Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you, and.

I think we will go into recession the first quarter of 2030 and that that will come up very slowly until we start changing our policy.

A weird economic moment.

So for me, I've been driven all my life to try and do my best to have this broad impact as I can on.

Taking major steps to prevent cancer and improve outcomes.

While we totally rely on our volunteers, more than 10,000 people come here every year.

Food banks are hurting as inflation rates surge.

I just hope things get better.

The summer travel woes continue.

Hi, everyone.

Sticker shock and outrage and worry.

Is that what you felt when you got your last power bill from Entergy?

Well, if you did join the club, I was shocked by mine.

Besides everything costing more.

We're also paying a surcharge to help Entergy recoup billions in hurricane repair costs.

Customers have had enough and they're letting Entergy know it.

In response, the power giant is now awaiting fees on bills paid.

Late and they are asking their shareholders to commit $10 million in donations to help people who are struggling to pay their bills.

That is good news.

Now let's check on some of the other news across the state this week, Governor John Bel Edwards announced the start of a $176 million broadband investment from the American rescue plan.

The first phase will use $130 million to bring more affordable and accessible Internet access across the state.

More than 66,000 households and small businesses will be helped.

Five days after a state judge blocked enforcement of the state's abortion ban, the same judge on Tuesday denied a motion by state officials to suspend the ruling while they pursue an appeal.

A $25 million facility for high risk juvenile offenders is being built in Monroe at the Swanson Center for Youth that has critics of the new construction questioning the location because Swanson has a history of escapes and violence.

It seems years overdue.

But LSU finally unveiled a statue of basketball legend Pete Maravich this week.

It's located just north of the arena that has long carried the Maravich name, standing alongside Shaquille O'Neal and Bob Pettit.

Maravich was a one of a kind.

Shattering scoring records that were achieved before a three point shot in college ball.

Lafayette native and former LSU tiger Mondo Duplantis keeps breaking his own world records in the pole vault.

The latest for the 22 year old who represents his mother's home country of Sweden was a vault of 20 feet, four and a half inches.

It took place at the World Championships held at Oregon's Hayward Field, where there was a ceremony this week at the Baton Rouge General Hospital.

That was moving.

And it was also important.

It centered around the honoring of the first African-American nurses to work at the hospital in the 1950s.

And here they are arriving at the general all these years later with a crowd of about 200 watching.

They watched as they unveiled a plaque in their honor.

Now, remember, hospitals were segregated.

These women were trailblazers, and they provided first rate care, even though it was tough.

They dealt with racism, but all say patient care was paramount.

Those nurses that were presented go as follows Miss Audrey Cotton, Miss Catherine Anderson Jackson, Miss Earl Jean Joseph and Miss Gwendolyn Woods Miller.

Job well done.

Absolutely.

So some are asking, are we in a recession?

While others believe we definitely are.

Record inflation, the economy shrinking for a second quarter in a row.

The Fed's raising interest rates.

Economist Dr. Lawrence Scott, who presides over his own company and in three decades of LSU, put the economics department on the national map there.

So thank you for a lot of help, a lot of.

What do you say?

Are we in a recession?

Well, actually, the typical definition has historically been two straight quarters in which real gross domestic product falls.

Well, it fell in the first quarter, fell the second quarter and say, hey, that's it.

But there's actually an arbiter, the National Bureau of Economic Research.

They decide they look at all kinds of stuff.

I think they're going to say we're not in it.

And the reason is because that first quarter number was a really weird quarter.

It was before that we had a humongous quarter in the fourth quarter of 2021 because of some weird thing having to do with inventories, which I could tell you.

But yes, a weird thing happened to that, right?

A correction was made in the inventories in the first quarter, which normally means the quarter would have grown if it had not before that it would have been smaller and then about even.

But we had this weird first quarter.

So I think the NBER is going to do they're going to look at that.

There's like we're really not in a recession, but I think we're going to be in one probably in the first part of 2023.

I think we'll have about three quarters of a recession, not very deep, but I think we're going in recession.

What's it mean for Louisiana?

And I say that at a time when the governor is announcing that jobs are at an all time high.

It's never been better in that regard.

But people don't feel like things are so good.

Well, I mean, yeah.

And part of the deal is here it is very common for employment to grow in the first quarter of a downturn, oddly enough.

But that has happened before.

I call around about 200 companies this time of the year because of preparing the Louisiana economic forecast.

Every single one.

It doesn't matter what industry you're talking about, can't find enough employees.

They are really, really short.

But the problem here is that we have this 9% inflation.

The Fed has got to stop that.

The tools that they're going to use to stop that, they're going to raise interest rates, as you saw yesterday.

