The wannabees at work

The really insidious thing about the DOGE phenomenon, wherein a team of hooligans under the direction of a hostile plutocrat wreak havoc on the basic physical and social infrastructure that makes life possible for most Americans, is that.. in addition to this... the movement spawns hundreds of immitators in state and local governments accross the country.

Last month we noted that Jeff Landry has formed a DOGEesque committee to attack state services. At last notice, they were writing a report. A week ago, we learned that St. Tammany Parish is getting a DOGE committee of its own. With the New Orleans municipal elections right around the corner, it also looks like Pres Kabacoff is having his own Project 2025 drawn up. (Let's keep an eye on that one, yes?)  In January, we caught this profile of Jeff Landry advisor/patron and Harvey Gulf President Shane Guidry where he explicitly compared himself and his role in the administration to that of Elon Musk. 

Today we find Guidry behind a move by Landry to dismantle South Louisiana's flood protection. After Katrina, a grass roots movement of residents succeeded in taking corrupt and negligent levee boards out of the hands of political cronies, de-emphasizing their police powers, and professionalizing their core flood risk management function. This week, three board members resigned in protest of Landry's attempts to reverse those reforms.  They addressed their resignation letters to Guidry. 

The letter was signed jointly by board members Roy Arrigo, Thomas Fierke, and William Settoon. It is addressed not to Roy Carubba, the president of the board, but to Shane Guidry, Landry’s informal adviser in New Orleans, who is not on the levee authority’s board but has been overseeing reforms at the agency.

It alleges the agency's new leadership had diminished “morale, readiness and focus on flood protection.”

Guidry thanked the departing board members for their service. He also stressed that, under his guidance, the agency was “moving in a better direction to make sure that all flood control assets are maintained properly, which they haven’t been, and working properly, which they haven’t been,” though neither Guidry nor Carubba has provided any evidence that the city’s flood control infrastructure is faulty.

And now we're getting wild unsubstantiated assertions about what does and doesn't work from unofficial administrators of dubious legal authority.  Our wannabe DOGEs are rounding into form.

Somebody really should do something

The villains are pretty much monologing their evil plans here.  Maybe someone will hear it?  Would that matter? 

An internal Social Security Administration (SSA) memo sent earlier this month suggested that a proposed change that requires claimants to prove their identity online could cause “challenges for vulnerable populations” and strain the agency’s resources to the breaking point, according to a report in Popular Information.

Nobody actually lives here

It's getting more difficult to hide the truth about this place.  

New Orleans and its suburbs have lost population at a faster rate than any other large metropolitan area in the country since 2020, according to new Census Bureau estimates released Thursday.

It's the second year in a row the New Orleans area has topped the list of fastest shrinking large metros.

The New Orleans area lost more than 39,000 people between 2020 and 2024, a decline off nearly 3.9%.

I suppose 2020 can be considered a turning point for many things. And it's fair to think of that as a transitional moment from a rapidly gentrifying Post-Katrina New Orleans, where the communities washed away by the flood were replaced by vacation rental amusements, to the Post-Covid ghost town where it just feels like the the wiring is being stripped out of everything. 

But, really, there is a consistent narrative flowing through both of these phases. As always, the root causes of the current hellscape trace back to what came before it. In our case, that's a long story about a city's ruling class and the deliberate choices it made in the wake of a disaster to change the city "demographically, geographically and politically," as one prominent member of the Rex Organization said at the time.  We've watched that process fairly closely over the years. The archives of this blog should show that farily well.  I have no idea if any of that mattered, though. 

In any case, the stated aim of the gentry, then, was to build a smaller, whiter, city with fewer poor people.  Congratulations to them on their success. 

 

"Good news"

 We live under a terror regime. 

The Ali family had been on ICE’s radar, facing removal, for some time. They had a pending application for a temporary reprieve from deportation when, in mid-January, a case manager working for an ICE contractor asked them for a meeting at a nearby office, promising “good news.”

For months the family had been monitored through one of ICE’s “alternatives to detention” programs, which use various technologies to track immigrants who are not detained and pose little or no security threat. The case manager said the family didn’t need to be under surveillance anymore. 

When they arrived ICE agents were waiting for them. Less than 36 hours later, they were in Honduras. 

