Hello, and welcome to a fabulous New Year of blogging yellowly

Unfortunately this new year is still among the 2020s which, as we all know, are categorically bad. Anyway, I know I've been saying it is time to get the Yellow Blog back into running shape for a while and I know that every time Twitter starts to die, it seems like that is the time to crank it back up over here. But I really do mean it. Maybe this will finally be the thing that does it. 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the character limit for tweets will increase from 280 to 4,000 characters early next month.

The feature, which was first proposed in December, is one of a number of changes to the social media platform that the tech billionaire plans to roll out over the coming months after purchasing it for $44 billion last October.

The increase in character length will be only the second time in Twitter’s 17-year history that it has changed the limit, having previously boosted the original 140 limit to 280 in 2017.

As the big social media sites have absorbed and siloed off the whole internet over the course of the past decade, so has Twitter eaten up more and more of my blog posts. That's mostly because I am incredibly lazy and it's easy to just tweet a half-baked thought out and let it go. But, when I'm doing it right, a blog post shouldn't be longer than one or two tweets anyway. Ideally, this is where the half-baked thoughts are supposed to go. 

But, also, this is supposed to be where I put stuff that I want to remember later. And a chronological, taggable, searchable web log of annotated bookmarks is far better for that purpose than the increasingly unreliable instant gratification machine currently being dismantled by a chaotic billionaire.  And if the tweet stretches out to blog post length anyway, (I just checked. So far this post isn't even over 2,000 characters.) it might as well be posted over here instead.  So this time, we mean it. We're gonna try and put the stuff that happens this year on the Yellow Blog so that it doesn't all blow by in a confusing haze this time. Besides, 2023 makes 20 years of posting here so we need to have a nice round archival number. 

I think what we'll do for a while is try to get at least one post up every day or so that collects some of those annotated bookmarks I mentioned. There are a couple of drafts of longer form writing that have been lingering for a while which I would like to finish but let's wade back into this a step at a time.

With that in mind, here is today's stuff I wrote down so I might remember it later. 

The Louisiana Democrats will need to find their own loser candidate for governor instead of borrowing a Republican loser

Late last year, there was a parlor game discussion going around trying to parse whether Dem-aligned power brokers and/or centrist establishment media would rally around a Bill Cassidy campaign for Governor in 2023. Cassidy is a "weird dude" and a perpetual darling of the Advocate editorial page. But that's not exactly an unassailable coalition to ride up against the Jeff Landry juggernaut. The last reporting we've seen has Landry wielding a $3 million war chest plus the official endorsement of the state Republican Party and multiple Super PACs all of which multiplies his fundraising capacity many times over. Anyway, Cassidy decided it wasn't worth it. Much better to sit around in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body doing nothing forever than to take on that headache. His fellow Senator John Kennedy (although he theoretically might have posed a stronger challenge to Landry) reached a similar conclusion last week.

When Bill said he wouldn't run, all of that speculation about Democrats and media picking a favorite Republican shifted over to Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser. For a long time it seemed like Billy and Jeff deserved each other.  For example, we know they both have a problem with librarians. Landry is on a typical "anti-woke" crusade to burn them all while Billy is retaliating against them for blowing the whistle on his corruption. Heck, since the day they were elected to their current positions, we've had them neck and neck in a pool to see which of the two would be the first one indicted and whose scandal would be the stupidest.  Maybe this is just a sign of the times, since despite the fact that each has had his share of doozies over this term, neither has yet landed in jail. Guess we should have bet the over.

And like any pair of like alpha dunces vying for the same space, Jeff and Billy clearly do not like each other.  Nungesser hasn't been shy about saying so. In December, Nungesser said that he had to run against Landry if Kennedy didn't because "Jeff is a bad person." That's was after a long summer of scrambling for endorsements and pre-announcing that he was planning to announce a candidacy.  

And yet, today, Billy says, nevermind all that. 

“But the worst pandemic in our lifetime and a series of devastating storms leaves me with unfinished business to bring tourism back to its peak performance, especially for the near 250,000 families who rely on this industry for their livelihoods. For that reason, and after much thought and prayer, I have decided to seek re-election to the Office of Lt. Governor"

Those devastating storms and the pandemic did not happen just this last month, though.  So who knows what really got Billy to back down? The upshot is the Democrats no longer have an easy way to just quietly sit out a Governor's election they had clearly been planning to just quietly sit out.  Can't wait to see what they come up with. They don't seem to be generating a lot of excitement these days, that's for sure. 

Ad-hoc garbage service

This Sunday morning, we were stunned to see a Richard's Disposal truck picking up on our block. Turns out they're dealing with a "backlog" maybe? What is going on here?

In a statement Monday night, Richard said the company is addressing the backlog with 70 additional personnel, pulling from crews in Baton Rouge and Jackson, Miss. Richard said he and the company "look forward to working cooperatively with the city council, mayor and all of city government to address the market conditions and other circumstances that affect timely trash collection,” according to the statement.

The statement did not address the administration's decision to turn over some routes to different contractors. 

