr. (Kristine), Jeff LeBlanc, Katy Durette (Mike), Van Teryl McNeil III “Mac”, Evan Stoelzel (Jen), Andy Stoelzel, Zach McNeil, Isaac McNeil and Anthony LeBlanc; seven great-grandchildren, April, Tucker, Noah, Logan, Ella, Diana and Christian; two brothers, Bobby Hebert and Bern Hebert and her little sister, Dianne Johnson; a host of nieces and nephews and her Cathedral family.
She was preceded in death by her husband Van Teryl McNeil Sr.; her parents Didier and Mona Claire Hebert; and her brothers Charlie, Johnnie and Carlton Hebert.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Delhomme Funeral Home - Bertrand on Friday, July 7, 2023 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. A Rosary will be prayed at 6 p.m. on Friday evening in the funeral home. Visiting hours will continue Saturday, July 8, 2023 from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Pallbearers and Honorary Pallbearers will be her eleven grandsons.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial donations be made to Hospice of Acadiana, or to the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Special thanks to the staff of Cornerstone at the Ranch, Hospice of Acadiana, and Eastridge Senior Living - Abbeville.
Personal condolences may be sent to the McNeil family at: www.delhommefuneralhome.com
Janice Hebert McNeil and her family were cared for and entrusted final arrangements to Delhomme Funeral Home, 1011 Bertrand Drive, Lafayette, LA.

Jim Bradshaw

Codes didn’t zip into popularity

Wed, 07/05/2023 - 11:21am

Jim Bradshaw, LSN columnist

It was not universally popular when five-digit postal ZIP codes went into effect 60 years ago, on July 1, 1963. And that’s probably an understatement.
Newspapers across south Louisiana — and everywhere else — had dutifully run near-identical press releases about what the Post Office people called a “revolutionary new system of improved mail dispatch and delivery.”
Postmasters, who filled in the blanks with their names and their town’s code before sending the handout to their local paper, “stressed the importance of all citizens … learning [their] city’s ZIP code and using it in their return address on all correspondence.”
That important instruction touched on the big bugaboo in the minds of a lot of mailers — and there were still a lot of them in those days when nobody had even dreamed of something called “social media,” let alone the technology that has made it possible. People still wrote long letters to each other and sent them through the mail, even though they grumbled that a first-class stamp had gone up to five cents — to a dollar for a book of 20!
The new dilemma was that they could put their ZIP in their return address, but where did they find the one needed to speed a letter to Aunt Lottie in Port Arthur? You can imagine how many people took the trip to a post office and waited patiently while a clerk thumbed through a thick book to find it.
The other way to go, the postal handout said, was to keep your address book handy and to write down Aunt Lottie’s ZIP as soon as you got a letter from her. That way we’d eventually have the ZIPs for everyone on our Christmas card list, presuming that Aunt Lottie remembered to put her ZIP in her return address, and we took the time to dig out the address book and write it down (before losing the envelope).
The Post Office hoped that the people would catch on to the idea that ZIP (an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan) would send their letters zipping along faster than ever. Without ZIP, according to the announcement, the address on a letter had to be read “as many as eight or ten times by postal employees to get it to the proper destination.” With ZIP, however, “a clerk needs only to glance at the code to know immediately to what national area, state and post office the letter is destined, and to speed it on its way.”
The ZIP code replaced another system that most people thought worked just fine. That one involved Postal District Numbers in places that were big enough to be divided into zones. Letters were addressed to John Doe, 1234 Main Street, Anytown, 16, Anystate. The “16” indicated which part of town or branch post office the letter should go to.
The postal union and some mailers suspected that the new ZIP code was a first step toward automated mail sorting (meaning a machine would put a clerk out of work), and they got even more suspicious when, just a few months after rolling out the big ZIP campaign, the Post Office issued “Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code.”
That changed all of the state abbreviations that we’d learned in geography class (La., Calif., Mich., etc.) to two-letters, unpunctuated, upper case (LA, CA, MI). The rationale was that longer abbreviations for the states often made the last line too long for “major addressing systems,” which sounded suspiciously like something involving machines, not people.
English teachers howled that the new abbreviations were ungrammatical as well as confusing, but postmasters such as Howard Durant in St. Martinville, Thomas Patin in Breaux Bridge, and Lloyd Chachere in Eunice, each promised via their press releases that with the abbreviations and ZIP code “the United States will have the most modern system of mail distribution and delivery in existence.”
We’ve pretty much seen how that’s worked out, haven’t we?
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

Bryan Golden

What If You Get Discouraged?