While deceptive, such “ruses,” as they are referred to in internal agency memos and operational manuals are neither illegal nor new. But some immigrants’ rights advocates said they are concerned that agents will increase their use of ruses under Trump, creating chaos in immigrant communities.

"Work look"

 Every day I die a little bit

As the Office of Personnel Management oversaw the layoffs of thousands of federal workers and pressed others to justify their positions, the agency’s chief spokesperson repeatedly used her office for a side hustle: aspiring Instagram fashion influencer.

In at least a dozen videos filmed in her OPM office, political appointee McLaurine Pinover modeled her outfit choices for the day, while directing followers from her Instagram account to a website that could earn her commissions on clothing sales.

On the same day OPM sent a government-wide memo pressing federal officials to identify barriers they faced in their work to “swiftly terminate poor performing employees,” Pinover posted a video blowing a kiss to the camera with the caption “work look” and the hashtag #dcinfluencer. Her Instagram account linked to a site where viewers could buy the $475 purple skirt she wore in the video.

 

Get this off my desk

There are a lot of reasons why elected office holders behave the way they do. But one fundamental razor for understanding them I find useful is assume their primary motivating question  with regard to any issue is, "How do we get this off of my desk?"  We're about to find out if Senate Democrats will extend this principle to... well... the entirety of their constitutional mandate. 

But most important, the bill grants an open invitation to Trump and Elon Musk to continue to ignore Congress and toss out disfavored spending. Vice President JD Vance, while selling the deal to House Republicans, stated outright that “Trump would continue cutting federal funding with his Department of Government Efficiency initiative and pursue impoundment—that is, holding back money appropriated by Congress.” This has been reiterated by others in the Trump administration.

In fact, the House Republican bill gives the president more leeway to move money around. It appropriates money for things that Musk has eliminated, meaning that money can operate as a floating slush fund for Trump’s priorities, as long as the courts don’t roll back the illegal impoundments.

Think about what this means. The Trump administration is saying that they will sign a bill appropriating specific funding, and then go about cutting funding anyway. If you’re a member of Congress, you’re being told that your work product doesn’t matter, that the constitutional power of the purse doesn’t matter, and that there’s no guarantee that anything you pass will actually reach the people you serve.

To most modern politicians, that is a tempting offer. With no expectation that your office has any relevance to the work of governing, you are now free to focus on the real work of  raising money and being on TV a lot. This is an especially attractive proposition if you happen to be a member of the "opposition party."  Why bother with performing the frustrations of exerting your limited power when you can scale that back to simply performing. 

So far, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has committed to voting yes. But as Josh Marshall has documented at Talking Points Memo, a number of Senate Democrats have stated no position on the bill, leaving their options open. In general, senators have been hedging their bets until forced to make a decision. That time has come.

Credible sources indicate that the most likely Democrats to offer up the remaining seven votes to avoid a shutdown are Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Michael Bennet (D-CO), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Mark Warner (D-VA).

Some Democrats seem to be consumed with Senate brain, worried that they would be blamed for a government shutdown. What they’re not understanding is that the Musk-Trump assault on government has created a kind of permanent government shutdown, where so-called nonessential personnel are fired and operations are deeply circumscribed. Why would any Democrat sign on to a bill making that state of affairs even more likely, out of fear of the same government shutdown that the Trump administration is locking into place anyway?

I'm a little harsher than David Dayen in that article.  I think Democrats understand what's happening perfectly well.  They're being offered a chance to avoid responsibility and are keen on taking it. That's just good political instincts. Your Social Security check didn't come? The bad people must have taken it from you. Meanwhile, now my job doesn't involve looking after Social Security anymore. One less thing I have to do.

Digging out from under

A stressful Carnival season, the collapse of the Republic, and a few bits of personal news have gotten us behind schedule in our endeavors to start writing stuff on the internet again. I still haven't even gotten all the Mardi Gras pictures uploaded yet.  For a visual representation of what this week feels like, here's a short video of the Krewe of Municipal Vehicles cleaning up after Tucks I shot on Saturday.  

More to come soon.

He fell down and hit his head

 I'm sure it was just like this. 

Hammond Police said they pulled over a vehicle on the evening of Feb. 10 near Magazine and Apple Street that was registered to someone with an outstanding felony warrant. 

McCaskey and a passenger jumped out of the car, and officers chased them, police said. 