And secondly, they're going to start engaging in open market operations to take money out of the system.

That's the only way they can combat inflation.

And when they do that, that tends to put the brakes on the economy.

I think that's what will push us into it in the first part of 2023, but ultimately be okay.

Is this a long term thing or.

I think it'll be relatively short, but I think we're going to go into a period of time which we don't grow very fast at the national level.

You can't you can't be talking about raising taxes all the time.

You can't be talking about raising regulations all the time without that slowing the economy down.

I mean, that's just that's just the nature of the animal.

So I think we will go into recession the first quarter of 2030.

And if that were to come out very slowly until we start changing our policies, you know, right.

Right now they're talking about raising corporate income tax rates.

Who in the world raises tax rates when there's a recession?

Even talk of a recession.

That's the last thing you do.

You lower taxes of anything.

What about the psyche and where we are right now?

And I'll say that bleeds over politically.

Yeah.

There are a lot of things going on.

Yeah, there is.

They are.

Word is everywhere right now.

People talk about recessions.

You see it in the news.

You see at the paper, it's loaded.

And that is a kind of a sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the more people hear that, the more their hands will tend to come around their pocketbook and squeeze it.

And they don't buy especially they don't buy durable goods, houses, cars, appliances, furniture, those sorts of things.

So those are the industries are really get hit hard.

And let me come back again to Louisiana.

How does this impact us directly?

Yeah, I just mentioned the key industry that gets hit the hardest when we go into research is the durable goods industry.

People quit buying things like that, anything they buy and they have a tendency to quit buying that.

And luckily for us, we have a very small, durable goods manufacturing industry in Louisiana.

So when the U.S. economy goes into the tank, we go into a tank.

When the national economy booms, we're going to boom, you know?

So we don't have a lot of durable goods.

We don't have a single car manufacture in the state, for example, or appliance manufacture.

So we don't get hit that hard.

Not hit us hard.

Anything else you want to tell us right now in this short time?

Well, the only other thing I would say is I think you're going to see the next quarter not being so bad.

It won't it won't be great, but I think it'll be positive.

And it's going to give the indication that we that we've kind of come out of a recession.

But again, I don't think this is a recession we're in yet.

I don't think the NBA or is going to call it a recession.

All right.

David Lawrence, Scott, thank you so much for always enjoyed this.

We will talk again, but thanks.

As inflation soars to a 40 year high.

Food banks are scrambling to find affordable options for those in need.

The CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank explains how price increases are impacting their ability to provide food.

All right.

So what is this?

What's everything that we're looking at right now?

So you've got a variety of things here.

So this is interesting.

About 25% of our food in normal times comes from USDA.

And that food goes to the school system first and then to the emergency feeding system after that.

And that's us.

So that 25% of our food will come from USDA, 75% comes from private sources.

These.

But you were mentioning talking about donations and things like that coming from Wal-Mart.

But some of the stuff you actually do have to buy.

We do an increasingly we have to buy more food because if you think about COVID and you think about supply chain disruptions and you think about what the shelves of grocery stores look like, then you know, what happened to our donations?

They started to disappear.

So we needed to buy more food.

And unfortunately, a lot of those vendors were charging a lot more for the food that they had because of the supply chain issues all of us are experiencing now.

Every time we go to a grocery store and we're paying 10% more for everything we buy in that grocery store, that's impacting everything we do at Second Harvest, too.

So inflation really is a big deal for you guys and.

It's an incredibly big deal.

Again, in normal times, almost 400,000 people in south Louisiana, the 23 parishes we serve are food insecure and that amount went up by 20 to 25% over COVID.

We're still seeing a 5 to 10% increase or 20,000 more people every month come in.

And in many cases, these are middle class families that were making it and suddenly are not making it.

So, I mean, you're mentioning things like COVID and four hurricanes in two years that's going to make need shoot up because when there is anything that affects the economy, obviously that's going to affect the way people eat.

But have you seen anything like this before?

Because now people are thinking about 2008.

Is this similar?

It is.

It's similar in many ways because it affects so many middle class families.

When you get a recession type of situation, then people who were making it before just about are suddenly not.

So it's it's a different kind of need.

You know, it's people that are coming down saying, I never thought I would ever have to come to a food bank before.

And so, you see, need change at that end.

But what makes it so much worse right now is that we've had these back to back situations.

So in many parts of our service area, home activity, even in parts of New Orleans, people are recovering from Ida and Lake Charles.

You've got Hurricane Laura.

The community hasn't come back from that.

So when you layer hurricane damage on top of COVID, where people lost their jobs for a significant period of time, and now you get a recession.

So there's no savings, right?