Those "other contractors on some routes" is confusing. Apparently the city is juggling the routes that contractually belong to Richards among Waste Pro and IV Waste, the companies who recently took over Metro's territory. Now they're encroaching on Richards bit by bit as well. But it all seems to be happening according more to whim than a comprehensible scheme. 

Richard’s contract expires in March, 2024, though the city can terminate it for cause or "convenience," which essentially means it can be ended at the city's discretion. Officials have previously said they want to rebid the contract this year, but they have not laid out a time frame. 

Asked how long he expects his company to supplement Richard’s, Torres said officials had advised him “to be prepared to do it until they put it out to bid.”

Meanwhile, they're just making it up as they go. And paying a premium for it. 

My FNBC jury duty notice was sadly lost in the mail

 I didn't even get invited to the tailgate party.  Anyway, the trial is kicking off. 

A jury was seated Monday in the federal bank fraud trial of First NBC Bank founder Ashton Ryan, Jr., as lawyers readied for what is expected to be a weekslong trial probing the actions of Ryan, other executives and bank borrowers ahead of the institution's stunning 2017 collapse.

I have said many times there is probably a good book someone could put together centered around this bank collapse that might tell a broad story about the post-Katrina era of New Orleans politics, real estate, education, and non-profit corruption.  I don't really see this trial telling that whole story but... I may have liked to take a look at this list.

Lawyers involved in the case have said the prosecution's witness list initially was between 100 and 200, though it will call far fewer over the next few weeks. Witnesses are likely to include at least some of those who have taken guilty pleas in the case, including Gregory St. Angelo, the bank's former top lawyer.

Speaking of post-Katrina failures and corruption...

This is part of a series the T-P has been running about "changing streets" or some such. I think the idea here is to frame the massive displacement and dispossession New Orleanians have endured as just "inevitable progress" or whatever. But some of this stuff you can't gloss over. 

According to statistics from the New Orleans Data Center, since 2000, the area encompassing the Marigny, Bywater, St. Claude and St. Roch neighborhoods has gone from 61% Black and 32% White to 17% Black and 72% White. The number of households with annual income over $100,000 a year rose from 3% to 19%.

The article trots out familiar apologists CW Cannon and Rich Campanella to sigh and shrug but at least Cashauna Hill is here to point out that these aren't just natural forces at work. They are deliberate policy choices.  

Many of those pushed out crossed St. Claude Avenue, where the process continues today, said Cashauna Hill, executive director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center. 

Hill said population changes and demographic shifts are often inevitable, and said opposing gentrification does not mean opposing investment.

The problem, she said, is that the city’s leaders have consistently favored policies that encourage gentrification — pouring millions into Crescent Park and the Rampart-St. Claude streetcar line and failing to rein in short-term rentals — while neglecting policies that would prevent it — primarily funding affordable housing.

No need to catalog all of the atrocities right now. But I will point out that the City Planning Commission is once again this month rolling out yet another round of STR regulation that looks on track to once again favor wealth over residents.  We'll catch up on that later. But seeing this picture of where our neighborhoods are today, reminded me of this remark from Mitch Landrieu when he took office as mayor. 

In August, when Mayor Landrieu announced his plan for spending New Orleans’ hard-won recovery dollars he warned a famously tradition-bound city that the time had come for change. “It’s especially important that we stop thinking about rebuilding the city we were and start creating the city we want to become,” he said, echoing his inaugural address.

This is the city we chose to become.  

When the "cyberattack" eats your homework

Amazing story from over the weekend. Let's see if we can sum it up in under 4,000 characters. I think we can. 

So, to start with a cop shot a dog. Apparently this was not the first dog this cop shot either. Which is why the owners of the dog that was shot (the second dog) requested the Public Integrity Bureau file on the first shooting as documentation for their lawsuit against the city. The city agreed to hand over the document. Except  WHOOPS it turns out the city cannot actually produce it because it is locked away in the Iron Mountain. 

Document storage company Iron Mountain is withholding hundreds of boxes of files it is storing for the city of New Orleans because of an ongoing financial dispute with Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration, a City Hall spokesman confirms.

So, according to this report, the city hands over "hundreds of boxes" of public records (which departments and types of records is unknown although clearly NOPD is one) to a private contractor who can, apparently, hold them up for ransom in the (seemingly inevitable) event that the city falls behind on its bill.  That's very interesting! We'd love to know more about that situation. But, WHOOPS guess what. 

But there is no record of a contract to store old paper files for the NOPD or any other department. Iron Mountain’s local administrator, Robert Leamann, spoke to a reporter in early December and declined to provide information about the company’s scope of services for the city. He also said at the time he was unaware of a dispute with the city or the subpoena. After being sent a copy of the court records, he referred subsequent requests for comment to a corporate email address, which did not respond to multiple emails.

The company’s local attorneys, Kellen Matthew and Kathleen Cronin, also failed to respond to emails seeking comment.

Joseph could not say why the city purchasing office could not locate a contract with the company, but noted that all contracts and purchase orders contained in the city's BuySpeed and AFIN databases were lost in a 2019 cyber attack.