“The officer says he believes that he was reaching towards his waistband, at which point he tased the subject. Upon tasing the subject, it was Bobby McCaskey," Bergeron said, "Mr. McCaskey hit the ground. Upon hitting the ground, he hit his head.”

I do not like it when, upon hitting the ground, I hit my head. It's happened a few times. It hasn't happened to be while being tased, but I suppose it's probably similar.  It's not nice.  Of course, I don't think I've experienced any of these symptoms.

McCaskey's family said he's had to have multiple surgeries, including facial reconstruction. Plus, the family said he swallowed his partial teeth plate and is spitting up teeth. 

“From the MRI reports, it showed that he had multiple strokes, and his C-Spine was crushed," Hunter said. 

The family doesn't know exactly what happened before they found him in the hospital the night of February 10th, but they believe police used excessive force. 

“The phone call we got was that he was dead," Hunter said. 

The normal things that happen when you fall down and hit your head. 

Jeff Landry is an asshole

 Pass it on. 

The Public Service Commission on Wednesday removed commissioner Davante Lewis as its vice chairman after he called Gov. Jeff Landry an "a**hole" on social media. 

On a 3-2 vote, the commission chose to replace Lewis with Commissioner Eric Skrmetta in that role on the board. The vote followed public comment from a line of people arguing the move violated Lewis' right to free speech.

How thin is the Governor's skin? I mean asshole is not even that out of bounds.  The WBRZ version of the story doesn't even censor it. 

BATON ROUGE — The Public Service Commission voted to remove Davante Lewis as vice-chairman at a Wednesday morning meeting after Lewis called Gov. Jeff Landry an "asshole" on social media last week. 

The commission voted 3-2 to remove Lewis and named commission member Eric Skrmetta vice-chair.

Of course there is also the possibility that this is about a little bit more than just hurt feelings.  It might, for example, have more to do with protecting Entergy and Meta from public oversight than with people using rude words.  

Two environmental and consumer protection groups are challenging Entergy's plan to power a massive AI data center for Meta, Facebook's parent company, in northeast Louisiana. 

 The Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists have filed a motion asking the state's utility regulators to deny Entergy's request to build three gas power plants at a cost of over $3 billion until it follows standard procedure. If the regulators side with the advocacy groups, Entergy would have to scrap the proposal in its current form and resubmit it after proving the gas plants are the best option available.

The regulator being appealed to here, of course, is the Public Service Commission. And the ousted co-chair seems to have a different approach to the issue than the person who will replace him... on behalf of the Governor's hurt feelings, of course.  

PSC commissioner Davante Lewis said that it was too early to comment on the motion, but that the filing raises questions that the commission should look into.

"Having a review process is important to ensure we are building generation that is needed that is also the most cost-efficient," Lewis said.

Eric Skrmetta, another commissioner, similarly declined to comment on the motion specifically, but said that he believed the concerns over fast tracking the process or massive power needs to be unfounded.

There's no law anymore

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2025

There are four constitutional amendments that will appear on your March 29 ballot in Louisiana. They're all very bad.  

One of them would allow the legislator to create something called a "business court." In practice, that will likely mean the state can take civil matters out of the hands of locally elected judges and move them into more corporate friendly venues whose scope is defined by the legislature. 

One of them would allow the legislature to greatly broaden the list of crimes for which children under 17 could be sent to adult prison. 

And another one would step up the timeline for special elections to fill judicial vacancies. 

There's no good reason to support any of these. But one, in particular, turns out to be such a mess that a lawsuit has been filed to take it off of the ballot.  Tyler Bridges explains.

During a two-week special session in November, Landry and the Legislature reduced income taxes, abolished the corporate franchise tax, raised the sales tax and kept tax credits used by film productions and developers of historic buildings, albeit at lower spending levels.

The net savings would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and big companies, who, Landry said, would use the money to invest in Louisiana and grow the state’s economy.

At Landry’s behest, the Legislature also passed House Bill 7, which in 115 pages authorized a series of other changes to the constitution if approved by voters on March 29.

The lawsuit says the 91-word question is hopelessly complicated.

“There is no person in the State of Louisiana – including the legislators who passed HB7 – who understands all of the proposed changes to the constitution,” the lawsuit says. “The voters, however, are to be asked to vote on the proposed changes.”