So and now suddenly at a period of time where people thought the economy's going to come back, I'm going to be able to go back to work, I can replenish the savings that are depleted over COVID.

Suddenly that opportunity's taken away.

So I think it's these things coming on top of each other that's making this an especially frightening time for people.

Right.

Whenever there's plenty, whenever things are plentiful, people give more.

And in situations where it's a little tough, people give less.

I mean, do you think that soon people will start giving you less?

You know, I feel very fortunate to do what I've done for so many years because I get to see the most generous side of people all the time.

So I can tell you what happens when people get into trouble.

People rushing to help.

So when a hurricane hits, when COVID hits, we normally have people saying, what can I do for you?

Can I come and volunteer?

All those hospitality industry people were saying, Can I come and volunteer in your kitchen?

I don't have a job right now, but I want to help other people.

So that will last for a while if a recession lasts a long period of time like it did in 2008.

Suddenly people are helping.

They're helping.

They're helping, but they're out of resources themselves.

They can no longer help.

So the longer this stretches on, the more worried we get that people's needs are going to stay really heightened.

But people's ability to give and help us is not going to be as great as it was.

So besides the obvious, which is donating food, how can people help out?

Well, we totally rely on our volunteers as more than 10,000 people come here every year and help us prepare meals, repack boxes.

And that, by the way, can happen at our food banks throughout the state of Louisiana.

Wow.

So you see a lot of people doing great things up close.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, that's one of the best parts of what I get to do is I see the best of people while we try to alleviate people suffering.

Louisiana has a long way to go and it's battle against cancer.

We have the fifth highest cancer mortality rate in the nation, and we're among three southern states with the highest cancer cases per capita.

So Tuesday was a big day for the Louisiana Cancer Research Center in New Orleans.

We are not at a.

Wake or a funeral.

We are here to celebrate the advances that we are going to make to better serve the people of our great state.

Governor John Bel Edwards introduced the LLC's new director and CEO, Dr. Joe Ramos, a visionary with a big job ahead.

The mission is to lead the centers public private partnership of LSU Health, New Orleans, Tulane University School of Medicine, Xavier, University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health toward its longtime goal of earning a cancer center designation from the National Cancer Institute.

When such a designation is earned, you know that cancer care in the state is vastly improved in the short 20 years since its inception.

The CRC, like Metro New Orleans, had to recover in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as lives were changed forever.

The CRC lost some of its most prominent.

Cancer researchers and was forced to.

Rebuild basically.

From scratch.

And look at where we are today.

Dr. Ramos comes to Louisiana from the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, which has had a continuous 25 year NCI designation.

So for me, I've been driven all my life to try and do my best to have as broad an impact as I can on cancer and my research initially.

And then as and in my role as the director of the Cancer Center in Hawaii and deputy director there for the last many years.

And so the need here is tremendous.

I mean, we're in the very bottom as far as cancer incidence.

We are hard hit in Louisiana.

And that's really an important thing to get a handle on.

And the way to do that is by putting in place all of those elements that you need to do to attack the problem of cancer.

So that's great research, but also great clinical trials.

Getting that research to the people, to the patients.

Great prevention.

Try our best to prevent cancers from occurring and then educating that next generation.

So those are all the elements that are a part of what you do as a cancer center.

And if we do those things right here, I can see us having a real effect on that cancer incidence and those disparities.

The coveted cancer center designation only happens when a series of benchmarks continue to be reached.

Incredible vision here of the board and the previous folks who put together this idea of how the CRC can be structured.

There's nothing that quite looks like this and the rest of the country and I really think this is the way to do cancer research, cancer care here in Louisiana, to make sure that you're reaching every area of the state.

I don't care if you live in the Delta right outside of Saint Joe or whether you're up in Bastrop or repeats parish or wherever.

We need to make sure that everybody benefits from what we're doing.

And quite frankly, that's what we're going to do and that's how we're going to be successful.

There is not a current NCI designation research center in Louisiana, Mississippi or Arkansas.

So the expectation is that our state will become a regional cancer care destination for the central Gulf South.

We will provide a mechanism to amplify the power of that work, to impact the burden of cancer faster, more broadly and in more detail here.

When we do that right, that combination and that amplification of all that research, the whole is going to be greater than the sum of the parts.

And I'm given two analogies.

I love music.

And so I kind of think of this in one respect as the jazz effect.

I like a great jazz band.

Each player adds their own special take on the theme.

They bring their own flavor to it.

But together you get something quite different and much more powerful than any of them would have alone.

And one of the first things on the agenda for Dr. Ramos is to take off across the state and visit every corner to better understand addressing the needs.

