Who are we trying to sustain?

Seems like the river is pretty much always in flood this time of year now.

The Army Corps of Engineers is considering opening the Bonnet Carre Spillway for a second time this year, with the river again set to rise to 16.9 feet in New Orleans on May 11. It would be the first time the spillway was opened twice in the same calendar year since it was completed in 1931. While the official flood stage at the Carrollton Gage in New Orleans is 17 feet, floodwalls and levees in the New Orleans area protect from water heights of at least 20 feet.

That's probably bad. Maybe just leave the thing open for a few months.

While they're at it, maybe it's time to get some of these lower river diversions up and running while they still might do some... well I hesitate to say some good since we're probably past that point but, you know. 

One of the embarrassing facts of American political life is that most of us only pay attention when the debate is about so-called “kitchen table issues.” Our lives are so busy and hectic, researchers claim, we don’t get involved at the ballot box until a topic might cost us money or safety.

That’s one of the excuses given to explain why so many south Louisiana voters continue to send people like Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins and Garret Graves back to Washington even as those congressmen vote against their constituents’ best interests by steadfastly fighting regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The science may show those pollutants are the main driver of rising seas that will drown much of the state’s bottom third within 40 to 50 years, but that seems like a long way off, these politicians say. No need to pay for it now. You’re still safe. And maybe it won’t happen!

Well, maybe the new storm surge risk maps issued by the National Hurricane Center last week will finally bring this issue to your kitchen table. 

Bob Marshall is correct to call out Louisiana's congressional delegation for its dismissal of the threat climate change poses to the majority of their constituents.  But he'd be kidding himself if he actually believes the new flood maps will change anyone's position. At the most all they're likely to do is tweak the marketing pitch for continuing the same destructive policies.  Here is a NYT article about some Republicans who are doing just that, in fact. Among them is LA Congressman Garret Graves.

In almost all of the cases in which conservative politicians are cautiously staking out territory on climate change, they still do not acknowledge the extent of man’s responsibility for causing it. Putting a price on emitting carbon into the atmosphere is verboten. And they insist solutions do not need to include eliminating or even curbing the use of oil, coal and other dirty energy sources primarily responsible for heating the planet.

“If we can find strategies that allow us to reduce emissions while continuing to use fossil fuels, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Mr. Graves said in a recent interview.

See we gotta figure out how to compromise and balance between having a coast and supporting the industry that has ripped it to pieces. Simple. Sensible sounding.  The stuff of editorial page legend. 

Of course, here is what that looks like in real life.

Today, there is a proposal to place a massive oil terminal – the Plaquemines Liquids Terminal – on the Mississippi River directly in the footprint of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. This terminal would provide a connection from a not-yet-built oil pipeline to large tankers on the river, storing as much as 20 million barrels of oil on site for loading onto these ships directly upriver of the intake structure of the diversion.

What could go wrong? Unfortunately, a lot. First, the terminal and the ships using it will decrease the land-building power of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, as the tankers block sediment from being captured by the diversion, resulting in less land. In effect, we’ll be making a $1.4 billion project investment far less effective than it could be.

Given the importance and urgency of coastal restoration and protection, that in itself would seem to make this a very bad idea.

Beyond that, virtually any spill, however small or large, will risk fouling the wetlands that are being created and sustained by the diversion. At a time when our state is losing its wetland buffer and wildlife habitat faster than anywhere else on Earth, why would we allow something to compromise or corrupt the wetlands that remain? In a post BP world, why would we take the risk of a catastrophic failure that could ruin the very effort we need to sustain ourselves here?

I suppose that last question is rhetorical. As we well know by now none of this is about choosing to "sustain ourselves" in South Louisiana because there is no "ourselves" to sustain.  There are, instead, the competing interests of varies "selves" to consider. And some of those are more valuable than others.

Fine upstanding citizens

Bollinger and Cannizaro give a lot of money to local politicians (many of them Democrats!) and are active wheels in the non-profit industrial complex that more or less runs everything.  Also they do this.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will have a dinner fundraiser in New Orleans next month that will cost supporters a minimum of $2,800 apiece.

Those willing to shell out $100,000 per person will get "roundtable" access, and couples can pay $35,000 for a photo with the president at the May 14 event.

Shipbuilder Boysie Bollinger and developer Joe Canizaro, Trump's finance co-chairs for Louisiana, are listed as the event's hosts, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by The Advocate.

They all want to talk about how there's nothing more important than beating Trump (even if they have some stupid ideas about how to do that)  but they still accept Trump's guys into the club whenever. It makes you wonder if they take any of this seriously.

Backtracking on ITEP

Why do Republican legislators hate democracy?

The Year Of Enforcement

"We have to shake this image of being the Big Easy where you can do anything you want in New Orleans" -- LaToya Cantrell

That isn't all she says in this unhinged rambling video about traffic cameras, bicycle regulations and the "year of enforcement." (By the way, I thought LaToya wanted 2015 to be the Year Of Enforcement.  She really does have a thing for policing people.) LaToya has no tolerance whatsoever for nuance, subtlety or the notion of  discretion in law enforcement.  "We can't pick and choose!" about when and where to drop the hammer, she says. If you are driving even one mile over the speed limit, "That's illegal!" End of discussion. There is only force and it must be applied at maximum to everyone. LaToya pounds the table as she declares, "Cyclists will be ticketed!" 

She sounds an awful lot here like her father-in-law Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell who has been repeatedly criticized for setting excessive bail in defiance of federal court orders meant to shut down what has amounted to a "debtor's prison."  Judge Cantrell is about as empathetic as LaToya.

Cantrell routinely refuses to set bail below $2,500, regardless of the facts of a case or a defendant’s ability to pay, the suit claims. In most cases, the judge forces defendants to seek the services of a commercial bail bondsman, which in Orleans Parish charge a non-refundable 12-percent or 13-percent fee on the total bond amount.

“We don’t go any lower than $2,500 in this court,” Cantrell told one defendant’s attorney. “This court never goes any lower than $2,500,” he said in another case. “I don’t got any lower than $2,500 on my bonds,” he said in yet another. In one instance, he told a lawyer he was going to set bond at $2,500, regardless of what information the lawyer provided.

The bail is the bail.  You can't pick and choose, right?  The law is the law and it has got to be enforced.  If you tried to slow down in the school zone but only made it down to 25 mph  instead of 24 by the time the camera saw you, well it's nice that you tried but also that's too bad. We have to enforce it. If you are playing music in the street for a crowd during a music festival, well that's nice but also "That's illegal!" LaToya's cops are gonna come and shut you down. Here's Kevin Allman on why that's a problem.

Was the street band in violation of some ordinance? Maybe. But doesn't the city have something, anything better to do than to attempt to shut down the next generation of musicians who are trying to make a buck — and making a lot of people happy in the process?

New Orleans' music culture isn't restricted to symphony halls, nightclubs or festivals sponsored by Acura and Shell. It's more organic than that, or it should be. And it's a bad look for a city that pays lip service to "culture bearers" to shut down actual culture bearers outside a multi-million dollar festival where Pitbull and Katy Perry are pulling down huge salaries.