The lawsuit also says the 91 words include only the sweeteners in the proposed amendment – language aimed at drawing favorable votes.

“None of the unappealing changes are included,” it says. “The ballot language is all dessert, no vegetables.”

That article goes on to explain that even the "dessert" part of the menu is misleading.  For example, the ballot language implies that voters would be enacting a teacher pay raise. But what the amendment actually does is pay down a certain amount of debt on the teachers' retirement system to free up enough money to extend a one time stipend for another year. 

The rest of the amendment is incredibly complicated. It lowers income taxes on high earners. It adds a cap to mandatory spending on education and health care. It eliminates the so-called "rainy day fund." It also makes several convoluted changes to multiple taxation rules at once. It really is a lot to put to voters in one ballot item. 

But is it legal? Well that's going to be up to the judges, isn't it. So anyway, about those judges... 

The Louisiana Supreme Court is about to receive a second new member, following a series of moves orchestrated by Gov. Jeff Landry, who has reshaped the court more than any governor in decades.

Cade Cole, an attorney, former prosecutor and tax judge in Lake Charles, will join the court next month after winning election to an open seat because no one opposed him.

The seat for Cole opened up after Landry paved the way for then-Justice Jimmy Genovese to resign from the Supreme Court last year to become president of Northwestern State University.

John Michael Guidry, who had been the chief judge on the Baton Rouge court of appeal, became the other new justice in January after winning his election unopposed.

The seat for Guidry opened up after Landry got the state Legislature to redraw the Supreme Court district boundaries last year in a way that favored a Black Democrat for an open seat that Guidry would ultimately occupy.

Because the map Landry pushed now has two Democrats – Piper Griffin from New Orleans is the other Democrat besides Guidry – the other five districts favor the election of White conservatives in the coming years.

Landry has sought to undermine the influence of Chief Justice John Weimer, a maverick who is a no-party registered voter without a clear ideological line.

Anyway, there's more background on how Landry is working to re-shape the courts in that article.  Suffice to say, though, it's going to become more difficult to appeal his legislative shenanigans there in the future. 

President Grok

One thing I think this article does a good job of doing is providing the context for understanding the AI takeover of government. Rather than a sudden jolt of revolution, this is just the next step in a long process.  It's half a century of movement conservatism fully automated. 

But the biggest issue with using AI is twofold: the routine wild inaccuracy of AI tools, as well as the particularly haphazard manner in which DOGE wants to use it. The Biden administration had been slowly integrating AI into government tasks, but it was pretty clear about guarding against potential risks: errors in coding, for example, or added security vulnerabilities. The Musk team is not going to care about that at all. If a one-line code error flags billions of dollars in “wasteful” spending improperly, that’s probably seen as a feature, not a bug. If the AI goes haywire and starts making things up, or the code breaks systems that need to be redundant and reliant, oh well, government isn’t supposed to work well anyway. And if back doors are opened up to allow hackers or adversaries to poke through, maybe they’ll develop a patch later.

That’s the Silicon Valley mindset: move fast and break things, like Social Security. And it has merged with the MAGA mindset. Without transparency in what AI is supposed to look for, you can bet it will be reverse-engineered to spit out a desired result, whether about climate change or DEI or whatever.

So on one level, you can expect the inexperienced coders trying to find trillions in cuts by lazily feeding government data through AI tools to make mistakes, trigger cybersecurity breaches, and neglect AI hallucinations. On another level, you can expect government data to be highly politicized. The White House plans to make chief information officers at the agencies political appointees, who would have loyalty to the president and a willingness to manipulate data for ideological purposes. We’ve already seen this with the installation of Musk ally Tom Krause overseeing the Treasury payment system.

For more background, here is a recent interview with the historian Quinn Slobodian.  The main insight here has to do with ways in which the techno-feudal impulse unfolding under Trump II is in line with the natural course of the neoliberal order and not a radical departure from it. 

 

Finally, one more point about this Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" ethic. There is an accelerationist argument from the left that supposes this all works out for the best in the end. But this is a gross fantasy.  Here is a recent Adam Johnson column pointing out that Elon is never going to "break" the things we might actually like to see broken. 

