LUS Fiber and Porn (Roll Eyes)

Good Grief….I go out of town for a couple of weeks on a Rockies camping vacation and return to reams of “coverage” of LUS Fiber after a long quiet period. I’ll get around to making some sort of comment on earlier financial stories just as soon as I get it all straightened out in my own head what the issue is supposed to be. But this latest business about porn is just plain silly.

First: Of Course LUS Fiber has porn channels. So does every single other video provider you care to name. Big whoop. Glad to get that moral dilemma out of the way.

Now, about representative Sam Jones (R, Franklin) suggesting a law that was ostensibly only supposed to prevent public officials from using their credit cards to buy porn. He says that it wasn’t supposed to effect the big city right up US 90 from his burg in any way…but then again he’s gonna fight any change that might clarify that it wasn’t his intent. That is purest horse pucky. He’s been put up to this. There is NO need for a law preventing public officials from buying porn…that would be using the public’s credit card for personal purchases and that is already against the law. If his intent was so innocently (and pointlessly) school marmish then he wouldn’t be fighting an amendment that would clarify it.

There is a lot of murkiness behind this article…according to text the Advertiser apparently alerted LUS and the city-parish’s state lobbyist to the existence of the bill following which LUS asked Michot to put in a clarifying amendment. Various confusions followed. What’s most interesting about that story is that we aren’t told how the Advertiser knew this toss away law was being put up late in the session. You can bet that there’s nobody at the Advertiser who is pouring over the legislative daily’s for stories about ridiculous uses of public credit cards while our states financial crisis continues to deepen with no resolution in sight. No, somebody pointed this bill out, and underlined the not-obvious implication it had for LUS Fiber. If the Advertiser really wanted to get to the bottom of this “story” they’d follow that lead. Or at least tell us so who did so that we could trace the implications for ourselves.

Who put this neat little bit of sensationalism before the Advertiser reporter? Follow that trail and you might actually have something to report on that would be relevant to the larger battle.

What do I think? Follow the money as two reporters were famously advised. Who benefits? Nobody but Cox Communications…and anyone who thinks they are above such crassness doesn’t remember the ugliness of Lafayette’s fight to build our network.