Summer 2022 has been dubbed the summer of chaos by travel officials.

Travelers are seeing delayed and canceled flights and much higher rates.

Many thought air traffic controllers was the main culprit, but research by the Department of Transportation shows that airlines are causing most of the delays.

Summer travel numbers are almost back to pre-pandemic levels, but the efficiency hasn't rebounded as quickly.

I've had, let's see, two, four, two flights canceled and one delayed.

Yeah, all within the last one year.

It was bad weather.

And then the crew had had.

Maxed out their hours.

So we needed a totally new crew.

And they didn't have one.

So the flight was completely canceled.

Solomon Garbo takes flight details with a grain of salt after two stalled takeoffs and one cancelation.

The fear of delays follows them every time he books.

Now, just hope things get better.

Things get better.

Pray for better times.

Garbo isn't the only passenger running into delays and cancelations.

It's a nationwide issue.

Only seven months into 2022 and flight cancelations have already surpassed the entire year of 2021.

Nearly 20% of all flights are delayed and about 2% are canceled, which may not seem like a lot, but 20% is about 20,000 stalled flights.

Our consumer protection office has been overwhelmed with complaints that they are working their way through right now.

Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, says the number of flight delays and cancelations was disappointing following Memorial Day weekend.

But he says that's because staff still can't keep up with increased demand.

Look, it is a good news, a good piece of news.

It's great news that passengers have the income and the inclination to take trips that they wouldn't or couldn't a year ago.

Two years ago.

We're glad to see the demand back, but now we need to make sure the system can meet that demand.

Jim Caldwell at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport says the airlines are overwhelmed.

It's multiple factors.

Demand came back a little more quickly than many airlines had anticipated, and they had to spool up again aircraft that were mothballed and had to be equipped to fly again.

You know, there of course, there's staffing shortages, particularly among pilots, and that's exacerbated things.

Baton Rouge is air travel report shows that 98% of flights are on time with a cancelation rate of almost 2%, which is above the national average.

Other airports are seeing a 3 to 4% cancelation rate, with only 85% of flights arriving on time.

As far as a cancelation rate, you know, airlines generally, you know, hope to keep it at 2% or under or in that range.

And and now they're closer in recent months, closer to the 3 to 4% range.

But as far as on top performance, you know, usually you're in the mid to high eighties.

Now it's been running closer to 80% based on the most recent dot Department of Transportation numbers for the past 12 months.

There are other factors contributing to delayed and canceled flights that don't have to do with staffing.

Extreme weather came in at number two while security concerns came in third.

Now, the airlines, of course, need to step up and service the tickets that they sell.

Secretary Buda Charge says that airlines are starting to see some improvements.

Southwest hired more staff than they did before the pandemic.

Delta Airlines said that they hired 18,000 people since last year.

Caldwell says that it may take some time, but airlines and travel chaos will eventually die down.

I think people going forward will find that it's going to improve.

And even with the drop off in recent months in performance.

The U.S. secretary of transportation says they are working closely with airlines to ensure more efficient travel.

We shift gears now.

How quickly can Brian Kelly restore the luster and championships to LSU football?

Season one begins in 38 days.

This week, the coach delivered his recipe for success to the Baton Rouge Rotary Club.

We've put together what I consider the best high performance team in all of the United States, and I have that support from President Tate and Scott Woodward and Virgin.

The entire administration here we are in lockstep and there is great vision together about how to do that and to have the resources here at LSU to first and foremost put that high performance team together.

The second thing that I've done my entire career and and feel as though this is an essential part of the building block, is that it's about player led teams.

You know, when you have successful football teams, when that locker room is led by the players.

And so make no mistake about it, the ability to have a player led culture.

When players are holding each other accountable on a day to day basis, when you're working on helping them become better young men on a day to day basis, better leaders.

And I think the third part is having a positive teaching environment in that positive teaching environment is so when every young man comes into our charge that they feel as though they're being given the opportunity to be coached and developed in a positive manner.

You're going to see that that when we interact with our players.

We're demanding, but never demeaning.

We're going to demand the very best because that's what you come to LSU to expect.

Our mission here at LSU is to graduate champions.

Graduate champions.

And so that's our standard.

So my toughest days are on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I'm going to sit back with you on Saturday, enjoy the game, because that's how I like to coach.

I want to have fun on Saturday, just like you do.

And I really don't worry about wins and losses.

I know you have to win.

I know you got to win them all here at LSU.

All right.

And that's just fine by me.

Go, Tigers.

Absolutely.

You said it just perfectly.

Everyone, that's our show for this week.

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I'm on very.

Moral and I'm care thanks here.

And so next time.

That's the state we're at the top.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together.

Together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.