May the city of New Orleans subject local tour guides to hundreds of dollars in fines and five months in jail for engaging in unauthorized talking?

This is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) seeks to answer in a federal lawsuit filed on December 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Four New Orleans tour guides are joining forces with IJ to strike down New Orleans’ tour guide licensing scheme as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights:

According to First Amendment expert Matt Miller of the Institute for Justice, seen the above video:

The government cannot be in the business of deciding who may speak and who may not.  The Constitution protects your right to communicate for a living, whether you are a journalist, a musician or a tour guide.

New Orleans requires every tour guide to pass a history exam, undergo a drug test and pass an FBI criminal background check every two years merely for speaking.  People who give tours without a license face fines up to $300 per occurrence and five months in jail.

City officials are currently breaking up tours led by guides that don’t have the government’s permission.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Ben Smilowitz to discuss disaster relief in Haiti, and the need for greater oversight of disaster relief organizations.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

One Year Report On Transparency of Relief Groups Responding to 2010 Haiti Earthquake
The importance of disaster relief NGO transparency
Disaster Accountability Project releases report on transparency of relief organizations responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake
Fraud plagues global health fund backed by Bono, others
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Before Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, Orleans Parish public schools were failing miserably. After the storm shut down the public school system completely, there was little reason to be optimistic.

But then something amazing happened.

The state of Louisiana took control over most of the schools in the district and has been chartering those schools ever since. This fall, more than 70 percent of the students in New Orleans will attend charter schools. (Check out reason.tv’s Katrina’s Silver Lining to learn more about the New Orleans charter school revolution.)

And then in 2008, Louisiana enacted the Student Scholarship for Educational Excellence Program, a pilot voucher program designed to allow students in failing schools to attend private schools in the area.

The result: more competition and more choices for parents.

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In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

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From the April 2010 issue of Townhall magazine: Brandon Darby learned something from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Once a hard-core radical who sided with progressive revolutionaries, Darby prevented a left-wing terrorist attack on the 2008 GOP convention. Now, this America-loving patriot is the target of the domestic extremists he once called “friends.”

Did you know that a courageous former radical helped to avert a planned left-wing terrorist attack at the 2008 Republican National Convention that might have killed who knows how many Americans?

Neither did I until recently.

That’s because if you disrupt a terrorist attack on Americans by Islamic fundamentalists as Northwest Flight 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa did on Christmas Day, you’re a hero; however, if you take the initiative to undermine a terrorist attack on Americans by supposedly well intentioned left-wing fundamentalists, you might as well be a terrorist yourself.

Brandon Darby, who in recent years also refused leftists’ invitations to get involved in Venezuelan communist subversion here in America and in anti-Israeli terrorism in Palestine, learned this unpalatable truth the hard way.

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It is apparently a mystery to a lot political insiders why the Tea Parties have become so popular with so many Americans in state after state across the nation.

Many have simply tried to dismiss the phenomena as the ranting of a relatively small number of angry right-wing zealots. They are dead wrong but one gets the feeling the political class finds this easy dismissal far more comforting than the unsettling truths driving angry and vocal dissatisfaction by people from across the political spectrum.

“Real people” like me resonate in politics right now because of the growing chasm between what the political elites of both parties see as the best course for the nation—and for themselves– and the hopes and fears of the average American man and woman. In China that difference might mean very little to government as we saw in Tiananmen Square but, according to the Founding Fathers, such a division should not even exist here in the United States.

Those who are passionately protesting at Tea Parties and making themselves felt at the polls have rightly detected more than a hint of contempt for the average citizen. If everything were going well such elitist arrogance might be accepted, as it has been in the past. But things are not going well for our nation and more and more people are challenging the performance, ideas and motivations of those who hold themselves out as smarter and better than the rest of us.

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Bureaucrats gone wild! Taxpayers charged for international trysts, golf, skiing, and other government junkets

Military officials bought thousands of dollars worth of alcohol, food and other amenities for congressional overseas junkets

Delaware airport that “hardly ever sees a paying passenger” has received $12.3 million from the federal Airport Improvement Program for a runway construction project

Tennessee library pays for Rock Band video game session and Monday Night Football with a $5,000 federal Community Building Through Video Games in Libraries grant

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In December 1908, the President of Haiti, Nord Alexis, attempted one last, desperate, act before leaving office; spiriting his family away to the safety of Jamaica, then New Orleans, to escape the rising tumult in the Haitian capital of  Port-au-Prince.  I give thanks that he was successful, for Nord Alexis was my ancestor.  His foresight, in getting his family out of Haiti and into the U.S., made my life, with the freedom, opportunity, and prosperity that only America can offer, possible.   My story is just one of many strange incidents connecting Haiti and the United States over the past hundred years.  With the devastation wreaked by the recent earthquake, it is clear that a new chapter in Haitian-U.S. relations is about to be written.

Americans should be proud of our quick response to the devastating earthquake that has wiped out virtually all services, businesses, schools, and institutions in Port-au-Prince.   Our President, Barack Obama, has moved government resources and emergency management experts to the area without hesitation, debate or delay.

Within hours, the US Air Force had reestablished air control and the long line of aid and assistance began to flow.   The Army’s 82, All-American Division,  is already on the ground helping to reassert law and order, as well as assist in the difficult job of distribution of relief aid.   Each day more planes arrive in Haiti, with even more assistance.

More impressively, American citizens and private companies have already raised millions in relief with more on the way.   Dozens of organizations such as the American Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services,  and Salvation Army, have already mobilized their resources and are on the ground providing relief efforts in a hundred different ways.

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Who knew that this was the beginning of government health care in this country?

We may never fully appreciate the full costs of Hurricane Katrina.

Trendiness of baby names being studied by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation

Federal government spends millions of dollars on a floating canal museum, a Corvette museum, the National Packard Museum, and other museums of questionable merit

Costly AIDS vaccine study touted as a breakthrough may actually be a bust or boondoggle

Streetcar to nowhere: Stimulus funds may pay to construct an Atlanta streetcar but city may not even have the funds to operate it once it is built

$181 million stimulus project wasn’t shovel ready after all and local residents applaud decision to withdraw it from the state’s list of stimulus projects

Funding to assist rebuilding projects after Hurricane Katrina spent on sod for a stadium

From Steve Beatty, Pelican Institute’s investigative reporter:

More than two years before an ersatz pimp and prostitute raised troubling questions about Acorn Housing Corp.’s financial advice, Louisiana officials criticized the organization’s bookkeeping as it denied the group tens of thousands of dollars from a potential $1.5 million state contract.

The office overseeing the contract recommended against rehiring Acorn Housing in part because it couldn’t document its work.  The contract was designed to inform low-income residents about the Road Home program and help them apply for post-hurricane benefits.

A much smaller $53,000 contract that Acorn Community Land Association had with the state attorney general’s office also was criticized for thin financial justification, though the group got its full payment and was recommended for future work. The contract was to tell hurricane victims of non-discriminatory housing policies as they sought temporary rentals.

In both contracts, the state files contain promotional materials extolling the virtues of paying for an ACORN membership – a solicitation expressly forbidden under the contracts.

“If you are not rich, you need to join your ACORN community group and work on the problems affecting you,” reads one flier in the attorney general’s file.

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