The #CityOfYes official twitter put out some nonsense about how the police acted appropriately by eventually allowing the band to continue playing in somebody's yard because this is how you make "balance" happen or something.   But in reality all that was accomplished was pointless intimidation supposedly on behalf of a neighbor's complaint. Here's Jarvis DeBerry on why that's absurd.

Seriously, the solution that was worked out Friday night is as absurd as the decision of those unnamed residents to complain and is as absurd as the decision from the police to intervene and make the music stop. If the neighbors were bothered by the noise, then how would they be any less bothered by the noise after the band moved from a position in front of the yard to a position in the yard itself? And if they were bothered by something other than the noise, well, then, the police should have just told them to mind their business and that the band was fine.

NOPD shutting down live music in New Orleans, especially during Jazzfest, is always going to draw attention. But this goes beyond the typical NolierThanThou concern olympics over the fate of "culture bearers" whatever they are. The larger issue here is the city's increasingly authoritarian administration and law enforcement regime being brought to bear on its poorer and more vulnerable populations for what often appears to be the mere convenience of officials looking for the easiest and/or most revenue friendly cop-out solution to the problems of municipal governance.  LaToya explicitly says the problem is this "image of being the Big Easy" where people can do what they want to do. So the solution is we have to stop people from doing things.... unless they can afford to pay. Thus the Year of Enforcement also promises to be the Year of Collections. 

Backlog of stuff

Man... I still didn't publish the second half of the Mardi Gras posts I had been working on.  I wrote up a whole bunch of stuff about the Zulu blackface controversy which, I suppose, can sit until next year when I'm pretty sure people will be talking about that again.  I also had some things in there about the drunk driving accident which is still relevant and will probably get dumped into something else I'm trying to finish.  Meanwhile, here are some quick notes from this week before that stuff piles up on me too.



It's city-wide investment property open house season. We used to call that Jazzfest. But things are kind of different now in the "year of enforcement," as the mayor likes to call it. Also the steady stream of people I keep seeing drive slowly through the neighborhood with little notebooks says more about what goes on now. Anyway I heard a rumor that City Council is about to take up the Short Term Rentals thing again soon... as early as next week, perhaps. There are a couple of different bills  before the legislature right now that would impose new taxes on STRs as one instrument in the sprawling and sputtering search for a grand bargain between the city and the tourism industry. If lawmakers successfully tie the fate of STRs to the prospect of infrastructure revenues, it follows that City Council would be even more positively inclined to their proliferation than they already are.  Which means we can look forward to seeing even more long time residents displaced by investment properties. Nobody will live here but at least we'll be able to pay for nobody's drainage.



The "Together For Parks and Recreation" moneywad is putting out on an all-out media blitz this week in favor of hooking Ron Forman up with a dedicated millage for twenty more years.  They've got  mailers, TV ads, all sorts of endorsements from elected persons and editorial writers.  It's pretty disgusting.  What's worse is even the more skeptical notes I've read are reserved in their criticism of this measure which, pretty obviously, should be rejected. But there's too much wealth and political status sitting behind it and nobody really likes to challenge the money power in this city.

Basically there are three kinds of people who will vote for this thing. They are:

1) Cynical allies of the con-profit oligarchy who have a direct financial interest and/or adjacent political interest in helping them win something.

2) Cynical political actors who have an interest in having been "on the mayor's side" of something in case they want to ask her for something else later.

3) Idiots. I like the idiots. At least they're honest.

In any case, since those are pretty much all three categories of voter that exist in New Orleans, I'm pretty sure the millage is going to pass in a landslide. Oh well. On to the next disaster.

Let's see what else? I knew there was something I wanted to mention.

Oh yeah it was CCC last weekend.



I did a slightly more robust Mardi Gras this year than last so my training was a bit behind schedule. During the Lenten season I ran a full 6.2 miles only three times coming in at or about 56 minutes. That's fine, I guess. But also there were a number of outings when I had to stop altogether after 4 or 5 miles. So I wasn't sure what to expect coming in to race day. And this is why I made the stupid mistake of neglecting to lie about my estimated time so I could sign up for the green corrall instead of the red.



It wouldn't have even been that much of a lie. 56 is just a minute over the dividing threshold. But your starting group makes a huge difference in the lived experience of this race.  The reds are ostensibly joggers but the group is loaded up with baby strollers, walking clubs, bunny costumes, and all sorts of obstacles that end up making the first mile as much a lateral run as it is forward. It's fine that all that stuff goes on. But for some reason I always forget it's going to happen and I've only been doing this thing for twenty years or so. Maybe next time I'll know better.

Anyway I managed to finish. In 53:40 at that, so I could have signed up in the green group and that wouldn't have been dishonest in the first place.  Still, the trend is not good.  Last year was 52:13. The year before that was 48:31. But let's not worry about that too much just yet.  See, I won one of these participation trophies.



They also give you one of these at the post-race festvial.  But be careful. If you are trying to drink your water from it, you only get a couple of sips before you are prompted to subscribe.



Not this site, though. The Yellow Blog will always be free... if we can manage to keep it updated.  Until Google decides to shutter it, of course.

Drainage app

Forget about the fact that he wants to make a St. Roch market out of it for now and look at this.

Circle Food Store dates to the 1930s and was one of the country’s oldest African-American-owned groceries. It closed in October after sputtering through a final period of irregular hours when shoppers found increasingly bare shelves.

Before reopening, Torres said he wants to discuss the area's drainage issues with New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell's office. The store gained a spot in the national memory during Hurricane Katrina when an image began to circulate showing floodwaters reaching several feet up its signature arches

In 2015 Sidney bought a series of television ads complaining about crime in New Orleans.  The ads bought him a closed door meeting with then Mayor Landrieu and then Police Chief Michael Harrison. This, in turn, led to an oddball arrangement of  state troopers, "citizen patrols" and off duty NOPD details in the Quarter funded by a special sales tax, a slice of that famous Convention Center surplus, and some vehicles Torres donated. 

Also Sidney made an app for these patrols to use.. or not... it isn't clear how useful that was. But for Torres, it's the perception that matters more than anything else.  So in 2017 he bought a mayoral debate which, amazingly, most of the candidates agreed to participate in. Among those who did was now Mayor Cantrell who took the opportunity to loudly and confidently praise Sidney's app. Results matter, LaToya said, and according to her.. and little else.. Sidney's app "reduced crime." 

Now Sidney wants to meet with the mayor about drainage. Can't wait to see how that goes.

.

what

Been a little too busy to keep the yellow blog updated lately. That should be changing soon. But it's impossible to resist jumping in to just ask... what

Sidney Torres is the proud new owner of the building that housed an historic New Orleans grocery.

Torres, a real estate mogul and reality TV star, bought the Circle Food Store for $1.7 million as the store was put up for auction Thursday afternoon. He said before the auction that he intended to keep the store as a grocery.

No idea what level we've sunk to at this point.  But the NOligarchs are just picking properties up out of the bargain bin now.

Speaking of which, what do we make of this mess?

A golf driving range venue is being considered for Morial New Orleans Convention Center property, potentially a complement to a proposed hotel next to the facility.