Oh man that "cyberattack" sure did a number on public records, huh. Man that is a shame that nobody can get anything from those databases. Unless, somebody... looks it it up and gives it to them... wait.. what? 

What?

Here are Buyspeed purchase orders the city pulled for @misaacstein last year. https://t.co/jffDInLBzN https://t.co/KuGGmE7HWD

— Charles Maldonado (@Maldonado_CB) January 9, 2023

Sometimes the cyber attacks and sometimes it doesn't, I guess. Just a mystery we'll never fully get a grip on. I wonder if it is going to attack those unwritten garbage contracts next.

Keep Doing What You're Doing

Honestly, I have no idea what Saints fans are so upset about this week. They're all ready to fire Dennis Allen after one season as Head Coach even though that one season was the greatest of his entire NFL career to date. In three prior seasons with the Raiders, the dude had never won more than 4 games. This year he won three whole games more than that. That's a 75 percent improvement! 

I'm never clear on what it is Saints fans are really after these days. We already won football in 2009 so there's no need to stress over that anymore. From that point until the time when the brutal criminal enterprise that is the NFL collapses under the weight of its own contradictions,  I just want to see as many interesting things happen as possible. A lot of interesting things happened to the Saints in 2022.  We listed some of them here. Whether those things are "good" or "bad" is really a matter of taste. 

All pro football teams are pretty evenly matched talentwise. Most games are decided according to a combination of dumb luck and which team is the least injured that week. Most of the jawing about whose fault that is or is not is just how fans have fun. NFL fans are basically conspiracy theory hobbyists constructing grand bullshit theories to draw certainties out of what is essentially unknowable. You feel a lot better about it all once you understand this.  Not everybody wins the Superbowl every year. Most teams, in fact, do not! Hopefully fans of the teams who do not don't see this as a complete waste of their time. How sad, that would be if they did. 

Anyway, I can't have strong feelings about Dennis Allen one way or the other.  He seems like a pretty boring middle-management guy. That's probably why he's risen to this particular point of mediocrity.  I definitely don't think the Saints got the most out of their offensive players this year. That seemed like a coaching issue to me. But, again, I'm just spinning theories like anybody else there. Whatever they do, I hope they don't bring those awful black helmets back.  I don't think those helped matters one bit.

Bill Cassidy's victory tour

Much like Troy Carter, Bill now gets to go on a tour of the state doing a bunch of ceremonial groundbreakings and/or aspirational ribbon cuttings for stuff in the infrastructure bill that *might* build infrastructure but will definitely line the pockets of some important <strike>donors</strike> "private partners while at least seeming to try to build things.  For Troy, it just means a fun year of being a new Congressman-for-life.  But for Bill, it could very well be the opening round of his campaign for Governor. 

Cassidy may have an easier time winning the governor’s mansion in 2023 than reelection to the Senate in 2026. Gubernatorial elections are more often about candidate qualities and local issues, while U.S. Senate races tend to track national partisan fights. This could lessen Trump’s influence in a contest for governor.

If Cassidy runs for governor and makes a runoff against a Republican, he could win the faceoff with support from Democrats, independents and his remaining personal base among Republicans.

Conversely — if he makes the runoff against a Democrat, he could win with votes from Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats. Even most Trump die-hards would hold their noses and cast ballots for Cassidy, a Republican with an 83% conservative voting record, rather than vote for a left-leaning Democrat.

That Ron Faucheux column doesn't really even mention Bill's support for (and significant role in crafting) the "bipartisan" infrastructure package. But he sure does get a ton of credit for it from the Advocate's ostensibly liberal  opinion writer. So much, in fact, one would think she has some sort of quota to fill.  All of which is to say that should Cassidy run for governor, he will be a very well positioned candidate on paper... or in the paper, as it were. 

But that doesn't always mean everything. Faucheux does point out also Bill isn't the most popular guy among so-called "Trump Republicans." And given that the term Trump Republicans pretty much just means Republicans then that could be a problem. Also, as has been famously noted, the "dude is weird."

Rep. Cedric Richmond, a dapper politician from New Orleans and key Landrieu supporter, was more blunt. “He’s weird. Dude is weird,” Richmond said. “He’s not what Louisiana is. He’s not personable, he’s not charismatic.” 

Of course that is far from the only issue with Bill. He's not just a "weird dude." He's a weird dude who protects the chemical industry from consequences when they poison our air and water. 

Under federal law, Louisiana must develop a “state implementation plan” outlining actions that plants must take to reduce emissions below that standard. As part of that process, the Department of Environmental Quality in 2017 and 2018 ordered Rain to adopt a plan to change its manufacturing processes to keep sulfur dioxide levels in check.

Rain balked, however, saying it was having trouble figuring out how to monitor the heat and flow of gases and other materials at its plant because conventional meters kept melting. In 2019, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., intervened on behalf of the company and joined the state agency in successfully lobbying the EPA to delay implementation of the plan.

Still, if he does run, he's going to be the favorite candidate of the Advocate editorial page.  But that also isn't surprising given the company line over there with regard to protecting the environment.

Courtesy reports

Well that sounds very polite.