Wed, 07/05/2023 - 11:19am

Bryan Golden

Perseverance, determination, focus, and hard work are effective in helping you attain your goals. Refusal to give up is essential. Getting up every time you stumble or fall will eventually lead to success. The big unknown is how long will it take to see results.
Everyone would love to see their efforts produce rapid, if not immediate results. But if you don’t know how long something will take, how do you keep yourself motivated? Even the most successful people get discouraged.
It’s natural to think that maybe your efforts won’t pay off. Perhaps, for some unknown reason, others can accomplish what you are attempting while you can not. When self-doubt seeps in, you begin to consider abandoning your quest. Why not just set your sights lower and retreat to a former comfort level?
Working to accomplish anything you really want exposes you to discomfort and insecurity. There are no guarantees. You have to rely on yourself. The greater your goal, the more nerve wracking the journey.
Feeling discouraged is normal. No one can or will feel up beat and energized 100% of the time. It’s hard to keep going when there are no immediate measurable results. Achieving a goal is a journey that consists of many steps. Although any step, if looked at alone, seems insignificant, it’s the sum of all of the steps that leads to a destination.
If you were to drive from California to New York, you would be facing a journey of about 3,000 miles. If you drove 500 miles a day it would take you six days to reach your destination. You wouldn’t see the border of New York until you were within a mile or less. For 2,900 miles your destination wouldn’t be visible.
During your trip you would encounter a variety of challenges. You would drive over mountains and across the vast expanses of the plains. A variety of weather conditions would be encountered. Perhaps your car would require repairs.
Should you decide you were not making progress and stop, you would never arrive in New York. You may get tired of driving. But in order to get to New York, you must keep going. If, regardless of how you felt each morning, you got back in your car and continued driving, you would keep making progress. But in this example you know exactly how far you have to travel and about how long it should take.
The big unknown with goal achievement, is the time frame. This is the factor contributing to discouragement. Without knowing the length of the trip, you could easily get discouraged after day after day of driving failed to bring your destination into sight.
Discouragement is devastating only when you give up. The antidote for discouragement is action. Should you stop and stress, you will get frustrated. Only by forging ahead will you consistently move toward your goal. Especially when you feel all of your efforts are producing no results, you have to call up more determination in order to keep going. Doing nothing will only make you feel worse.
There’s nothing wrong with you if you feel discouraged at times. Only by giving up will you fail. Refocus on your goal and never, ever give up. Refuse to quit. Continue taking one step at a time. You won’t know exactly when it will happen, but you will be successful.

Marjorie Istre Hebert

Wed, 07/05/2023 - 9:45am

October 17, 1935 ~ July 3, 2023

ABBEVILLE —Funeral services will be held at 9:00 AM on Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville honoring the life of Marjorie Istre Hebert, 87, who died Monday, July 3, 2023 at her residence. She will be laid to rest at St. Paul Cemetery with Fr. François Sainte-Marie officiating the services.
Marjorie was a devoted Catholic and member of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Catholic Church. Her love of children led her to become a caretaker of many Abbeville children. She worked at Cajun Blenders for many years and made numerous friends over the years.
She is survived by her seven children, Gerald Simon of Abbeville, Mary Salazar and her fiancé, David Hernandez of Florida, David Primeaux and his wife, Denise of Abbeville, Henry Paul Primeaux and his wife, Wanda of Abbeville, Darline Abshire and her fiancé, Virgil Vice of Abbeville, and Randy Hebert and his wife, Pam of Abbeville; step-daughter, Brenda Primeaux of Abbeville; four brothers, Whitney Istre and his wife, Dorothy of Erath, Harold John “Dago” Boudreaux and his significant other, Elaine Hebert of Abbeville, Eldride “Glen” Istre, and Murphy East; three sisters, Ruby East, Norma Istre and Annie Daigle; long-time friend/sister, Margaret Richard; her loving fur baby, “Lola”; eighteen grandchildren; twenty-six great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren; and a host of cousins, nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Minos Hebert; mother, Louise Bourque Boudreaux; step-father, Frederick Boudreaux; father, Gladu Istre; sister, Alice Clements; son-in-law, Michael Abshire; and daughter-in-law, Sherril “Rose” Lynn Kebodeaux.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville, 209 S. St. Charles St., on Tuesday, July 4, 2023 from 9:30 AM until 9:00 PM with a rosary being prayed at 7:00 PM; Wednesday, July 5, 2023 from 8:00 AM until time of services.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.vincentfuneralhome.net.
All funeral arrangements are being conducted by Vincent Funeral Home of Abbeville, (337) 893-4661.

