Dumb Crooks and Solid Citizens

We have a candidate for the densest criminal of the year. He was caught yesterday going 125 mph in a school zone two blocks from my house. But wait, it gets worse.

When the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputy ran a check on his car, it came back as stolen–but belonging to this man, the driver who had just been pulled over. “Nope, not stolen,” he said. “That was all a mistake.”

Just to be safe, the deputy called for a policeman from nearby Harahan to come over, since it was that town’s complaint about the car’s being stolen.

The car was stolen all right–from the police compound. The Harahan Police Department had confiscated the car recently when the owner–our speeder–was caught with drugs. So what he did was break into the police compound and steal his car back. The cops weren’t real happy with our boy.

What I can’t figure out is, if you are in possession of a stolen car, why would you drive 125 miles an hour anywhere, let alone through a school zone?

Unless he was whacked out on drugs. That would account for the bizarre behavior and would surely make him the dumbest crook of any year, for my money.

Monday night, prior to the BCS championship game at the Superdome, plainclothed cops circulated among the fans on the streets in search of crooks selling fake tickets for big money. The newspaper did not say if they arrested anyone or how many, but Wednesday’s paper tells the story of some disappointed fans who traveled half a continent to get to our city, then blew $500 each for several tickets that turned out to be fakes. They ended up watching the ball game from a bar near the dome.

In this case, it wasn’t only the scammers who were dumb. The reason this kind of con works at all is that people are too trusting and unwilling to double check before handing over their money.

It would have been so simple to say to the seller, “Come with me over here to the turn stile. If they take this ticket, you get the money.”

Monday morning in Baton Rouge, they’re inaugurating Bobby Jindal as Louisiana’s newest governor. The boy wonder, this brainy young man who has impressed people all his life with his smarts has gone from success to success in his career. From all reports, he is assembling an all-star team of advisors and colleagues. We’ll be watching eagerly to see what he proposes and is able to pull off in the way of rebuilding New Orleans.

Bobby Jindal is from Kenner, our New Orleans suburb just to the west (the airport sits inside the city limits of Kenner), and has been our congressman for a couple of terms. He’s an active Catholic with a born-again testimony, and has the outspoken support of most of the politically active evangelicals I know.


I’ve mentioned Mike Flores on these pages before. The president of GCR Associates, a firm in our Research and Development Center situated right between our Baptist Center and the University of New Orleans, Mike’s firm monitors state-owned property throughout Louisiana, monitors the use of electricity of every house in this city, and keeps up with every airplane in the air throughout this nation. He said to the ministers at our monthly gathering, “We can tell you exactly where any of the 30,000 planes in the air are at any given moment.” So, this is the firm which is always quoted in the media giving accurate figures on the returned population of our city.

Mike said today, “The rebuilding of New Orleans is a 20 year project. It will be 20 years before this city is normal in any sense of the word.”

The crying need in New Orleans is for leadership, Mike says. Without faith-based groups, almost no rebuilding would have been done over these last two and a half years since Katrina.

Mike is a good example of the kind of leader this city cries for. He is a member of a number of boards and organizations making a difference here, and is the executive vice president of the Baptist Crossroads, responsible for constructing fully one half of all the homes erected by Habitat since Katrina. The Crossroads people are committed to building 40 or more homes a year for the foreseeable future. Their website is www.baptistcrossroads.com.

Geoff Hammond is the new president of our North American Mission Board, based in Alpharetta, Georgia. He’ll be preaching Sunday morning at Slidell’s First Baptist Church, then moving over to New Orleans that evening. Monday morning, a group of our ministers and NAMB missionaries will breakfast with him, then someone will drive him through some neighborhoods and show him two things: the work that has been done by the sacrificial investment and dedicated labors of NAMB’s wonderful workers and the massive work still to be done in this city.

We laugh at the dumb crooks, and honestly, we don’t cry a lot over football fans who allow themselves to be scammed into purchasing fake tickets.

But we rejoice over good people who rise up to make a difference in this world. Some will sit in governor’s offices, some in R & D centers, some in denominational positions, and some in pickup trucks. We appreciate each one and thank God for them.

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