Last month, an unknown amount and type of acid gas leaked from within the Domino Sugar refining facility in Chalmette, escaping into the air. The cause was also unknown, according to a notice sent to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality by the plant.

Such self-disclosures are sometimes known as courtesy reports, and are often the only way members of the public learn of unauthorized releases.

You might even call it "civil discourse."  Why would anyone object to such a friendly practice?

A move toward self-audits is heavily supported by Louisiana's oil, gas and chemical industries, who have pushed for some version of it since 1997. The state agency argues the program would be modeled after one designed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that aims to incentivize polluters to disclose and correct minor issues in plants more proactively. In exchange, companies may receive a reduction in fines and a veil of secrecy until settlement proceedings close -- or for two years, whichever comes first.

Instead of fixing a policy that upholds safe environmental standards under penalty of law, the legislature has proposed that we offer polluting industry, "incentives" to correct what the text of this article asserts are "minor issues." It's so dang nice of them!  Such a welcome change in tone from all the nasty epithets one usually hears thrown around to describe one of the nation's most cancer-ridden regions. Just ask Bill Cassidy. He knows. 

The concentration of chemical plants and refineries in mostly poor, Black areas of Louisiana drew international attention in January when President Joe Biden mentioned “Cancer Alley” in a speech about a series of executive orders targeting climate change and industrial pollution in areas with large non-white populations. Some Louisiana leaders bristled at the president’s use of the term, which many residents use to describe the Mississippi River corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge; Sen. Bill Cassidy called it “a slam upon our state.”

Besides, offering "incentives" rather than enforcing rules is clearly the most effective means the government has at its disposal for protecting the public from health hazards.  Everybody knows that.

But the primary aim of this bill is to keep any potential nastiness is kept out of the public discourse altogether. And, again, isn't that better for everyone's state of mind?

During the session, agency officials said information provided in self-audits that companies are already required to report would remain public. But those courtesy reports aren't legally required if the company finds that the amount released was below reportable quantities.

Bagert says it's unclear whether these notices would remain available to the public if they're provided through a self-audit.

"The question here is whether the public has a right to know information that its government is in possession of about toxic chemicals in their own community," he said. "We all could have debates about the appropriate regulation. This is something far simpler. It's even knowing that releases and spills of these toxic chemicals have taken place."

The Governor has until Thursday night to decide whether to veto this one.  But, again, why would he do that?  It seems so pleasant.  His own administration apparently lobbied for it, even.  

On the other hand, if he really wants to please everyone, he has a chance to do that too.  Since Together Louisiana and other environmental groups seem so adamant about it now, why not let rip with the veto pen this one time and make them happy.  The legislature can come back and override him later and it'll be out of his hands anyway.  That way everyone does everyone else a favor.  Perfectly courteous.

Don't worry about Bill

#NeverForget pic.twitter.com/5OyfiIkgnt

— Bill Cassidy’s Mardi Gras Beads (@BillGras) October 4, 2020

Oh noooo Bill Cassidy voted to convict Trump in a meaningless gesture where the outcome was foreordained and is getting "harsh backlash" from Louisiana Republicans  

Almost immediately after his vote to convict, Louisiana Republicans blasted Cassidy. Attorney General Jeff Landry said the vote was “extremely disappointing,” calling the impeachment trial unconstitutional. He said Cassidy fell into a “trap laid by Democrats to have Republicans attack Republicans.”

Mike Bayham, the secretary of the LAGOP, said he hopes the Legislature will revamp the state’s election system to hold closed primaries, which he believes will result in more reliable Republican candidates. Currently, all candidates for office appear on the same ballot regardless of party, in what's known as a jungle primary.

“Bill Cassidy is a senator without a party as of today,” he said.

It would be a shame if the Republicans, who do control the legislature after all, decide to scrap the jungle primary over this.  It's one of the few good things about Louisiana's electoral system. But more likely nobody will remember any of this in six weeks, let alone the six years before Cassidy is up for reelection again.  By that time, the ever expanding Republican right wing will have found a new mode of expression beyond the personality of Donald Trump and Cassidy will just as likely be positioned relative to it in a way that rides that wave along with the rest of them. 

Because the thing to understand about the difference between the Republican right wing and the rest of the Republican Party is that there isn't any.  Regardless, wealthy liberals and corporate media institutions are going out of their way right now to pretend that there is some sort of schism between the "educated" Republicans and the crazy ones.  Here, for example, we see Nancy Pelosi repeating and expounding on a line that she has pushed for a few years now and Joe Biden has repeated.  America "needs a strong Republican Party" for some reason. Why? It's probably true that the Democrats enjoy the convenient excuse for not delivering things they promise to their voters.  But the country has had a strong Republican Party for decades and look where that got us. 

Really, though, the Democrats who pine for it are telling on their own class biases.  Here is Pelosi talking about candidate recruitment.  

When we recruit candidates to run for office or we see them self-recruiting, we always say or we see them saying, well I could be the president of my university or the head of my hospital department or this or that so I have to think about whether I have to run for Congress, we always say we don't want people without options that's why we are looking to you to run. Because you have options.