Joseph Keith Arceneaux

Wed, 07/05/2023 - 9:43am

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held for Joseph Keith Arceneaux at 3:00 pm on Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church.
Fr. Buddy Breaux, Pastor, will be the celebrant for the service.
Courtney Dore and Keisha Holmes will serve as readers and Katherine Sonnier, Lauren Sonnier, Elliana Dore, Jonah Dore, Amelie Dore and Noelle Broussard will be gift bearers.
Keith will be laid to rest following the Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Mausoleum in Erath.
The family will receive guest beginning at 9:00 am on Wednesday, July 5, 2023 until 2:30 pm at Evangeline Funeral Home in Delcambre.
A Rosary will be prayed by the Men’s Rosary Group at 10:00 am.
Born in Abbeville, LA on January 27, 1949 to the late Emick and Emilda Dugas Arceneaux, Keith passed away on Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 9:05 am at his residence surrounded by family.
Keith the former Mayor of Erath, will also be remembered as the Mayor in office when the town celebrated its 100th anniversary of incorporation.
He was a 1967 graduate of Erath High School, owner of Arceneaux Tires and a current member of Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Delcambre.
His family will remember his love for them and the time he spent making memories and babysitting his grandchildren.
As an outdoor enthusiast he enjoyed spending time fishing, hunting, crabbing and going to his camp at the Boston Canal. He also spent time on the golf course with Jacob and his sidekick, Darson.
Keith had a sense of humor up until the very end when Fr. Manny came to visit he and Nora and told him, “If you are ready to go, it’s OK!”, to which Keith responded, “I’m trying but it seems that I have a flat tire.”
He was also a very patient man that could be found on rainy days making puzzles of many pieces.
Those left behind to cherish his memory are his wife, Janora Migues Arceneaux; children, Ron Dore (Courtney); Brandy Dore and Jacob Broussard (Gabrielle); grandchildren, Sister Teresa of Jesus (the former Brittlyn Sonnier); Jordan Sonnier (Alexa); Catherine Sonnier (Drake Morganman); Lauren Sonnier (Colby Efferson); Nick Bergeron (Andree); Alex Bergeron (Christina); Justin Menard and Karter Menard; great grandchildren, Leighton Bergeron; Amalie Sonnier; Ellison Sonnier; Paisley Reese Morganman; Eloise Bergeron; Noelle Broussard; Jace Dore; Elliana Dore; Jonah Dore and Amelia Dore; siblings, Sharon Sellers (Minos); Marlene Arceneaux Holmes and Aaron Arceneaux (Lisa) and his sons in law, John Sonnier (Dana) and Jason Bergeron.
Along with his parents he is preceded in death by his two daughters, Charisse Arceneaux Bergeron and Monique Arceneaux Sonnier; grandson, Andre Sonnier; granddaughter, Taylor Renee Sonnier; nephew, Tyler Arceneaux and brother in law, Bozi Holmes.
Honored to serve as pallbearers are Nick Bergeron, Alex Bergeron, Jordan Sonnier, Aaron Arceneaux, Ron Dore and Jacob Broussard. Justin Menard, Karter Menard, Jonah Dore, Lovelace Touchet, Russell Suire, Camille Manck and Darson Schexnayder are honorary pallbearers.
Family and friends are encouraged to share their memories and condolences with the family by visiting Keith’s memorial page at www.evangelinedelcambre.com
Evangeline Funeral Home of Delcambre is in charge of arrangements

Vermilion Municipal and Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force makes arrests