The New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority, which oversees the state-owned convention center, was scheduled Tuesday (April 23) to ratify a letter of intent on a lease with Topgolf. The Dallas-based company operates nearly 50 similar facilities in the U.S., including one in Baton Rouge, and five international locations. The authority’s board meeting was canceled, with president Melvin Rodrigue in Baton Rouge earlier in the day to testify at a legislative committee meeting.

The Advocate story is a bit better here. It mentions Topgolf's rivalry with Drive Shack as well as the names of the local investors now enlisted on either side of it. Notice Joe Jaeger's odd position. 

Drive Shack's $29 million Howard Avenue project will occupy the site of the old Times-Picayune building, which is currently undergoing demolition.

The site was bought in 2016 by a consortium led by developer Joe Jaeger, with partners including Barry Kern of Mardi Gras World and developer Arnold Kirschman.

Jaeger is also involved in developing the Convention Center's $557.5 million Omni hotel project. A decision about that project is expected to be made this year.

The Convention Center is trying to get Jaeger to build them a hotel on land adjacent to an amusement project that will put them in competition with one he's trying to build elsewhere.  That's pretty messed up.  Maybe if the same 7 or 8 mega-millionaires didn't own all the important land in the city, this wouldn't happen. 

Update:  Aaand it looks like Jaeger's position was untenable. 

Joe Jaeger Jr., one of the owners of the property where a Drive Shack golf and entertainment complex was set for construction soon, said Thursday that the actions of the Convention Center had made it untenable for Drive Shack to move forward despite its lease for the site.

"It appears that the project is dead," said Jaeger. He said he is currently negotiating with Drive Shack about splitting the costs incurred so far and plans to let them out of their obligations.

"Holding their feet to the fire over the lease wouldn't be right. ... They've been duped by the leadership (of the Convention Center), and it's not fair, it's not right and I can't make them do something I don't believe in," Jaeger said in an interview.

Or to put it another way, it looks like the Convention Center put him in that position on purpose.  Which, again, is what happens when the city is governed according to the whims and resentments of its competing oligarchs.

Golden age of grifting

So much money chasing money which is in turn chasing vaporware. It's a wonder this doesn't happen more often.

According to its website, DC Solar manufactured solar generators that could be deployed at construction sites, at outdoor festivals and in response to disasters to provide lighting or other power needs.

But bankruptcy documents, as well as an affidavit by an FBI special agent that was part of a forfeiture filing against the company's owners, allege that the company's investors were paid with other investors' money, and not from earnings or tax credits generated through the sale or lease of its products.

Hancock Whitney didn't specifically disclose how it came to be embroiled in the alleged scheme. On page 130 of its 138-page annual financial filing last month, it said that bank officials learned of the alleged fraud in February, the same month that DC Solar filed for bankruptcy protection.

Hold on to your butts

We've got an "enhanced severe threat" of whatever this is happening today. Everybody is freaking out a lot. All the schools in Jefferson are closed. All the charters schools in Orleans are calling the police.

In the past few years, weatherpersons have begun using an incomprehensible "risk" scale to describe thunderstorms, basically. I don't know if it helps anybody. It's nice if you get the afternoon off of school/work in order to "be aware" or hunker down or something.  But mostly what it has done is get everybody to pay Hurricane Season level attention to the weather forecast at odd times. And that's probably the main point.

BGR asks you to reelect the shadow government

During the last week of March, the City Council approved three new Sewerage and Water Board directors. These three were picked from among the names submitted by the unelected committee of business club members and university presidents who the empowers to decide such matters for some reason.

The new board members include Janet Howard, the former president and CEO of the watchdog Bureau of Governmental Research; Dr. Maurice Sholas, a New Orleans-based psychiatrist who runs a clinic consulting firm; and Glen Pilié, an attorney with the firm Adams and Reese who worked as a civil engineer with the U.S. Corps of Engineers in the 1970s.

The three new members were among more than a dozen applicants recommended by a group of local university presidents convened as a selection committee, per state law. Their choices went to Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who the law charges with making Sewerage & Water Board director appointments. The City Council approved her appointments Thursday (March 28).

McBride watched the selection committee meeting, god bless him.  It was about as bad as you might imagine.  The committee members didn't seem to have done much prep.  They relied heavily on the fact of current board incumbency as a qualification in and of itself.  And they deferred to SWB Executive Director Ghassan Korban's opinion on who they should select as his bosses.

And then it got just plain uncomfortable. About ten minutes into the meeting, selection committee member Dr. John Nicklow made a rather surprising inquiry. I have transcribed the exchange as best as I could...

[TRANSCRIPT PORTION BEGINS]

University of New Orleans President Dr. John Nicklow: One other question, and if this is not appropriate, then so be it. If, if [S&WB Executive Director] Ghassan [Korban] would be willing to, um, speak to any applicants? Because some of these are current members, and, um, I, I, I think if you're comfortable doing so, it might be helpful to, uh, give us an indication of who's ... let me turn it around ... the best way to do it is who may be preferred, who you worked well with, who you think is an asset of the current group. But if you're not comfortable doing that, I would understand.

SWBNO Executive Director Ghassan Korban: I would be comfortable if it's in a closed session, not in an open session [crosstalk]. I don't want to, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

Nicklow: Are we permitted to go into a closed session?

Delgado Community College Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development and Institutional Advancement Arlanda Williams: You would have had to notify the public twenty four hours, well, thirty six hours prior to this meeting that we were going to be going into an executive session.

SWBNO Board Relations staffmember Candace Newell: To discuss this, yes.

Nicklow: Okay.

[TRANSCRIPT PORTION ENDS]

So a selection committee member asked the head of the SWBNO staff who he would like to be overseeing him. And the only objection that executive director had was that he was in open session and someone's feelings might get hurt; he'd be more than willing to spill in closed session.

And to clarify, according to state law, even that would not have been cool. Appointments are explicitly excluded from discussion allowed in closed sessions. Also, Ms. Williams was initially correct: the notification period for closed sessions is 24 hours, and the subject of the closed session also has to be notified and allowed to insist on an open session.

And this is the process by which government "watchdog" Janet Howard got appointed to a government oversight board. That and she's clearly close with the mayor. I can't remember the last time the mayor and the Bureau of Governmental Research, which Howard was the head of until recently, disagreed about anything. At least not since Cantrell became mayor, anyway.

Last month they worked together to defeat an emergency plan to shore up funding for senior services. BGR argued and the mayor agreed, we should not trust the "unaccountable" non-profit Council on Aging with dedicated public money even for only five years.  We still don't know how the mayor wants to address the problem of underfunded services for seniors now.  As "Grace notes" here, it's time for her to get to work on that. LaToya still says she loves the seniors, though. Hope that's enough in the meantime.

Now the mayor and the BGR are working together to promote a scheme to keep public money flowing to the private non-profit Audubon Institute by tying its fate to that of City Park, NORD, and the city Parks and Parkways Department. But if we were to take LaToya/BGR's argument against the seniors millage and apply it to the Audubon plan, we'd have to reject that too. By that standard, Parks and Parkways is really the only entity here sufficiently "accountable" to receive dedicated mils. The others are run by quasi-private boards of fundraisers.... many members of which happen to overlap and intermingle with BGR's crowd. Funny how that works. 