It’s worth noting that not all of Musk’s attacks on the administrative and liberal state are equally pernicious. There are real issues with USAID and its role as a soft power arm of meddling US imperial bureaucrats, as well as a political shield for U.S. atrocities, from Yemen to Gaza, as I’ve noted here and elsewhere. But USAID also does objectively useful work because many countries grow dependent on them, and it’s very clear that, based on recent statements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, what is most likely going to happen is the sinister activity USAID does will simply be folded back into the State Department directly or the CIA (as it used to be) while the Incidentally Good Stuff USAID does will be be eliminated. Despite his faux libertarian posturing, Musk, of course, doesn’t care about the anti-imperialist argument. He hates USAID because he thinks it helps keep black and brown people alive, which—by virtue of the US being a largely unipolar empire—it very much does, regardless of motives.

But it does no good to cheer on the looting of the entire social contract by Nazi robber barrons because of some bank shot hope that it ushers in the "real class war" or whatever.  It doesn't work that way. The US is just Russia in the 90s now.  The tech oligarchs mean to put us through a decade of "pain." They have literally said as much. 

American politics and its glorification of the individual "yeoman farmer/homeowner" tradition is easily poisoned by narcissistic millenarism.  The internet age, particularly the post-COVID internet age, makes that process happen all the more smoothly.  But even in the context of extreme alienation and parnoia we live in, it still stuns me that we can't know or do better. There's no reason anyone who has lived through the events of this century; Katrina, the financial crisis, COVID, etc etc; can't have figured out by now that none of these calamities ushers in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.  They just form the context for the next round of looting. And thre's always another one of those on the way. 

Run gubmint like a bidness

 Always a scam proposition.  It's been modernized. 

In an essay dated April 2022, Yarvin updated RAGE to something he described as a “butterfly revolution.” In an essay on his paywalled Substack, he imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc on the United States Government (USG) over the past three weeks.

Wrote Yarvin:

We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945. This level of centralized emergency power worked to refound a nation then, for them. So it should work now, for us.”

(The metaphor of “full power start” comes from Star Trek and entails a risky process of restarting a fictional spaceship in a way that might cause “implosion.” The World War II metaphor casts the federal government as a conquered enemy now controlled by an outside force.)

Yarvin wrote that in a second term, Trump could appoint a different person to act as the nation’s “CEO.” This CEO would be enabled to run roughshod over the federal government, with Trump in the background  as “chairman of the board.” The metaphors clarify the core idea: Run the government as a rogue corporation rather than a public institution beholden to the rules of democracy.

The "children and families" mayor

It says something that, in a moment of crisis like this one, when people are trying to figure out if they have to march or if they have to strike, and their elected representatives are clumsily grasping at ways to respond to an apparent coup, LaToya Cantrell's instinct in a moment like this is... to cut funding to public schools.

On Monday morning, a crowd of 30 officials – including state legislators, City Councilmembers, Orleans Parish School Board members, District Attorney Jason Williams, and school leaders  –  condemned Mayor LaToya Cantrell for trying to torpedo a $20 million settlement with the school district, which is trying to plug a deficit of at least $36 million, maybe significantly more.

The settlement would have resolved a six-year-old lawsuit by OPSB, which had discovered that the city was skimming a portion off of the top of its OPSB tax payments.

Cantrell cannot now take the position that “the city cannot afford to stop stealing money from schoolchildren,” said OPSB member Carlos Zervigon, noting that the city has skimmed at least $100 million due to the district. “We need the mayor to get out of the way.”

We all thought the mayor had gotten out of the way.  A few months ago, she and members of her administration all got up and played hero. Their settlement announcement came to the rescue of a school district budget crisis precipitated by a still unexplained "accounting error."  

It's hard to tell what's changed since then besides the federal government's payment systems having been taken over by an unpredictable corrupt junta. Everyone is at least a little bit worried about that situation.  But one can't help but wonder if the mayor has special insight into the Trump administration's M.O. It does take one to know one, after all. 

In any case, it is remarkable to consider that a mayor who came into office branding herself around concern for "children and families" will be remembered for her efforts at de-funding public schools and libraries.

The wannabees

The only thing worse than what Elon is doing to the federal government right now are his pathetic emulators sprinkled across the states... including your very own.

Landry was inspired to create the commission by the federal Department of Government Efficiency headed by billionaire business owner Elon Musk.

