Greater Baton Rouge Business Report: Low expectations mean a happy holiday season - On Politics

First of all, I wish all of you a happy holiday season.

Mine is going to be for one reason: I set low expectations instead of high ones. Therefore, I am always happy about things when they unfold; in the past, when I had high expectations, for a certain gift, or how a dinner party should go, it never reached my high expectations.

But when I set low or, even better, no expectations and just go where events take me, I am almost always pleased.

So try it. It could work for you to make a very fine holiday.

With those holiday thoughts out of the way, on to other things.

Rudy, where are you?

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani hasn't called to respond to my open letter asking him why that rude New York City official ordered the Gumbo Krewe of LaPlace out of the city after they had served only 3,500 of the 50,000 Louisiana breakfasts, lunches and dinners for which they had hauled all the ingredients to New York City.

Nor has he even had an assistant to the assistant to his assistant press secretary call or write.

He is certainly busy, but he should know that the city official has created a bad public relations image for New York City in these parts.

Bucks for a truck

Gov. Mike Foster flew to Washington and New York Dec. 19 and 20 to present to the New York Fire Department a brand-new fire truck built in Louisiana. It is a gift to the city from the hundreds of contributors to the "Bucks for a Truck" drive the governor began in October.

How many millions of dollars of publicity can be bought by the state of Louisiana's tourism office? Not many, especially for national audiences.

But Gov. Foster and his fire truck garnered five minutes on NBC's "Today Show," aired nationally. Five minutes is a lot of air time, and the governor's press office is to be congratulated for scoring that much time on national television.

Drinkers, beware

If you are a problem drinker, you had better stay away from casinos.

That's the message I got from a release from the Journal of Studies of Alcohol forwarded by anti-gambling crusader C.B. Forgotston (www.forgotston.com).

Problem drinkers are 23 times more likely to develop a gambling problem than a person who can stop after two or three drinks.

In other words, when you get a little buzz going, you lose control over how much you can afford to lose.

Now, the casinos must know that. That could be the very reason they serve free drinks to gamblers. (Although I'm sure casino spokesmen would say otherwise.)

This study was conducted by the University of Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.

And the rate of problem--or pathological--gambling is significantly higher among minorities and lower-income individuals, says John W. Welte, Ph.D., lead researcher on the study.

"The study of the cooccurrence of gambling and alcohol in the United States, based on random telephone interviews with 2,600 Americans 18 and older, indicates that between 1 and 2 percent of the American population has a compulsive gambling problem," according to the journal.

The study was paid for by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Remember EWE?

December marked another milestone.

Dec. 18 was the 30th anniversary of former Gov. Edwin Edwards' first election as governor. Edwards beat former U.S. Sen. Bennett Johnston by a razorslim margin of about one vote per precinct on Dec. 18, 1971. Edwards was then 44 and Johnston nearing 40.

In those days, the winner of the Democratic primary was always the winner, because victory over a Republican in a general election was perfunctory.

It was because of that bother of running an unnecessary third campaign that Edwards sought and won legislative approval for the open primary system we have today.

Ironically for Democrats, the open primary caused many to switch from Democrat to Republican or no-party. Before the law went into effect in 1975, it was necessary for people to register as a Democrat in order to have a say in who got elected from governor to city council members.

While many folks would like to return to the party primary system, Republicans and African Americans would likely combine to oppose the change. Both groups have benefited from the open primary system.

John Hill, Capitol reporter,