AGR - Louisiana Edition

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 30, 2026. We open with a campaign jingle mix-up that turns out to be from the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race, not Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. Then we get into the senator’s speech to the Shreveport and Bossier chambers of commerce, where he made the case for governing by normal peop...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avalone and Stephen Parr. We open with good news out of Baton Rouge: Fitch Ratings has upgraded Louisiana’s credit rating from AA-minus to AA with a stable outlook. We explain what that means for your wallet and for the interest the state and local governments pay when they borrow. Then we take up Treasurer John Fleming’s call for more tax re...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avalone and Stephen Parr. We start with Louisiana’s November 3rd election and the early vote numbers, and we caution against confusing who voted first with who will win. Democrats lead early voting by about three points, 42% to 39% over Republicans, a far smaller edge than in past elections. We talk through why that gap isn’t the whole story....

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 27, 2026.  We start the show with the Caddo Parish district attorney’s race between incumbent James Stewart and State Senator Alan Seabaugh, both of whom we’ve interviewed in studio. We talk about what it would cost to add jury trial capacity while the parish jail is overcrowded wit...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 26, 2026. We start with Louisiana’s $100 billion SpaceX project and the lawsuit that could slow down the planned spaceport in Vermilion Parish. We talk about the open meetings claims, the “Project Osprey” code name, the roughly $24 billion tax exemption, the 3,000 promised jobs aver...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 23, 2026.  We open in Baton Rouge, where deputies used pepper balls to break up unruly crowds after LSU’s homecoming game against Mississippi State. We ask what has happened to self-control, why every law ends up reflecting someone’s bad behavior, and whether we’ve confused having f...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 22, 2026.  We open with Louisiana’s new voter ID law, authored by Senator Thomas Pressly of Shreveport and taking effect July 1, 2027. Critics called it an assault on democracy, yet Black voter turnout in this midterm’s early voting is the highest in recent history, up from 24% of e...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 21, 2026.  We start close to home with the Shreveport mayoral race, the largest municipal election on the Louisiana ballot this November. Caddo Parish Sheriff Henry Whitehorn Sr. has endorsed Stormy Gage Watts, citing her commitment to public safety. We take a hard look at the endor...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 20, 2026.  We start by digging into a Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s report showing the state sent $3.2 billion to nonprofits over four years, with $1.9 billion of it coming from the Department of Education. We ask what taxpayers got for $10 million to the New Orleans Super Bowl ho...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 19, 2026. We open the show with a message for New Orleans: get it together. Mayor Helena Moreno’s proposed budget would eliminate 75% of the sanitation department’s positions. We ask how making a top tourist destination dirtier and less safe helps a city out of a financial crisis. W...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 16, 2026. We start with election season and the local races many of you have on your ballots, from mayor to sheriff to city council. We talk about the difference between candidates who bring the data and candidates who lean on emotion, and why a claim like “it’s not happening in my...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 15, 2026.  We start with a question about the Louisiana economy: if we want more people working and fewer families depending on government assistance, who’s going to watch the kids? We look at the cost of child care, which can run about $12,000 a year for one child. We also look at...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for Octobe 14, 2026.  We start with Louisiana’s Amendment 4 on the November 3rd ballot, which would permanently bar a governor from returning to office after serving eight years. We explain how the current law lets a governor sit out one term and run again, look at Louisiana’s history of return...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 13, 2026. With Election Day on November 3rd and the voter registration deadline here, we start by working out the election calendar. Then we walk through Louisiana’s Amendment 3, which would deny post-conviction bail to people convicted of aggravated sex offenses against children. W...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 12, 2026.  We start with a rough weekend for Louisiana sports. LSU dropped another SEC game, the Saints lost, and we ask whether a $91 million coaching contract should come with championship results. Then we get to some good news. Louisiana has been ranked ninth in the nation for do...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 9, 2026.  It’s Friday, Louisiana, and we start with Speaker Mike Johnson’s comment that he’d happily come home to Shreveport and start a lawn business if God leads him there. We brainstorm business names (Gavel and Gravel is our favorite), then get serious about what it means to be...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 8, 2026.  We start by asking what government should and shouldn’t build, then dig into Governor Jeff Landry’s broadband expansion in East Baton Rouge Parish. Louisiana is the first state to get its BEAD plan approved, and we debate whether $1.3 billion in federal money for fiber mak...

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 7, 2026.  We start with the gas tax. With Election Day a month away, states from Georgia to Ohio are suspending theirs, and Louisiana is weighing the same move. We separate emergency relief like red-dyed diesel from what we see as an election-season gimmick, and we explain why a tax...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 6, 2026. We start with great news for Louisiana: a projected 55,000 new jobs over the next two years, driven by a wave of industrial investment. We run through the numbers from Baton Rouge to Lake Charles to Shreveport-Bossier, with Monroe headed for record employment thanks to a ma...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 5, 2026. We start with Senator John Kennedy quoting the Judds on Meet the Press while admitting he's thinking about a 2028 run for president, and we debate whether a great senator would make a great president. Then it's the Top 3 things you need to know: Louisiana Attorney General L...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 2,2026. We start with a story out of Ruston, where two Louisiana Tech students were arrested for allegedly blasting racial slurs through a loudspeaker near campus. We're clear that the speech was ugly, racist, and offensive. We also take a look at it from a constitutional angle, cov...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for October 1, 2026. We open with a case hitting close to home: two St. Tammany Parish brothers accused of helping finance Hamas through PayPal, Western Union, and online fundraising. We walk through the alleged "bread" code language, the undercover operation out of New York, and why we say kno...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 30, 2026.  We open with a heavy story out of Shreveport, where a 13-year-old boy died shielding his 2-year-old sister during a shooting at a basketball court. We talk about a culture that doesn't know what to do with anger, rejection, and disrespect, and about what honor, responsi...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 29, 2026.  We start with the Protect College Sports Act, which passed the Senate 77 to 22 with both Louisiana senators, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, voting yes. We explain what the bill does on NIL compensation, transfers, eligibility, and agents, and why its path through the Ho...

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 28, 2026.  We open with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who was indicted on 16 felony counts by an Orleans Parish grand jury over letters she wrote to New Orleans officials in a fight over the Orleans Parish clerk of court consolidation. All 16 counts were later dismissed,...