You see, ideally, the republic is guided by university presidents and heads of hospitals as opposed to, say, bartenders or nurses who become civil rights activists. We can't trust those people because their "options" are limited. Remarkably, she's talking there about who the Democrats - the ostensible party of the people - envision for their party's leadership.  Specifically she means to contrast this with the GOP where we are meant to understand that the rubes have taken over.  But this isn't just about Pelosi's hostility toward poor and working class Americans' material stake in or aptitude for engaging with political outcomes. It's about the fundamental lie she and other like minded observers are telling about what's keeping us from enjoying the benefits of a "strong Republican Party" right now.  

A recent New Republic column by Osita Nwanevu written after the House voted to strip Marjoire Taylor Green of her committee assignments, talks about how conspiracy theories like QAnon are frequently mischaracterized as merely a consequence of ignorance on the part of their adherents. 

Of all the “big lies” distorting our politics, one of the largest and most popular—back in 2010 and now—has been the notion that our political divisions are the product of under- or miseducation. The Republican Party’s flight into lunacy, it’s often suggested, has a fairly simple cause. The unwashed aren’t getting The Facts in school or from their media sources, and it’s up to the enlightened to shower The Facts upon them—perhaps, as some “disinformation” experts recently suggested to The New York Times, with a “reality czar” at the White House manning the hose. This was the explanation many turned to as the Trump era began, and it was the explanation many turned to for how it ended. 

But this doesn't actually describe most conspiracy-minded Republicans. Or, at least, according to this Atlantic article Nwanevu cites, it doesn't describe the kind of people who stormed the Capitol in January. 

The average age of the arrestees we studied is 40. Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.

Looks like more than a handful people who "have options" there. Not that any of this should surprise anyone.  The Republican Party has long been and is still a party of the ruling class establishment.  Its radical movements are not subversive challenges to that establishment, they are establishmentarian reactions to progress.  

Democrats will still occasionally refer to voters' inherent understanding of this when it's convenient for them. But, as Democrats have become more dominated by ruling class interests themselves, those moments are less frequent.  A party that depends on finance capital for its funding and college educated white collar professionals for its electoral strategy is less likely to cast itself as oppositional to the elites in the other party.  Instead, they have to build a classist myth of paper "deplorables" to run against.  Whether or not one finds that strategy effective depends on what we assume are its goals.  If we think the point is to maintain the sinecures and fundraising streams maintained by the career pols and staffers embedded in the party infrastructure, it's been a smashing success. If we think the idea should be to actually halt or even resist slightly the country's inexorable decades long march further and further to the right, then the results have been less good. 

Nwanevu appears to be giving them the benefit of the doubt in offering this advice.

Democrats should try campaigning on the truth: The Republican Party is controlled by intelligent, college-educated, and affluent elites who concoct dangerous nonsense to paper over a bigoted, plutocratic agenda and to justify attacks on the democratic process. That agenda and those attacks are supported by millions of reasonably intelligent voters who will believe or claim to believe anything that furthers the objective of keeping conservatives in control of this country forever. Simply pointing to figures like Greene and hoping the indignation of college graduates will do the rest is a mistake. Instead, Democrats should present voters with a material choice between a party that has nothing to offer the majority of Americans but abuse and conspiratorial flimflam and a party committed to building a democracy and an economy that work for all. If they don’t, the lizard people who run the GOP will be running the government again in no time.

If the Democrats truly were a party "committed to building a democracy and an economy that work for all," they would be well served to take this advice. But assuming this much good faith on their part has become so absurdly fruitless an exercise that even going this far into the act of pointing it out is boring. So forget trying to convince them of anything.  What readers should take away from Nwanevu's analysis, though, is that it is possible for smart, educated people to believe in and pursue evil politics. The "we need a strong Republican Party" wing of the Democrats don't want to acknowledge this because they, too, believe in and pursue evil politics with a different branding. But justifying their kind of evil depends on the false idea that education/expertise automatically equals morality.

Bill Cassidy has a lot of education and expertise. He is, in fact, a medical doctor.  Before he cast his meaningless vote to hypothetically convict Trump, he directed that education and expertise toward the defense of the petro-chemical corporations who regularly poison Louisiana residents while funding his campaigns. 

President Joe Biden’s recent utterance of “Cancer Alley” has raised the hackles of Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. The Baton Rouge Republican said the president’s use of the term, rooted in longstanding concerns about toxic air pollution in the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was an insult against Louisiana.

“I'm not going to accept that sort of slam upon our state,” Cassidy said in a call with reporters Tuesday. “It sounds like great rhetoric. But again, I don't accept that slam."

In 2017 Doctor Cassidy's proposed "repeal and replace" scheme for gutting the Affordable Care Act would have resulted in massive cuts in Medicaid care for the most vulnerable patients.

Critics of Cassidy's proposals, though, said that amounts to a substantial cut in the Medicaid funding that would jeopardize care for the elderly, disabled and low-income residents in Louisiana.

Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, which advocates on behalf of low- and moderate-income families in the state, said the cuts in the Cassidy-Graham-Heller bill would leave states scrambling to cover inflating costs.

