When I first took over as insurance commissioner in 1991, things were really in a mess. Regulation by the Louisiana insurance department was nonexistent. I shut down 40 insurance companies that were broke and never should have been licensed in the first place. I couldn’t imagine things being any worse. Well, I was wrong. Jim BrownJim Brown is a former …

Thomas FieldsThomas “Tuffy” Fields is an author and regular contributor to The Gazette. He can be reached by email at thelouisianaexplorer@yahoo.com. The world is in a perilous place. Not since the end of Desert Storm has the world been in such a state of war; a state that threatens to expand and grow to a world wide conflict. Already we …

State and industry officials are bullish on the prospect of Louisiana becoming a national leader in the practice of carbon capture and sequestration, basically capturing carbon dioxide that would otherwise contribute to atmospheric warming and injecting it deep into the ground.With huge economic development projects lining up — and with a full understanding of the state’s extreme vulnerability to rising …