The real problem here is we have a network of business insiders and "charitable" non-profits who form a de-facto government in New Orleans.  Sometimes they get to pick who runs the Sewerage and Water Board. But even when it's not that, the daily order of business is an inherently anti-democratic exercise in protecting generational wealth through nepotism and money laundering.

BGR's and Cantrell's criticism of the Council On Aging gets us part of the way to recognizing that problem but they won't extend that criticism to similar non-profits they happen to favor.  Their actual complaint is that they want to pick and choose which unaccountable elites get to play and which ones don't.
 
This is exacerbated by the fact that nobody reporting on this recognizes that BGR is itself another one of these unaccountable anti-democratic insiders' clubs. Instead they're treated as a benign observer from on high.  Here, Uptown Messenger calls them an "independent New Orleans research group." The Advocate refers to them here as a "nonpartisan policy group." Here is NOLA.com naming them a "watchdog group."  This is pretty much routine. BGR is a player in the game just like everybody else.  And because they seem to have the mayor's ear as well as the uncritical eye of the press so often, they're a player with a distinct advantage.

On May 4, Mayor Cantrell and BGR are asking you to vote in favor of perpetuating our governemnt-by-wine-and-cheese-clubs status quo. But the good news is they just made a fair argument against doing that one month ago. So if you are looking for a reason to vote the other way, it's right there.

Maybe stop calling the cops on your students

One could argue this is all part of preparing kids for life in the over-policed future they're graduating into but let's maybe not lean into that if we can help it.  Here's Jarvis Deberry last week.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation in the press release is the claim that the students were not only warned not to go through with their planned prank, but that they were specifically warned that the police had been made aware of their plans.

What?

Some adult from Sophie B. Wright better step forward to say that they thought the students were planning something more nefarious because any adult who warns an understaffed New Orleans Police Department that teenagers are about to have a water fight isn’t mature enough to be watching children.

Over the last year, social media feeds have been full of stories of busybodies who got stuck with alliterative nicknames after summoning the police for trifling reasons. In most, if not all, of those cases, the tattletale has been white. Barbecue Becky reported a black man using a charcoal grill in a restricted area in a park. Permit Patty reported an 8-year-old black girl selling bottled water on the sidewalk without a permit. Coupon Carl accused a black woman, wrongly, of trying to use a counterfeit coupon at the drugstore. 

Clark is black, as are 91 percent of Sophie B. Wright’s students, but if she called the police to say that this particular prank was imminent, we might have to call her Water Fight Wanda, Super Soaker Sally or Water Balloon Beulah.

Jarvis also points out Clark has a history of bullying students in particularly cruel ways.  Here is a story from a few years back where she held homeless students out of class because their uniforms weren't monogrammed.

Anyway, yesterday the school rescinded the suspensions after a week or so of bad publicity. It looks like they don't get to go to graduation, though. That's harsh but it's not unheard of in the context of most school disciplinary policies regarding stuff like this. What is disturbing is the impulse to call the cops on students. They really have no place in any of this.  But we do love to be policed more and more so it's hard to be surprised when something like this happens.

Oh also here is something else to note.

Wright school attorney Tracie Washington Tuesday told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that the administration Monday night received notice via a third party email that attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center had been engaged as counsel for the students to contest the validity of Tuesday’s proceedings.

When Tracie Washington isn't vigorously lobbying to turn the city's housing stock into Airbnbs, she's defending a charter school that calls the cops on kids.  Makes sense.

Mayor Trump

Amazing. I was just talking about this the other day. The recent mayors of New Orleans always seems to have certain stylistic traits in common with whoever was President during their terms.  LaToya acts a lot like Trump sometimes.  Assumes everyone is out to get her, especially the media who she frequently bullies.

In an interview with Essence about her recent trip to Cuba, Mayor LaToya Cantrell was blunt about the way she perceives she's been treated in the press: "I have not received the benefit of the doubt from the media since the beginning of my tenure as Mayor," she told Essence.

And we're just a year into this. 

Why the party busses?

The city of New Orleans, like a lot of American cities, is hard up for money.  State and federal budgets don't offer as much support to cities for infrastructure or transit or social services as they once did. Even the $2 billion in FEMA road work assistance we've been sitting on is insufficient to meet the need.

We're apparently not allowed to take the money we need from the tourism cabal.  We aren't about to stop handing out tax breaks to real estate developers or to movie productions or to industrial concerns in "opportunity zones."  We're definitley not going to tax any property held by any politically important local non-profits.   Instead, we're going to see if we can squeeze more out of poor people and those who aren't on the ball enough to defend themselves.

This is why we're sending your name to a collection agency over your water bill even if we still don't know how to make that bill accurate.  It's why we're playing games with traffic cameras to see how many people we can entrap. It's why we're still saddling defendants with excessive bail even if we have to defy a federal judge's order to do it.  It's why we're taking advantage of legitimate concerns with motorists who obstruct bike lanes by jacking the fine for that up to an absurd $300.  And it's why we're in the process of exploring other concerns over bicycle safety to find excuses for police to also write tickets to bicyclists.

In short, we are governed according to which policy choices are most likely to generate the highest amount of revenue in the shortest amount of time from sources least likely to fight back.  Which is how it came to be that we suddenly wake up one day and discover that "not a single New Orleans party bus in in legal status."

Smith said there are some party buses that could obtain the certificates with proof of proper insurance, registration and “minimal modifications.” According to rules the city issued in 2017, party buses are considered “Charter Party Carriers" and must have working fire extinguishers and display the CPNC number on the back of the vehicle.

No doubt quite a few of these fly by night operators could stand for a little more scrutiny.  But let's not pretend your city leaders are primarily concerned with anybody's safety and well being here.  If that is the motivation in this case, it would certainly be unique.

Mostly this is about punitive enforcement for the sake of revenue generation. To some degree it is also a chance for the mayor and our more right-leaning councilmembers to exercise a favorite hobby horse and pander to the neighborhood association busybodies who comprise a large part of their base.  But, again, mostly it's about making money... not by taking it from those who can spare it but from those who are most vulnerable to coersion.  The party bus operators are one such opportunity. But one among several.

John Bel makes a compromise

On the one hand he's giving up on basic government transparency and the public's right to know.  So that's bad. On the other hand, he's helping the state kill people more quickly so ..... that's what they call reaching across the aisle and getting things done, I guess.

We'll always have pictures of Paris

Menckles and I just celebrated our 10th anniversary last month. Not coincidentally it is 10 years since we went to Paris together. I brought a mediocre Nikon point and shoot camera with me because that's what you did before everyone's phone camera had X-ray vision or whatever. Anyway I took a bunch of photographs exactly the way an annoying American tourist might. Many of those were of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Which is good because probably the world didn't have enough. And now we'll need them. Some of these were okay.

Blake Miguez wants you to go hungry

He says that's how capitalism works.