"This would rip a large and growing hole in our state budget while eliminating all guarantees of assistance for low-income residents," said Moller, whose group has actively opposed other recent Republican proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act.

His 2020 family leave proposal has been described as a "Trojan horse" bill that would push more families into bankruptcy. 

Some policy researchers have criticized this plan as tantamount to a loan that working families will have to pay off with reduced tax credits in the future.

Kathleen Romig notes that this policy will have no actual protections for employees seeking to take time off, so many workers in service sectors would risk losing their jobs entirely. Romig also points out that the details are sparse on how this plan would cover costs for low-income workers. By front-loading the child tax credit, they would be sacrificing their tax credits on income tax returns for years to come.

“The bill thus provides no net new financial help for families,” she wrote in an article for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “In effect, it is a loan that families would repay during some of a family’s most financially crunched years. . . . Families who took this ‘advance’ would have to repay it for ten or 15 years.”

And who could forget Cassidy's most startling breach of the trust we are meant to place in our experts when, during a 2018 Fox News segment, the Senator from Louisiana demonstrated an alarming lack of understanding of how a jambalaya is prepared.  

While Mike Bayham might declare that Cassidy is "a senator without a party as of today," his consistent record of support for conservative causes and hostility toward the poor suggests that six years from now he will probably be as welcome as ever in either party.  Or to put it another way, he's not exactly someone "without options."

Whoa, settle down, Bill, you won

This is from a few weeks ago but I'm still thinking about it for some reason. Bill Cassidy says here that a half-hearted Joe Biden proposal to slowly replace fossil fuels over time will only happen, "over my dead body."  Seems a little bit much.  He's even embarrassing the oil lobbyists now. 

Tyler Gray, the president and CEO of Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, expressed less concern than Cassidy with Biden’s comments.

“We don’t have to choose between reducing emissions and meeting energy needs. We can do both,” Gray said in a statement. “We are proud of the grit, innovation, and progress we’ve made so that Americans no longer have to choose between environmental progress and access to affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy and we aren’t going anywhere.”

Interesting that Gray is more or less saying the Biden rhetoric verbatim. I wonder who he expected to win the Presidency. 

Of course when the window of discourse is only wide enough to allow for a "debate" between burning the world up as fast as possible vs. kind of pretending we are trying not to while it burns anyway, I guess people like Gray are playing with house money.  And since both Cassidy and Biden are going back to D.C. next year, it's going to stay that way.

Okay well check back next week

Tyler Bridges writes this in a pretty definitive tone so maybe it really is set in stone this time.  But, you know, Mitch has a habit of jumping into things at the last minute so maybe let's check back during qualifying just to be sure.

Mitch Landrieu, who served two terms as mayor of New Orleans, was elected statewide twice as lieutenant governor and has a national following after taking the lead in removing four Jim Crow-era monuments in New Orleans, long before the death of George Floyd led to a rethinking about racial injustice in the United States. Landrieu also had a personal reason to run – he could have avenged his sister’s defeat in 2014.

But Landrieu is staying out, even though national Democrats tried to coax him in, said a person close to the former mayor.

Landrieu did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his chief political adviser in Louisiana, Ryan Berni.

Also there was something of a buzz going around last week that KCP might be looking into a run at this after she stepped down as state party chair. But that might have just been light speculation.

Anyway, one would think that, despite the seemingly long odds, the Democrats would want to fight for every available Senate seat this year.  But, well, you know..

Work lists

Delusions.  

New Orleans’ tourism-dependent economy will remain shut down until at least June, business leaders said Thursday, with no one able to say with certainty when it will fully reopen.

“Based on the fact that the governor has extended the stay in place order until April 30 and we are nowhere near our peak [in infections] in New Orleans, it will be well into May and probably June before the stay-in-place order is released and we start to go back out,” said Stephen Perry, president and CEO of New Orleans & Co., which promotes tourism. “For tourists, we’re not anticipating anything until August or September. Our industry is just watching carefully and making sure we watch every health protocol.”

Ha ha, what?  Do they mean June of next year?  Because really even that seems optimistic. But when you are Stephen Perry and your business is basically marketing, you are trained to believe that real wealth is created entirely through perception management.  In a way it's hard to blame Perry for thinking that. It's certainly made him rich, anyway.  But it's also a chronically blinkered way of understanding what's going on out there. And it's why New Orleans's tourism ownership class should be the last people anyone turns to for policy advice right now. (Too late, I know.)

What will it take to "restart the economy?" The longer we go without providing the millions of suddenly jobless Americans a means of support during the shut down, the harder it will be.  There is a plan to do this but Congress left it sitting on the shelf before they adjourned for (at least) the rest of April. In the meantime we'll just keep handing all the money we print over to large corporations and  investment banks with little or no accountability as to what they do with it.

Neither Fed nor Treasury officials would comment on the record. But the Fed quietly began to signal its discomfort with onerous conditions on Monday when it unveiled the terms of two new corporate credit programs that are likely to play a significant role in the bailout. One had no restrictions on how borrowers can use the money, while the other had extremely mild limits on stock buybacks and dividends, and only for firms that defer their loan payments.

