The changes in Louisiana’s quality of life 

By: Jim Brown

All we know 

Left untold 

Beaten by a broken dream 

Nothing like what it used to be 

We’ve been chasing our demons down an empty road 

Singer Alan Walker 

These words hit home to me as I read a number of Louisiana newspaper headlines in recent weeks. I’m approaching 86 years old and life is just not the same as it was when I started out in public life back in the 1970s. 

Oh, we had some backroom gambling and horse race betting back then. You could travel to Las Vegas for a special outing. Today, every kind of betting is now legal here in the Bayou State. Casino and riverboat gambling, the lottery, slot machines and video poker. Anything you want to bet on. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing a barrage of ads featuring Louisiana’s first family of sports, the Mannings, huckstering sports betting. Even Saints icon Drew Brees raked in the big bucks pushing a new casino referendum in Slidell.