“I believe if you let capitalism work, it’ll breed hunger inside of people’s stomachs to go out there and do better for themselves,” Miguez said, adding the state has a “bad business climate” and the bill would worsen that issue.

What he's arguing against here is Royce Duplessis's  HB 422  that would allow local governments to set their own municipal minimum wages.  If allowed this option, probably quite a few cities would raise them significantly.  According to the LSU Reilly Center survey, 59 percent of respondents favor a $15 minimum wage. That includes 85 percent of registered Democrats which we find in particularly high concentrations in Orleans Parish where councilmembers frequently speak on the record in favor of a "living wage."  Duplessis' bill would give them the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to that sort of rhetoric.

Miguez doesn't think that's a very good idea, though, because it might mean fewer people go hungry and that makes for a "bad business climate."

Meanwhile the Governor would prefer to leave this alone altogether in favor of a statewide $9.00 minimum wage which would have to pass a 2/3 majority in the legislature and then a statewide referendum.  He says that's more "achievable" for some reason.  Of course, it also won't feed anybody any better so it's got that going for it too.

Chaos Mayor

Gill isn't wrong to write about this, exactly. It's just that his premise is a bit off.

It cannot be said that LaToya Cantrell was elected mayor of New Orleans just because voters believed she would get rid of traffic cameras, but her stance sure was wildly popular.

Cantrell is hardly the first politician to abandon her principles on election, or to resort to dirty tricks. But it requires a special talent to do both at the same time.

The problem is Cantrell never really had a stance to reverse herself on in the first place.  From the very beginning of her campaign, she was impossible to pin down on the question even though she raised it herself in her opening speech.

In the course of less than 24 hours, New Orleans controversial traffic cameras came down, went back up, and then came down again. They did, at least, in the context of mayoral candidate LaToya Cantrell's campaign promises, which were laid out, taken back and then reaffirmed.

Maybe it's just a function of the prevailing political zeitgeist but I've been interested in the way our mayor's style tracks with that of whoever is President during their term. Nagin and Bush were possessed of an avuncular goofiness you might mistake for charm if it weren't in service to naked corruption and incompetence. Mitch and Obama were more professional and polished and dangerously adept at masking predatory capitalist policy choices with woke sounding platitudes.

LaToya has characteristics in common with Donald Trump. She can be loud and a bit of a bully sometimes. For example, here she is screaming at the news media that they are trying to "screw the city."  Also, like Trump, she campaigns and governs in a state of chaos.  She just says things and then just as quickly says the opposite. The audience can take whatever they want from whatever part of what she says and then become excited or outraged according to whatever interpretation they like. It doesn't matter if that's confusing. The news cycle doesn't last long enough to sort stuff out anyway.

But what we can't say about it is that Cantrell "abandoned her principles" with regard to the traffic cameras.  She never applied any discernible principle to the issue to begin with. She just said things and immediately contradicted herself.  Her position never reached a level where it was a credible enough promise for anyone to put any real stock in. You could call it a transparent lie but it's not even that.

Anyway, the cameras are still there. And now they have lowered the threshold for error at which the robots will issue tickets. They say they're doing this because they want to "reduce fatality rates" but nobody believes that either. Or rather nobody is actually meant to believe it unless they want to. And, as it happens, one or two online fanatics seem to have decided they want to. So now everybody is yelling again but not enough people are yelling directly at the mayor. Because if nobody knows what side she's on today, nobody knows what to yell at her about. That's how the chaos works. Is it political genius or is it an accident?  It's the question of the moment in New Orleans and in Washington.

Spoilers

Kind of giving away the game publishing this in April.  You're supposed to hold all the big revelations until hurricane season starts.

But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.

The growing vulnerability of the New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin assessing repair work, including raising hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its adjacent suburbs.

“These systems that maybe were protecting us before are no longer going to be able to protect us without adjustments,” said Emily Vuxton, policy director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, an environmental group. She said repair costs could be “hundreds of millions” of dollars, with 75% paid by federal taxpayers.

“I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,” Vuxton said.

It's only necessary if you want people to be able to actually live here.  Since so much of what gets invested in South Louisiana builds either oil and gas infrastructure or amusing things for tourists to spend money on, it's not clear that's really the priority.

But if protecting residents isn't the main priority, it might still be something we're a little bit interested in as long as we can maintain it anyway. In that case, it's about time to start working on that federal funding again.  Sounds like a great job for our conservative "small government" congressional delegation to talk to Donald Trump about. Or maybe if that doesn't go so well, we could always wait for the Democrats to come around on that "green dream or whatever." 

Who knows how that might turn out? If you think you know how it ends, please don't spoil anything.

Spears radio

Good news! WBOK will remain under local ownership.

New Orleans native Wendell Pierce, best known for roles in HBO's "The Wire" and "Treme," and several local businessmen confirmed Thursday that they are buying WBOK, Louisiana's only African American-focused talk radio station.

Not so good news.  It now involves these guys. 

Pierce is joining with Cleveland Spears, owner of a public relations company, business consultant Troy Henry and Jeff Thomas, owner of multimedia platform "Think504," to form Equity Media, which is expected to close the deal to buy WBOK in the next few months.

Really looking forward to the official radio station of Fest Festival.  Maybe we'll get a special commentary or two from Henry about privatizing S&WB or something.

They're like teenagers

Trump called Steve Scalise to ask him if he liked Pence without telling him Pence was listening in on three way... or something. I think this was the plot of a DeGrassi episode once.

Unbeknownst to Scalise when told Trump he thought the then-Indiana governor as a "great guy," Pence was secretly on the line, according to a book out this week that has sent tongues wagging among Washington, D.C. insiders and other politics aficionados.

Didn't matter much since everybody likes everybody, I guess. But also they do spend a lot of time and effort worrying about such things.

"It makes sense" to govern as a rump junta

Republicans in the legislature are throwing another fit over the scandalous notion that poor people might receive health care.

Several Louisiana House Republicans took advantage Tuesday of a hearing on the Department of Health’s $15 billion budget to sharply question the agency’s leaders on issues like Medicaid fraud and eligibility problems in the wake of critical audits of the agency.

It's exhausting that we even have to take a momement to engage with these bad faith allegations of "fraud" coming from parties whose aim has always been to kick as many people off of benefits as possible.  You know, what, actually let's do ourselves a favor and igore it altogether this time.  It's done enough damage already.

There are quotes in this article from Rebekah Gee and John Bel Edwards where we see they've been intimidated into touting a new eligibility system that "provides more detailed information about enrollees."  It's a side point in the story so it doesn't get explored much further. But to get an idea of how much this already concedes, take a look at how stricter, more intrusive intake systems for social services are brutalizing poor people all over the country.

In the fall of 2008, Omega Young got a letter prompting her to recertify for Medicaid.

But she was unable to make the appointment because she was suffering from ovarian cancer. She called her local Indiana office to say she was in the hospital.

Her benefits were cut off anyway. The reason: "failure to cooperate."

"She lost her benefits, she couldn't afford her medication, she lost her food stamps, she couldn't pay her rent, she lost access to free transportation to her medical appointments," Virginia Eubanks tells NPR's Ari Shapiro. Eubanks is the author of a new book, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor.