Those two programs represent an extraordinary escalation in fighting the crisis, empowering the Fed for the first time to buy investment-grade corporate bonds and financial instruments backed by corporate bonds, with the potential to expand to even riskier corporate debt once the Treasury injects some bailout funds as a backstop.

But while the programs don’t look like the “Trump slush fund” some Democrats feared, they don’t look like the worker-first initiatives some Democrats promised. Unlike the CARE Act’s separate $360 billion small business bailout, they impose no requirements that the beneficiaries use the money to retain their employees. And unlike the 2008 bank bailout, they impose no limits on executive pay.

It's important to understand that this favoritism toward Wall Street is a deliberate policy choice. We could be doing things very differently.  The same "money printing" process the Fed employs now to float trillions of dollars out to banks could be used to put cash in the hands of ordinary Americans who very badly need it right now.  Economist Stephanie Kelton briefly explained this in a column for the Intercept last week.

Think back to 2019, when the political conversation centered around the Democratic presidential primaries and whether we could afford the kinds of ambitious spending proposals being pushed by Sanders or Warren. Neither of them admitted it at the time, but Congress could have canceled student loan debt, lowered Medicare’s eligibility age to zero, or paid to make public colleges and universities tuition-free simply by writing a bill that sent one set of instructions to the Fed. Spending or not spending money is always a political choice. 

That’s not to say that Congress can authorize multitrillion-dollar spending bills left and right without ever building in offsets to subtract dollars out of the economy. There are limits.

But the limits aren’t financial. Uncle Sam can’t run out of dollars. The U.S. government is the issuer of our currency — the U.S. dollar — which means that, unlike Greece, it can never find itself in a situation in which it has bills coming due that it can’t afford to pay. Remember, Greece gave up its sovereign currency — the drachma — and started borrowing in what is effectively a foreign currency — the euro — when it joined the Economic and Monetary Union in 2001. That’s why it (and other) countries in the eurozone experienced a debt crisis and countries like Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. did not. 

So what are the limits for a currency-issuing government like the United States? The answer is inflation. The government can’t run out of money, but it can run out of things to buy (including labor). We are constrained by our real resources — i.e. our technical know-how and the available supply of workers, factories, machines, raw materials, and so on. As long as the economy isn’t already operating at full capacity, then it is reasonable for Congress to send just one set of instructions to the Fed.

This is the point that gives lie to every conservative and neoliberal trope about "how you pay for it." What we're really bounded by is how much the economy can produce and for whom. What Kelton is saying there is we can keep printing money until we produce enough stuff to match it. The money gun is real. It's just that the choices we make about where to target it are meant to prop up the status quo rather than benefit most Americans.

Instead the biggest cash infusion into the economy will support destructive activities.  Here's how that could end up affecting the New Orleans economy in June whenever it is ready to go back to business. 

In Louisiana, four dozen hotels — ranging from some of the largest, well-known brand names in New Orleans, like the Hyatt Regency, to budget roadside inns in Lake Charles — are financed by a total of $1.1 billion of the kind of loans that can make them the potential prey for so-called vulture investors, who specialize in targeting businesses during troubled times.

The loans, called commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS, differ from traditional bank mortgages in that they are pooled together, converted into bonds and sold to investors, such as hedge funds or pension managers.

That means that instead of dealing with a traditional bank when there are payment problems, hotel owners with these loans must answer to "special servicers" who represent only the interest of the bond investors.

What this means is several New Orleans hotels could find themselves vulnerable to private equity firms who specialize in carving up companies with financial vulnerability, selling off their assets, and putting their employees out of work. It's similar to what happened to Bayou Steel last year. The result is more workers are left to fend for themselves.

No worries, though. Here comes Bill Cassidy to help. In this Wall Street Journal op-ed Cassidy (along with Christopher Mores) plans to get everyone back to work sooner than later by putting them on a list.

To restart the economy, the government needs to set up coronavirus-immunity registries. At the same time, widespread testing is necessary to document immunity in those who haven’t fallen sick. A recent report from China found that 100% of patients tested two weeks after symptoms cleared had antibodies for the coronavirus. Recovering from a known coronavirus infection or having a positive antibody test is likely to indicate immunity lasting for at least some time. Those who so demonstrate that they are immune can be allowed to return to work. The whole community is freer when herd immunity is established.

Dr. Cassidy is well aware that the science on "herd immunity" to COVID 19 still has a long way to go. One "recent study from China" doesn't get you there. "Immunity lasting for at least some time" is vague, also. At this point we still don't know how long any acquired immunity lasts.  But the "allowed to return to work" is the real kicker. What he means is "compelled."

And that is what all of these policy choices taken together add up to. 10 million newly unemployed Americans' lives are meant to be kept as precarious as possible so that there will be plenty of compliant labor available when we get "back to business." We run the big money printer for Wall Street firms. We attach labyrinthine thickets of red tape to small business loans. And we give working people $1200 maybe 5 months from now.  But, hey, at least we'll have a list of who is "allowed" to work. That's real progress.