Fri, 06/30/2023 - 1:54pm

According to Sheriff Mike Couvillon, the Vermilion Municipal and Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force made the following arrest for narcotics related offenses within the parish.
• Richard Hebert, (dob: 9-14-1962 of Kaplan), was charged with Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule II, (Methamphetamine) and Introduction of Contraband into a Penal Facility.
• Eric Roy, (dob: 4-12-1990 of Delcambre), was charged with Possession of Schedule II, (Methamphetamine).
• Vince Viator, (dob: 2-28-1969 of Kaplan), was charged with Possession of Methamphetamine, Possession of Schedule I, (Marijuana) and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.
• Myles Guidry, (dob: 2-21-2001 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule I, (Marijuana).
• Lorenzo Collins, (dob: 8-3-1993 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession of a Firearm by a convicted Felon.
• Angelyn Hargrave, (dob: 1-30-1994 of Kaplan), was charged with Possession of Schedule I, (Heroin), Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and Possession of Schedule I, (Marijuana)
• Derrick Sam, (dob: 4-17-1991 of Opelousas), was charged with Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule I, (Marijuana)
• Jalen Levine, (dob: 5-11-1992 of Abbeville), was charged with Conspiracy to Introduce Contraband into a penal facility.
• Donald Courville, (dob:9-21-1979 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession of Schedule II, (Amphetamine), Possession of Drug Paraphernalia Possession of Schedule IV, (Alprazolam), Possession of Schedule IV, (Clonazepam), Possession of a Firearm in the Presence of a Controlled Dangerous Substance.
• Juan Medina, (dob: 2-7-1991 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession of Schedule II, (Methamphetamine).
• Chad Mayers, (dob: 2-16-1979 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession of Schedule II, (Methamphetamine), Possession of Schedule I, (Marijuana), Possession of Schedule II, (Cocaine), and various warrants.
• Anthony Connor, (dob: 7-11-1958 of Abbeville), was charged with Possession of Schedule II, (Crack Cocaine).
Sheriff Couvillon would like to thank the Mayors, and their council, of Abbeville, Kaplan, Maurice and Earth, along with their Chiefs of Police, for their support of the Vermilion Municipal and Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force. Sheriff Couvillon also applauds the concerned citizens of Vermilion Parish for their awareness and assistance in helping the Task Force in fighting the war on illegal drugs. He encourages all citizens with information in regards to illegal drug activities to contact the Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office or the Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Unit at 337-740-4501 or E-mail the Task Force anonymously at taskforce@vpso.net and your e-mail will be held in the “strictest of confidence” and replied to in a very timely manner.
More information on reporting drug activities can be seen on our Web Site at www.vpso.net. Click on Narcotics and fill out the TURN IN A PUSHER information.

For the last two weeks, contractors have been cleaning and removing old walls, lights and air condition units.

Owner of Fruit of the Loom building about to see his dream come true

Thu, 06/29/2023 - 11:20am

Benoit purchased building 16 months ago in hopes of landing an Amazon-type business

In February of 2022, Don Benoit, the new owner of the old Fruit of the Loom building, was quoted in the Abbeville Meridional as saying, “Hopefully, we can fill this facility and get some more jobs back. I want to be a part of something that can make the whole community better.”
He purchased the building for $3.2 million, hoping to bring it new life.
Fast-forward 16 months later, and Benoit’s wish is in the process of coming true.
“I am glad to see the job creation is happening,” said Benoit. “I hope to build off this and bring more things into Abbeville. This is a starting point.”
On Tuesday, Abbeville Mayor Roslyn White announced Amazon would be located at the old Fruit of the Loom building in Abbeville.
Amazon announced it would move into the building sometime in 2024.
The building is 134,000 square feet.
The facility is expected to create full- and part-time jobs, but the total number may not be known until it nears its opening date.
Amazon will use the building as a last-mile center.
According to Amazon, a last-mile delivery is the final leg of the entire delivery process, which starts from the final fulfillment center to the customer’s doorstep.
Reports on a similar last mile center that opened in Minnesota last mile facility like this will typically create up to 150 new jobs, many of which organize and prepare packages for customer delivery. Hiring will begin
The building, located at 3221 Veterans Memorial Drive, is the former home of the Abbeville Mills, part of the Fruit of the Loom operations that employed 600 just before it ceased operations in January 1998, reports indicate. It first opened in 1989.
Fruit of the Loom had operations in Abbeville, St. Martinville and Port Barre that employed a combined 2,370.
Over the last 30 years, the building has been used as a school and has housed different businesses.
Two weeks ago, construction got underway to transform the building into a “last mile” facility.
Different contractors are gutting the building this week and redoing some parking lots.
The building is also currently home to offices for the USDA and the National Resources Conservation. They will remain in the building, Benoit said.

