Several large corporations have announced they’ll be implementing pay increases this year, and one retail giant is joining in. Matt Doyle has more.
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The Trump administration agrees to speed up the permitting process for a vital coastal restoration project. Jeff Palermo on what this means for the state…
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UL-Lafayette has been named as a top 25 college in the nation where students are eager to attend. Michelle Southern reports…:
Cut 3 (30) “I’m Michelle Southern”
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Several of the nation’s largest corporations announced they are giving employees a bonus as a result of federal tax reform. Walmart, who employs tens of thousands of Louisianans, announced they are increasing bottom salaries from nine dollars to 11 dollars, and authorizing up to a thousand dollars in bonuses for employees. Zachary Walmart manager Cornelius Lombard says workers appreciated the gesture…
Lombard says the bonuses are the results of a hugely profitable run for the retail giant…
Cut 5 (11) “continued success.”
Walmart has come under fire in recent years for paying workers poverty level wages. Making Change at Walmart Director of Communication Amy Ritter says Walmart’s thousand dollar bonus headline was fairly misleading…
Ritter says the tax cut should provide the company with another 1.85 billion a year.
Ritter says even with the pay increase, hundreds of thousands of Walmart workers will still be below the poverty line. She says the costs for impoverished workers falls back on the taxpayer…
Walmart posts yearly profits of roughly 14 billion dollars, Ritter says the one to two dollar pay increases will cost the company about 200 to 300 million a year.
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UL-Lafayette has been named one of the Top 25 in U.S. News and World Report’s list of, “Universities and Colleges Where Students are Eager to Enroll.” Dr. DeWayne Bowie, vice president for Enrollment Management, says the ranking is a testament, not only to academic offerings..:
Coming in at No. 24, UL-Lafayette was the only school in Louisiana named to the list. Bowie says when recruits come to campus, they like what they see:
Cut 9 (13) “over and over again”
The list includes schools with selective admission that have a high percentage of students admitted by an institution who end up enrolling. Bowie says it’s not surprising because that’s similar to the positive feedback they get from students…:
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The Trump administration says they will speed up the approval of a key coastal restoration project. The agreement would reduce the permitting process for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project from five years to two. Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana spokesperson Jimmy Frederick says it’s a big win…
Frederick says by speeding up the permitting process, they hope they can now ground on the sediment diversion by 2020.
The 1.3 billion dollar project will rebuild the wetlands by returning sediment, fresh water, and nutrients from the Mississippi River into nearby wetlands to build and maintain land in Louisiana’s Barataria Basin that has been lost since the Mississippi river levee system was built. Frederick says the project will punch a hole in the levee system to redirect some of the river flow.
The state intends to pay for much of the project using funds it received from BP after the 2010 oil spill.
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House Republican Caucus Chairman Lance Harris of Alexandria is still waiting on specifics from the Edwards administration on how to fix the fiscal cliff. The governor would like to call lawmakers into a special session, so changes can be made to our tax code to address a billion dollar shortfall. But Harris says he and his party are still in the dark…
The governor is proposing a reduction in tax breaks for businesses as a way to bridge the one-billion-dollar budget deficit. But Harris says they should look at making more cuts in state spending first…
Cut 15 (09) “taxpayers pockets.”
Governor Edwards told legislators last week he’s made 600-million-dollars in cuts in his first two years in office. Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne says it’s time for the legislature to “put up or shut up” and present a proposal on where additional cuts need to be made…
Cut 16 (13) “billion dollars.”
Dardenne says the Governor is ready to move forward on solving the fiscal cliff, but Republican legislators have yet to present a plan…
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The 2018 LSU baseball team has a different look to it this year as several star players have moved on to professional baseball. The weekend rotation is completely new. Caleb Gilbert is slated to be the Friday night starter, Zack Hess is scheduled to start on Saturdays and Todd Peterson would be the Sunday starter, if the season started today. Coach Paul Mainieri believes Peterson is ready to have a big season…
Hess was sensational out of the bullpen last season. But Mainieri believes the flame thrower is best suited to be a starter this year and not the team’s closer…
LSU’s lineup at the plate will also look different this season and a lot of the guys that hit home runs last season are no longer with the program. But Mainieri believes there’s still plenty of guys on this 2018 roster that can put pitches over the fences led by Zach Watson…