"Young died on March 1, 2009," Eubanks says. "The next day, she won an appeal for wrongful termination and all of her benefits were restored the day after her death."

Pick up Eubanks's book if you get a chance, by the way. It's a good recommendation for anyone who isn't quite depressed enough about the current state of the hellworld we live in.

Anyway,  we already know it's not above John Bel to be shitty to Medicaid recipients.  He's only recently dropped his support to saddle them with work requirements because a federal court has ruled against that.

But does it make political sense in Louisiana?  Certainly these Republicans thinks so.  And Bernie Pinsonat agrees.

The comments by Republicans echoed similar lines of attack made by GOP gubernatorial candidates at a recent forum, where they criticized the Edwards’ administration handling of Medicaid.

Pollster Bernie Pinsonat noted Republicans’ base of support in Louisiana is generally opposed to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion, which is why the Medicaid issue will likely continue to come up this election year.

“Republicans know when they go back home, attacking Medicaid expansion or attacking Obamacare, it makes sense,” Pinsonat said.

Maybe it makes some sense with regard to the Republican base... but just barely.  According to this year's Reilly survey, the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana garners 47 percent support among Republicans. That's down from 51 percent last year so it's trending downward. But, still, hovering at or near 50 percent with the base doesn't really mean a thing is unpopular.  And when you figure in the fact that 69 percent of all respondents of either party approve, then you have to wonder what it is about that one half of the Republican base that gives it such outsized influence over positions taken by the House GOP caucus and even the causes John Bel to handle it with such caution.  Why are we being governed by this rump minority?

Collections

Sewerage and Water Board is gonna start sending out guys to, like, break some knees or something...

Korban said the S&WB is planning to start working with a collections company soon to start going after customers who owe money on accounts that have been closed.

A couple weeks back they were owed $134 million. But they didn't want anybody to know about it because that might "screw the city." Now they say they're owed $73 million which is, I guess, not a figure that screws them as much.  Somebody's about to get screwed, though.

Consultantocracy

When it comes to disentangling this knot, who even knows where to begin?

The New Orleans City Council has relied almost exclusively on outside consultants to regulate Entergy New Orleans for over 30 years. And it is those consultants that have largely decided what direction the city takes on a wide number of energy-related issues: How much can Entergy charge customers? How should the city generate or source electricity? How should the city prepare for hurricanes and deal with Entergy’s frequent outages?

But Councilwoman Helena Moreno — who chairs the council’s utility committee, which regulates Entergy — told The Lens she wants to break that structure. Specifically, she wants to expand the council’s in-house staff and expertise in order to become less reliant on contractors

That's going to be much more easily said than done. And, frankly, it's not even that easy to say.  Moreno isn't even entirely sure what she is asking for.

It remains unclear what the document will recommend, how fast Moreno will be able to move, or whether she will remain at the helm of the utility committee long enough to see the changes through.

“No one’s ever done this,” said Moreno’s Chief of Staff Andrew Tuozzolo. “New Orleans has never had this, really.”

We want to have some confidence that City Council can regulate Entergy competently and independently.  For decades they've mostly outsourced this function to consulting law firms.  During this time, the consultants have had longstanding relationships with prominent political organizations frequently cycling employees in and out of political office and/or in and out of employment by the utility itself.  So the public might be forgiven for wondering which side of the three way revolving door Jay Banks or Karen Carter Peterson is on at any given moment.  They promise they know how to keep it all straight but it can be difficult to parse as KCP demonstrates here.

Clint Vince’s law firm, Dentons, also gave $25,000 to the Louisiana Democratic Party’s political action committee between 2013 and 2018, according to state campaign finance records. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, the chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party since 2012, was hired by Dentons in 2014.

“Dentons does not have a relationship with the Louisiana Democratic Party,” Peterson said in an email to The Lens. “Separate and apart from my role with Dentons, I serve as chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party.”

It's kind of like trying to pull apart a dozen mardi gras beads that have gotten twisted together. They're all really just the same strings of the same lawyers, lobbyists, and political hangers on. Who knows where one begins and the other one ends?

Moreover, how do we even know who to trust with the task of sorting it all out? My favorite bit from the Lens feature article explaining this stuff comes where we learn about a critical Inspector General's report put together by.... yet another opportunistic third party consultant soliciting a job.

Vince questioned the conclusions in the Inspector General report.

He noted that the report was funded through a third-party grant. And its author — an outside consultant hired by the Office of Inspector General — later used his own findings to try and solicit a city job. According to a 2015 story by Fox 8 News, shortly after the report was released, the consultant wrote a letter to the city that said, in part, “I suggest you retain me immediately to address those issues.”

So, yeah, good luck figuring this out.  Moreno wants council staff to outline a plan by June. In order to put that together, I guess they're going to need to hire some consultants. Probably there will be lot of expertise at Dentons and Legend they could put to use... for a fee, of course.

Bensonville

The king is dead. Long live the queen. 

New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is purchasing the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, adding another piece of marquee downtown real estate to the growing portfolio of Benson-controlled buildings in the area.

The deal, which is set to close Friday, puts the Hyatt in local hands for the first time in its 43-year history and follows a multimillion-dollar renovation of the hotel that began in 2010. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but comparable recent hotel sales suggest the purchase price could be around $300 million.

Benson is buying the hotel along with two partners, longtime local developer Darryl Berger, whose interests via the Berger Co. include the Windsor Court, Omni Royal and Omni Riverfront hotels, and New Jersey-based hotel asset management firm Fulcrum Hospitality.

"My late husband Tom believed in reinvesting in our community, and that philosophy has made our city a better place," Benson said in a statement announcing the transaction. "Our investment in the Hyatt will continue that legacy."

She's got a point.  What better way to honor Tom's legacy than to buy something that.. for a brief time after Katrina, at least... had a big sign at the top of its tower that said, "YAT" 



Okay so technically it said, "Yatt." Don't spoil it.

Meanwhile, this must mean it's time to update the old NOligarchs map of downtown New Orleans. Let's see, Bensonville just needs to add a little notch there to acquire the Hyatt.  There we go. All better.



Actually the map needs a bit more work than that. These territories are far more overlapping than we can hope to represent in this crude rendering.  It doesn't consider figures like Darryl Berger who, in addition to partnering with Gayle on the Hyatt also is in on Jaeger's proposed convention center hotel as well as numerous properties all over the landscape.   Jaeger, meanwhile, is an investor, along with Barry Kern, in the project to demolish the vacant Times-Picayune building and replace it with a golf arcade. This venture is the cornerstone of what we have labeled Kernworld.

All of which is to say this map isn't a true tool for examining the way the major developers have carved up the city's most valuable real estate so much as it is a piece of conceptual art.  It could be more than that but I think we need to apply for a grant first.  The least we can do for now is extend Torreszonia to reflect Sidney's recent Frenchmen Street acquisitions. The rest of it will have to live as an unfinished project for now.

Anyway congratulations to Gayle. So, hey, as a person with a major interest in the Superdome and now also with the hotel/motel taxes that fund its upkeep, does she just write the check directly to herself now?