The city of Abbeville is discussing the possibility of acquiring the St. Theresa Community Center, with the possibility of utilizing the facility for recreation.

Abbeville looking into acquisition of St. Theresa Community Center

Thu, 06/29/2023 - 11:17am

Abbeville could potentially have a community center located near the heart of the city.
And it wouldn’t even have to be built from the ground up.
During Tuesday’s regular Abbeville City Council meeting, Mayor Roslyn White discussed the possibility of the city acquiring the St. Theresa Community Center on Leonard Avenue near Charity Street. The Abbeville City Council passed a resolution Tuesday to give White the authority to look into the possible center acquisition.
“I was initially contacted to see if the city would have any use for, or interest in, the building,” White said after the meeting. “It is my understanding the church has considered selling the building but would like to see the building utilized in a way that continues to serve the community.”
White said during the meeting that the facility could serve a long-sought-after purpose. The mayor presented the item to the council proposing the opportunity to provide a dedicated indoor recreation facility for sports such as basketball, volleyball and pickleball within the city limits.
“Currently, most biddy basketball games are played outside of the city around the parish, including as far away as Henry,” White said. “Many children in our community do not have transportation to get to these facilities.”
White also cited growing interest in pickleball and indoor volleyball.
Roderick Darby, part of Vermilion Reach Group, attended Tuesday’s meeting. He enthusiastically supported the idea of the city obtaining the center, even offering to help raise money.
“Buy it,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
Darby said after the meeting that such an action would greatly benefit the Abbeville community.
“For a very long time, I’ve always seen how other communities have a rec center that benefited their community,” Darby said. “We always speak about not having things as such in our community. Now we have a great opportunity to prove we are making permanent changes to improve the quality of life in our community.”
White said the location of the center is a plus. Darby agreed.
“The facility’s location is between the north and south part of the city,” Darby said. “Our kids can walk safely to and from the rec center. The possibilities are limitless for our city, and we must capitalize on every opportunity given to improve the image and quality of life in our community.”

(Photo courtesy of ExxonMobil)
Representatives from UL Lafayette and ExxonMobil gathered Wednesday in Abbeville to announce a $600,000 gift from the oil company to the University.

ExxonMobil to invest in UL Lafayette, Vermilion Parish

Wed, 06/28/2023 - 11:10am

2 local students will receive $50,000 scholarships

Vermilion Parish will be home to a landmark CO2 transportation and storage project ExxonMobil is building to help the state’s industries reduce their emissions.
As the University of Louisiana has announced, Exxon Mobil Corp. made the following contributions to the parish and UL.
• Two $50,000 endowed scholarships for first-year students from Vermilion Parish who are pursuing degrees in the university’s College of Engineering or Ray P. Authement College of Sciences.
• $500,000 for outreach efforts in the university’s Energy Institute of Louisiana and Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center.
Representatives from ExxonMobil were joined by members of the University community and local officials during a gift announcement on Wednesday in Abbeville.
“We’re very grateful for ExxonMobil’s generosity and partnership,” said Dr. Joseph Savoie, UL Lafayette president. “The University and ExxonMobil have common commitments to workforce development, environmental stewardship and energy innovation. This multifaceted investment by ExxonMobil touches each of these areas and underscores another value we share with the company – and that’s to be responsible community servants who anticipate tomorrow’s challenges and work to find solutions to them today.”
“I recently visited Vermilion Parish and saw firsthand the extraordinary capabilities of the local workforce in this community,” said Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions. “We’re looking forward to building a carbon capture project that helps support local industries and Louisiana’s goal to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.”
Carbon capture and storage – in which CO2 is captured and stored deep underground instead of being released into the atmosphere – is considered an essential solution for meeting net zero goals. It’s a proven technology, but will need to be deployed on a far broader scale than it is today.
“Scaling up carbon capture and sequestration will require a new generation of young people skilled in math and science, technology and engineering,” said Joe Colletti, ExxonMobil Louisiana Asset Manager. “We’re excited about helping build those skills here in Louisiana.”
ExxonMobil will transport and store up to 2 million metric tons a year (MTA) of CO2 from CF industries’ manufacturing site in Donaldsonville and up to 800,000 MTA from Nucor’s direct reduced iron facility in Convent. The combined total is equal to the emissions from more than 600,000 gasoline-powered cars1.
Louisiana also is home to ExxonMobil’s Baton Rougeintegrated refining, chemicals and lubricants complex, the state’s largest manufacturing employer.