“I think we in Louisiana are facing some of the same issues that President Trump is facing with his DOGE,” Hodges said. “We are very aware that the voters who elected us are demanding quick action. And we intend to deliver.”

State legislators, speaking privately, said they believe Landry created the commission to placate conservatives unhappy that they had to vote for a sales tax increase in November and that Landry has made no serious attempts as governor to reduce the state government spending that lawmakers control.

Conservatives are also miffed that Landry vetoed a high-profile bill that supporters said would reduce payouts to car accident victims and their trial attorneys.

Landry issued the executive order creating the government efficiency group on Dec. 12.

“In Louisiana, we always strive to have a government that is of, by, and for the people,” he said in a statement that day. “A government that runs efficiently and effectively is a government that best serves her people.”

His executive order called for Orlando to serve as its chair. Orlando made a fortune by owning an offshore supply company that he sold several years ago. He is a neighbor of Landry’s in Broussard and frequently accompanies the governor on fishing trips.

As far as anyone can tell they aren't monkeying around in the treasury just yet. The state does have an independently elected treasurer so it's not as simple a matter. (The state treasurer is ultra-MAGA sandwich magnate John Fleming, though, so it's not much of an improvement on the situation.)  Anyway, according to Bridges, this commission is just writing up a report for now. It is due at the end of the year. 

 

it's just tuesday

 what's happening now

The former executive did point to a meaningful difference between X and DOGE, however: The government is big and complex. This may be an asset during an assault. “Even if you try to take a flamethrower to the government, the destruction won’t be quick. There’ll be legal challenges and congressional fights, and in the months and weeks, it’ll be individuals who keep essential services running,” they said. The government workers who know what they’re doing may still be able to make positive incremental change from within.

It’s a rousing, hopeful notion. But I fear that the focus on the particulars of this unqualified assault on our government is like looking at X’s bottom line, in that it obscures Musk’s real ambitions. What are DOGE’s metrics for success? If X is our guide, health, functionality, and sustainability are incidental and able to be sacrificed. The end game for Musk seems to be just as it was with Twitter: seize a polarized, inefficient institution; fuse his identity with it; and then use it to punish his enemies and reward his friends. DOGE is a moon-shot program to turn the government into Musk’s personal political weapon.

tune in again tomorrow to see what burns and how 

Famous last words

 Ghassan Korban is talking about his legacy today.  

In May, Korban will leave behind an agency that is still challenged but in better condition than when he found it, he said in a recent interview. Among his accomplishments are two infrastructure projects to supply reliable power to drainage pumps and installation of smart meters he says will eliminate problems with water billing.

You sure about that, bro?  

Can't wait to find out

Inauguration Day

I've got my attention divided in several directions at the moment. Some personal dealings, also the city is getting ready to experience a massive BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY (there's a city hall press conference scheduled for 11:15 that I think may be entertaining.) All of which is to say that I am well aware of that Trump II: The Trumpening is the major event of the day but there's only so much time I can spend with that just now.  

Anyway, enjoy the circus.

Someone should probably do something

Seems bad

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a report Thursday evening finding that Louisiana State Police employs practices that violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the use of excessive force, often unjustifiably using Tasers and escalating minor incidents with people who do not pose a threat.

The Justice Department began its investigation of State Police in 2022 after revelations about the 2019 death of Black motorist Ronald Greene at the hands of Monroe-area troopers who beat and Tased him after a high-speed chase into Union Parish.

“We also found that troopers use excessive force to immediately control encounters, often within the first few moments of encountering a person and without giving the person a warning or an opportunity to comply,” the report said. “Additionally, LSP uses excessive force on people who run from troopers, even when that person is only suspected of a misdemeanor.”

The findings were released two days after federal prosecutors said they would not bring charges in the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene, ending a lengthy probe into the white state troopers who stunned, punched and dragged Greene on a roadside following a high-speed chase outside Monroe, Louisiana.

 Hopefully the DOJ has some plan to rectify these abuses? Right?

The Justice Department also examined whether state police engage in “racially discriminatory policing” but made no findings “at this time” as to whether that contributed to the misconduct.

The report recommends — but does not mandate — a long list of remedial measures, while also crediting the agency with making ”much-needed reforms after video of Mr. Greene’s death became public.”