A steak in every pot

The Louisiana legislature is going back into session next week. (Yes, yes, run for your lives, winter is coming, abandon all hope, etc. etc.)  There's a ton of fun stuff to talk about with regard to that but we'll save that for later.  I only bring it up now in order to point us to HB 113 filed by Rep Walt Leger. Here is what that would do. 

Provides that at all regular elections of governor and lieutenant governor, the candidates for such offices shall be elected jointly in such a manner as provided bylaw so that a single vote shall be cast for a candidate for governor and a candidate for lieutenant governor running together.

He wants the Governor and Lt. Governor to run together on one ticket. I'm having trouble seeing the benefit. The Lt. Governor's power is (mostly) limited to oversight of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. Even in cases when the offices are occupied by rival or ideologically opposed individuals, it would be rare to find them working at cross purposes. It's true the current Lt. Governor has some pretty unsavory ideas about privatizing many functions of our state parks. It's also true that he's been trying to figure out how to put monuments to white supremacy recently removed from view in New Orleans back on public display.   But if Governor Edwards has any strong opposition to any of that, he hasn't bothered to let it be known.  It's generally easy for the the two of them to stay out of each other's way.

At the same time, it's hard to identify much downside to Leger's proposal.  Probably the biggest loss will be to politicians and the.. well.. industry of politics since it effectively takes one prestigious (if ineffectual) statewide elected office off the board. It's one less opportunity for candidates to show they can win a race of that scope. One less chance for staffers, consultants, and other hangers on to make a ton of money helping them do that. Maybe this is a good idea after all.

Both the Governor and Lt. Governor are up for reelection this fall but this bill won't affect any of that.  It's a constitutional amendment and would have to be ratified by popular vote first and there's no time for that before the current cycle. In a way, that sucks for John Bel because imagine the ticket he could put together here.

It’s no secret that Gov. John Bel Edwards and LSU coach Ed Orgeron have a special bromance. They’ve often appeared alongside each other at events promoting Louisiana and LSU.

On Thursday, Orgeron introduced Edwards at a fundraiser for Edwards’ re-election campaign, calling the Democrat incumbent “a man of great character, great integrity.”

Man that is an intimidating prospect. Coach O really knows how to give the people what they want.  

“Let ’em have their cell phones and headsets,” Orgeron said in a recent interview with SB Nation. “Let ’em dress the way they want! Let ’em be who they are, as long as it’s respectful. Don’t put shackles on them. And I know it works. I know it works. I had kids at USC hugging me, crying, when I left. Begging me, ‘Don’t leave.’"

In that same interview, he added that part of being both a good and impactful head coach starts with showing players that you actually care about them.

“Before, I didn’t let them know I cared. I was the D-line coach. You can’t coach a receiver like a D-lineman. I just realized, here are some of the things I’ve got to change. I started writing, and I came to a realization: If I treat these boys like I treat my sons, I think we’re gonna be fine. How do you treat your kids? When my boys come home, I cook ’em a steak.

Vote Edwards/Orgeron and they'll cook you a dang steak!  Nobody wants to run against that.  No wonder John Kennedy is so mad.   

“I don’t want to watch LSU football and have to wonder if the coach is a Democrat or Republican. I’m so angry at this,” U.S. Sen. John Kennedy said during a five-minute diatribe on Baton Rouge radio Friday morning – a day after Orgeron introduced Edwards during a breakfast fundraising event. “It is a horrible mistake to politicize LSU and LSU football. I’m stunned that the candidate would even entertain, much less accept, the endorsement.”

Is that really the problem, John?  Politicizing LSU football?  It's not like that's never been done.  That very same article goes on to point out one recent example.

Former LSU coach Les Miles attended an event in honor of then-Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential campaign in 2015 and celebrated at Jindal’s re-election victory party in 2011.

There's also the obvious.  

To generate excitement for LSU, Long’s first step was to quadruple the size of the marching band (from 28 to 125) and develop a first-rate football team. He became the state’s most prominent ‘Tiger fan’ – coaching plays, giving locker room pep talks and personally recruiting top talent for the team. LSU fever swept the state, as reduced tuition and need-based scholarships allowed students from all regions to flock to Baton Rouge to study. 

We could go on and on about Huey, in fact.  His impact on the band alone is legendary.  T. Harry Williams devotes a chapter to Huey and LSU titled "I've Got  A University" emphasizing Long's sense of ownership over the school, the football team, and everything else there.  Also there is this quote from Glenn Jeansonne's less good book, Huey Long: A Political Contradiction that seems to fit here.

Long hired the best football coaches money could buy and then told them how to run the team, although he had never played football himself. He housed gifted players in the Governor's Mansion, where he fattened them up on milkshakes and sirloin steaks.

 Milkshakes and steaks 2019.  Nobody wants to run against that. 

Maybe yelling at the press actually works

A few weeks ago the Advocate reported on a controversy at Sewerage and Water Board where it appeared to some observers that the agency could be owed as much as $134 million in unpaid bills.  That number was probably wrong bunch of reasons, not the least of which being S&WB still can't produce accurate bills for many of its customers in the first place.  But City Councilmembers were asking about it anyway, as well they should have been. And the Advocate reported on this because... well, that's their job isn't it?

The mayor disagreed.  She didn't disagree with the facts of the story as reported. Instead she worried that publicizing them might jeopardize the grand bargain negotiations going on at the time between the city and tourism agencies over redirecting some of their revenue toward S&WB. That afternoon she called the Advocate to yell at the newspaper for reporting the news, an activity she interpreted as "trying to screw the city."

After the paper burned her back by publishing her comments to them, the two sides could have called it even.  But neither is likely to forget about it just yet.  In fact, as of Friday afternoon, it appears as though the grand bargain negotiations are still unsuccessful.  I wonder if LaToya will blame the Advocate for that. 

It's worth remembering that episode because this week it was the other newspaper that got out in front of a story the mayor might consider a bit sensitive asking direct questions about an unannounced trip to Cuba taken by a delegation of city politicians and businesspeople. 

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s trip to Cuba continues Friday (April 5), and her administration is starting to provide more detail about the visit.

Press secretary LaTonya Norton said Thursday the trip for the mayor and her staffers will cost $15,461. The mayor told WPLG-TV, a Miami station with a Cuba bureau, that the trip "is both publicly and privately funded.” Cantrell and her office have not specified how the cost is being split.

The administration also released a list of 35 people, many of them private citizens, who are traveling with the mayor. City Councilman Jay H. Banks is part of the trip, his office confirmed Wednesday. The New Orleans Advocate reported that the councilman’s wife, Artelia Banks, is paying her own way.

Now, there's nothing especially irregular about the trip itself.  Mayors do this sort of thing all the time.  And when they do, it only makes sense for the press to ask about the details. Who is on the trip? Who paid for it? What are they hoping to accomplish? People might want to know these things.  People might want to look at the mayor's answer to one question. She says they're there "to learn more about health care issues and education." And they might want to compare it to the list of people she brought with her to see how that matches up.