Jeff Crouere

As Biden falters, Trump looks even better

Wed, 06/28/2023 - 9:56am

Jeff Crouere

In politics today, the biggest rock star remains Donald Trump and it is not even close. At the “Faith and Freedom” conference last weekend, President Trump received thunderous applause.
Among Americans, Trump is the main attraction, the candidate with the most support and the unquestioned leader in the 2024 race for the White House. According to the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, Trump leads President Joe Biden by a margin of 45-39%.
What is amazing is that Trump leads despite a dizzying array of hurdles placed in front of him by his Deep State enemies. The latest challenge is a 37-count federal indictment stemming from the investigation into classified documents recovered from his Florida estate.
The Deep State has tried everything to derail Donald Trump from the day he descended the “golden escalator” in 2015 to announce his presidential candidacy.
In the 2016 race, he received horrible media coverage, spying on his campaign and outright dirty tricks with the revelation of the “Access Hollywood” tape right before the election.
Fortunately, none of the abuse prevented his election as President, but the mistreatment did not stop. He never received a honeymoon as President, in fact, many Democrats boycotted his inauguration and immediately called for his impeachment.
As President, the Deep State continued spying, unleashed by the phony Steele dossier, and authorized by a series of improper “FISA” warrants. His presidency was hounded by a special counsel with a staff of partisan Democrats who spent two years investigating him but found nothing to charge him.
Thereafter, he was impeached for a “perfect” phone call to the Ukrainian President and saddled with a worldwide pandemic originating in China, a country who wanted to deal with anyone else but Donald Trump in the White House. Trump was the first President who negotiated pro-American trade deals with China and was working to return manufacturing to our country.
The pandemic created the environment for the controversial 2020 presidential election, which was characterized by unprecedented use of mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting. There were also a multitude of questions about voting machines and improper federal government involvement to suppress stories on social media about Hunter Biden’s infamous “Laptop from Hell.”
In this whirlpool of election complaints, Joe Biden became the President-elect. Not surprisingly, millions of Trump supporters were furious, which led to a massive protest in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. Almost all these participants were peaceful and were protesting what they viewed as a tainted election. In fact, President Trump gave a speech in which he called on protesters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Even though President Trump did not call for violence, he was impeached by partisan Democrats in Congress for a second time. His actions were “investigated” by a sham House committee organized solely to inflict political damage on President Trump. Currently, his actions on January 6th are also being investigated by the same special counsel who just issued an indictment against him for classified documents at his home.
In the past year, his Mar-a-Lago home has been raided by a swarm of federal agents, an unprecedented move against a former President of the United States. Trump has also been indicted twice and sued by a woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her decades ago. More indictments could come from a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury and the special counsel, while the New York Attorney General pursues a civil fraud case.
Americans understand that President Trump has been treated unfairly from the beginning. Despite being surveilled, constantly investigated, and marred with false allegations of “Russian collusion,” his administration was extremely successful.
The Trump record of achievement stands in stark contrast to the disaster known as the Biden administration. A new NBC News poll shows only 20% of Americans believe the country is going in the “right direction,” while an astounding 74% believe our nation is on the “wrong track.” Even worse for Biden, 68% of Americans believe he does not possess the necessary mental and physical health to be president.”
While Biden is faltering on every level, and his radical policies are failing, President Trump is looking much better in comparison. Americans remember that Trump achieved energy independence, a secure border, a strong economy, a strong military, and respect throughout the world. Under President Trump peace deals were being reached while our country entered no new wars.
The sad truth is that the world is closer to nuclear war than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Donald Trump were in the White House today, the world would be safer, and America would be stronger.
The former President who is dealing with multiple indictments and ongoing investigations and has survived two impeachments, two special counsel investigations, and an FBI raid on his home, is undoubtedly our nation’s best hope to avert disaster.

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and is a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com

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Janice Hebert McNeil

Codes didn’t zip into popularity

What If You Get Discouraged?

Marjorie Istre Hebert

Joseph Keith Arceneaux

Vermilion Municipal and Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force makes arrests

Owner of Fruit of the Loom building about to see his dream come true

Abbeville looking into acquisition of St. Theresa Community Center

ExxonMobil to invest in UL Lafayette, Vermilion Parish

As Biden falters, Trump looks even better

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