Oh well. Best of luck, everybody 

The pathetic reign of the dumb

This isn't really a post in that there are more notes to share about both of these figures which we'll get to later. But we really need to mark these quotes down right now for future reference.  Louisiana is at a specific conjuncture of profane stupidity right now. But also it is rich with examples of how even under fascist oligarchy, the leadership is still populated by insecure try-hard types who say and do stupid stupid things. 

For example, the hack bureaucrat installed by the fossil fuel lobby to ruthlessly gut the state's Department of Environmental Quality, despite her no-lose situation and guarantee of lavish personal wealth now and forever, is still this insanely image conscious.. and incredibly stupid about it. 

Louisiana's environmental chief is trying out a different spelling for her last name in agency statements — and it seems designed to strike a chord with residents of the Bayou State.

DEQ Secretary Aurelia Skipwith Giacometto changed the spelling of her last name to "Giacometteaux" in recent communications with the public and media because, she said, she loves Louisiana.

The shift appeared recently in a statement issued on Jan. 7 about the state Department of Environmental Quality's efforts to streamline permitting for the oil and gas industry.

Amazingly, the constitutional hollowness extends even further up the hierarchy.  The current King of Louisiana, for example, is "best friends" with the Governor and can buy or have gifted to him whatever he wishes with no responsibility to anybody for anything. But even from that lofty height, he still has a pathetic need to be liked. He even goes so far to compare himself with current King of America and consequently World's Most Despicably Desperate Man to make that point for himself and for us.  

Guidry also said that, though he is not elected or appointed to a position in an official capacity, he was providing his services to the governor and the levee authority pro-bono. He donated or raised $3 million to help elect Landry during his gubernatorial campaign.

“Look, I’m best friends with the governor. We talk ten times a day, seven days a week,” Guidry said. “Look at Elon Musk, right? There’s a reason why he’s doing something free for Trump — because he knows he can help him. And Trump wants that. There’s a reason why I do what I do free for Jeff because he knows I have nothing to gain.”

In a way, the analogy demonstrates remarkable self-awareness on Guidry's part. But it's also just so so sad.

Camp Bernhard

I've had less time to be annoying online lately. That should change soon. But 2025 has been a monster already. Not only because the world seems to be on fire in various ways but also because of a series of personal crises.  Hopefully that gets dealt with soon enough.  

Even so, it's hard to know what there is to say anymore. Nobody has to work very hard to explain the cruelty and corruption that happens every day.  It's all so blatantly on the table now. I'm not even going to say anything here. Just putting the relevant bits in bold for you.

As part of a sweeping effort to spruce up New Orleans before the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Gov. Jeff Landry said Monday his administration will begin clearing homeless encampments downtown, moving some residents to a Gentilly warehouse miles away and others to undisclosed locations out of state.

The 70,000-square-foot shelter is expected to open by Wednesday, when state authorities plan to begin relocating those living on the streets around the Caesars Superdome, French Quarter, I-10 and US 90. Notices were being posted at some encampments on Monday, warning that failure to move to the new shelter “may result in enforcement action or legal proceedings.” The notices indicate that transportation and storage will be provided.

The warehouse, located at 5601 France Road, will serve as a temporary shelter and can accommodate 200 people, according to a proposal by Workforce Group, the company that Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration has tapped to operate the facility.

The building is owned by the Port of New Orleans and sits along the Industrial Canal across from Pontchartrain Park, far from the city's tourist-laden core. It will be subleased to the state for at least two months at an estimated cost of $11.4 million, with a possible one-month extension that would increase the price tag to $16.2, according to budget documents. That time frame ensures the shelter will be operational through Mardi Gras on March 4, another massive tourist draw. 

Okay I will say one thing to move the story forward. Many have pointed out that the state could spend 16 million dollars on the same people and probably get them all housed or well on the path to being housed. Instead they are putting them in a concentration camp. Are they doing that because they think its efficient? Probably not. Or they doing it because "the cruelty is the point"?  Maybe.  Is there some other reason as well? Well, see...

Baton Rouge-based Workforce Group is a disaster recovery firm that helps state and local officials with federal grants, data management, staffing and insurance claims, according to its website. Workforce Group is owned by The Lemoine Company, a Lafayette firm backed by Bernhard Capital Partners.

Yes, that Bernhard Capital.