While the roster does include some of the legislators, councilmembers, and city policymakers you might expect to see, it's also heavy on lawyers, lobbyists, and real estate vultures. Calvin Fayard is there. Cesar Burgos, Ronald Sholes.  Not a lot of "health care and education" expertise there.  The mayor's press secretary also mentioned the words, "economic development" which can mean pretty much anything. But mostly it means some well connected rich folks get to go scope out some possible contacts and opportunities.

We know that because, as the Advocate pointed out Friday, this trip has been made before and for very much the same purpose.

Cantrell is just the latest in a string of New Orleans mayors and Louisiana politicians to visit the island nation. Louisiana leads the U.S. in exports to Cuba, and many of its citizens have immigrated here over the decades.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who in 2005 became the first Louisiana governor to travel to Cuba since the Castro revolution, signed an agreement for Cubans to spend $15 million on Louisiana products. In 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards traveled there to sign mostly ceremonial agreements for increased trade if and when the U.S. embargo should be lifted entirely.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu and a delegation from the U.S. Conference of Mayors went later that year to talk trade. Even Mayor Ray Nagin went to Cuba at the end of his term, though that trip supposedly focused on hurricane preparedness, not trade relations, and was criticized by the Office of the Inspector General as a junket with no obvious purpose.

Why is Nagin's visit the only one anybody was suspicious of?  Not that they shouldn't have been suspicious. I'm asking more why we aren't more suspicious of all of them.  I remember reading about this 2015 trip well enough. But only because I remember being the only person suspicious of that at the time.  See I made little stupid jokes about it. That's really the only way I can remember anything that happens anymore... thus the reason I still type on this website... but that's beside the point.  Anyway, here's what that was all about. 

Shelton, with the assistance of others on the trip, went to Old Havana’s Parque Central on Wednesday to spread the word about Popeyes, in the hopes of opening a restaurant in Cuba one day. Shelton’s group began to hand out 25 orange Popeyes T-shirts with white lettering and 25 Popeyes baseball caps.

That attracted the attention of the men who argue about baseball every day in the park. They swarmed Shelton, his attorney Michael Tudor and New Orleans hotel broker Lenny Wormser. Less than two minutes later, they had given everything away.

“Next time, I’ll bring 1,000 shirts,” Shelton said, as he walked down an Old Havana street thronged with tourists. “I hope to be in business here one day.”

I don't think Popeyes ever made it to Havana. They got as far as Key West, it looks like.  I don't think Lenny Wormser owns any hotels there yet either. But someday, maybe.

Anyway, this whole post has gotten off track. The thing I really wanted to point out was the striking difference in tone between the T-P and Advocate coverage of LaToya's trip this week. The T-P's Kevin Litten began aggressively this week, going directly to the relevant questions readers might have about the trip as soon as we learned about it.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is taking an unannounced trip to Cuba on official business, but her office is releasing few details about the trip, including its cost.

Contrast that with Friday's report in the Advocate. If we didn't know better, we might have mistaken Jessica Williams's opening line for a Cantrell response to the question raised by the opening of the T-P article. 

A long-planned trip aimed at strengthening the city's ties with Cuba has pulled New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell out of town this week.

Surely a "long-planned trip" should come as no surprise. Did you not know about the "long-planned trip"? That seems like it's on you. The article also takes pains to answer some questions that I didn't know anyone was asking.  Will the trip distract from the (now failed anyway) grand bargain negotiations?  Nope.

Cantrell spokesman Beau Tidwell dismissed any notion that the mayor’s absence would affect delicate discussions with the tourism industry over the distribution of tax dollars and greater funding for the Sewerage & Water Board.

He said Cantrell is in “active, daily communication” with her chief of staff, John Pourciau, who is representing the administration in those talks.

Honestly, anything that keeps Mayor Cantrell and the similarly hot-headed Stephen Perry from being in the room at the same time is more likely to help than not. But okay, fine. What about this, though?

The trip was planned well before officials moved in February to lower the speeds that trigger camera tickets in the city, which has sparked controversy in recent days. That change occurred Feb. 4 but was not announced until this week, after unsuspecting drivers slapped with tickets complained.

Did anybody honestly and unironically suggest the mayor had skipped the country in order to avoid fallout from the traffic camera news?  That seems doubtful.  The closest thing I can find to that is Clancy Dubos linking the two issues in this column. But his only point there is that mayor should probably have told people about both of those things ahead of time.  I don't think any reasonable person would argue with that.

The mayor might, though. As we've seen she does sometimes get mad at the press for asking her questions about stuff. Last month she yelled at the Advocate for asking about Sewerage and Water Board issues.  This month, it almost looks like they're answering questions on her behalf. Did yelling at them actually work?   Maybe she's onto something. 

Not a lot of moral high ground

At the Legislature this year, we're not supposed to have a huge fight over the budget.  Technically it is a fiscal session but, thanks to painful compromises on sales taxes hammered out during last year's many bruisingly stupid special sessions, lawmakers will not have to solve the kind of budgetary shortfall they've faced in recent years.

And yet, the Republicans have contrived a way to argue about the budget anyway.  Because Taylor Barras has refused to accept  Revenue Estimating Conference projections, there is no official number from which to work.   The Govenor has submitted a budget proposal anyway under the assumption that the REC numbers are reliable whether Barras accepts them or not.  But the lack of agreement opens the door for mischief.  And it's an election year so... well... here it comes.

Anyway, since we're going to be arguing over spending anyway, it would be nice for the Governor if he could claim more of the high ground than he has. But when he's still handing out multi-million dollar "incentives" to global corporations, that makes the job all the more difficult.

Louisiana's new deal with CenturyLink offers the company $17.5 million in tax dollars and strips away penalties if it doesn't meet payroll targets in a continuing, decade-old effort to keep one of Louisiana’s two Fortune 500 headquarters in-state through 2025.

Yeesh. Of course it could always be worse. Check out Billy's idea.

The state has long had a close relationship with CenturyLink, which is based in north Louisiana despite having more global employees — 45,000 — than there are residents in all of Monroe. Last year, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser even offered to have CenturyLink sponsor Poverty Point, a deal that would have renamed the historic site Poverty Point, "the World Heritage Site in Louisiana Sponsored by CenturyLink."

And I guess that does strike the right chord for John Bel's reelection campaign. Where do we get our "It could be worse" makes a pretty good bumper stickers?

Yay more private police

What could go wrong?

The off-duty or retired officers, who will wear OSS uniforms but work for subcontractor Pinnacle Security, will collect information at accident scenes; send it to the NOPD, which will determine fault and issue any possible tickets; and keep all of the records, which can then be sold to insurance companies or attorneys.

Cheramie said the contract will cost the city nothing. But the company will make its money through the sale of the information it collects at the scene, such as photos, video statements, drone video, and on-board data collected from vehicles.

He declined to say how much that might cost in particular, but said it would at least be several hundred dollars. The job listing for full-time traffic agents says they can make between $41,600 and $52,000.

So now the cost of getting in an accident now includes forfeiting your personal information to a private company?   At least they probably won't shoot you.  Do they have guns?  I know it seems like they shouldn't but I do have to ask.