Daniel Erspamer

Lawmakers will not fund teacher stipends should Amendment 3 fail #lagov #lalege thecentersquare.com/louisiana/arti… via @thecentersquare

Thank you, @EdSecMcMahon! Pro LA GATOR means pro student and pro family! The results speak for themselves. It’s time to expand the success of this program!

👀 #lalege #lagov #laed

This is excellent.

The @la_psc is meeting TODAY in Baton Rouge! Your electric bill is on the line 💡 In Louisiana, electricity rates are set by state regulations. The prices we pay reflect the decisions they make. Tune in and stay informed!👇 📑 Read the Agenda here: lpsc.louisiana.gov/docs/agenda/Ma… 🖥️ Watch the livestream here: @louisianapsc/streams" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@louisianapsc/… #LaPSC #Louisiana #EnergyBills #ElectricityRates #StickerShock

...but to the extent politics becomes the end rather than the means of enacting good policy, we will continue to lose our way. I'm not a Pollyanna, and I enjoy the strategy and horse race as much as the next guy. I just hope we don't lose our perspective in the process.

On all sides of the ideological spectrum, it seems more and more people are turning politics into a religion. No doubt, politics matters. It's the practical implementation of policy, which has a huge effect on people's lives...

"...the tax tends to dissuade startups from … well, from starting up at all. Indeed, it can be argued that the inventory tax is a significant contributor to Louisiana’s near-perennial status as one of the worst-performing states, economically, in the nation." #Yeson4

Excellent observations and reflections. I especially love this line: "But more money for school improvement is not reform."

"Two Cathedrals" episode of "The West Wing "

This was my childhood!

Excellent! @WrightLouisiana getting in on it.

I'm very much enjoying @StewartCathey33 and @DarylDeshotel talk about hair dryers. #lalege #lagov

How well are Louisiana public schools funded? From our latest Citizen’s Guide to the Budget report… #lalege #lagov #laed

Quin Hillyer: A pugilistic stance against Louisiana’s inventory tax nola.com/opinions/quin_… via @nolanews

If you pitched this as a screenplay every studio would reject it for being too on-the-nose. A 73-year-old architect walks to confession in 1926 and gets hit by a tram on the Gran Via in Barcelona. He's mistaken for a vagrant because of his worn clothes and left at a pauper's hospital. He dies three days later. His name is Antoni Gaudí. The cathedral he leaves behind is less than a quarter complete. The plans to finish it sit in his workshop as plaster models and detailed drawings. Ten years after his death, in July 1936, FAI anarchists break into that workshop. They smash the plaster models. They burn the archive of drawings and calculations. They pry open Gaudí's tomb. For the next 50 years, architects piece together a destroyed playbook from photographs and broken plaster fragments. The geometry was the real problem. Gaudí designed the church using upside-down hanging-chain models because the math for hyperboloid intersections did not yet exist on paper. He had solved it physically. Computers finally caught up to him in the 1980s. By 2010 the project was 50% complete. By 2015 stone elements that took months to hand-carve were being modelled digitally and machine-cut in days. Now the kicker. The building is funded entirely by people paying admission to see scaffolding. €134.5 million of income in 2025, all private, none of it from the Spanish state or the Vatican. About 4.7 million tourists a year buying €26 tickets to watch a cathedral get built. The unfinished state was the product. On June 10, 2026, exactly 100 years to the day after Gaudí died, the cross goes up on the Tower of Jesus Christ. 144 years from groundbreaking. 172.5 meters tall. The tallest church building in the world, beating Ulm Minster, which took 513 years. When asked why his project was taking so long, Gaudí said one thing: "My client is not in a hurry." Turns out neither was he.

Reading Project Hail Mary while the UFO files are being released is an interesting experience.

Happy Saturday. The #Cubs have the best record in @MLB.