Back on Bill's bullshit

An item of some local interest appeared in last night's State of the Union address.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy's hoping his paid family leave proposal will get a boost from President Donald Trump after Tuesday's State of the Union address.

During Trump’s address, he called on Congress to pass the Advancing Support for Working Families Act that Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, has taken a lead role in sponsoring.

“Forty million American families have an average $2,200 extra thanks to our child tax credit,” Trump said.

As this article goes on to point out, though Bill's proposal is so bad it can barely even be considered a "tax credit."  It's an advance that you can borrow against an existing tax credit.

Under Cassidy’s plan, parents could borrow against future benefits from the federal Child Tax Credit that was doubled under the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. New parents would qualify for a $5,000 advance on the credit when a child is born or adopted. For the following 10 years, those parents would be eligible for a $1,500 Child Tax Credit, instead of the $2,000 credit otherwise allowed.

Bill is just telling people they have to use their own future money in order to partially cover present expenses. But it's the present expenses that new parents actually need to mitigate.  Bill's idea is no help at all there. If anything it is an impediment to actual progress.

Further, this proposal comes at a time of existing bipartisan support for more generous and comprehensive family leave policies. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLaura (D-Conn.) have introduced a competing, bipartisan plan with hundreds of cosponsors in the House and Senate.

The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY) would guarantee “up to 12 weeks of paid leave each year. . .and for self-care or the care of a seriously ill family member. It would pool small contributions from employees and employers,” Chun-Hoon wrote in the Arizona Capitol Times, noting that this bill is modeled off of existing legislation in eight states and the District of Columbia.

Contrary to the Cassidy-Sinema plan, existing state legislation and the FAMILY Act ensure that low-income workers get their full paychecks during leave and can keep their jobs when they are ready to return.

Bill's bill isn't the only family leave bill. It isn't even the only "bi-partisan" family leave bill.  But it is the one Trump chose to highlight.  Why? Maybe Bill just has that certain sort of genius that Trump favors.

This is what happens when you have no friends.

They let you put up a huge sign at your DC fundraiser with Washington misspelled.

Someone get this man a dictionary and a map of the city where he pretends to work. pic.twitter.com/6kBViTsDMJ

— Antoine Pierce for U.S. Senate (@AntoinePierce) February 5, 2020

   

No time to wall off Orleans Parish before Monday

Yeah, well...

President Donald Trump will be in New Orleans on Monday (Jan. 14) for an appearance at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 100th annual convention. The organization confirmed the president’s visit Wednesday.

Oh good lord why does he need to come here and do those things he does? I have no idea why but I did tune in to watch his TV show the other night.  The back and forth between Trump and the steely gaze of Chuck/Nancy was like sitting through a neighborhood associating meeting where one crank was going on about some cockamamie plan to buy a street from the city and turn into a gated community while the "reasonable" alternative from the rest of the groups was to hire rent-a-cops to run all the kids off.   And people take this insane shit seriously as though it merits actual discussion. Afterward some highly paid talking heads implored the two sides to find a "compromise" between their two very right wing positions. This is the reason I can't watch cable news anymore.

Meanwhile Senators John and Bill have weighed in. Just in case anyone was wondering if they were still bad. They are.

After President Donald Trump's televised Oval Office address last night in which he repeated his call for a physical border wall separating the United States from Mexico, U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Neely Kennedy reintroduced legislation that would have Americans, not Mexico, paying for its construction.

Also Governor John Bel said yesterday that, while he definitely thinks the shutdown is bad, maybe they could give Trump... like... part of a wall or a wall-like thing or whatever.  Because, at heart, really, "both sides" just want to be cruel to migrants and isn't that what's really important?

Edwards said he personally believes that a combination technique could be used to strengthen border security.

“I support border security and I think a combination of barriers, technology and people ought to be able to get it done," he said. “It just seems to me like there’s enough common interest on both sides, if they would just sit down and discuss it, they’d work their way through it.”

Anyway, now we're gonna have to deal with Trump traffic if we plan on being downtown on Monday. It's already bad enough down there as it is. 

Bill, why?

What a weird dude.

Um. Are those... photoshopped beads? #lalege #lagov #GeauxVote https://t.co/qwYmluQ7iK

— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) November 7, 2018

Okay but identify the villains

Here is a brief article in the Guardian US about efforts to organize workers in Louisiana's seafood processing plants.  Perhaps this is an overly optimistic account but it says here the local workers are succeeding at finding common cause with the "guest workers" brought in on H-2b visas.

Formed in 2017 as an offshoot of organizing being done by the National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice the Seafood Workers Alliance has hundreds of members in 15 different plants throughout Louisiana.

The organization has focused heavily on suing employers and building alliances with local communities so that workers can help push back when they face abuses in the workplace. They’ve built deep ties in particular with the African American community. Often, low wage employers have attempted to pit low wage African American workers against Latino workers, who many saw as coming to Louisiana to take their jobs.

Through combined struggle, the workers have learned that, while their struggles are different, their problems both with local employers and enforcement are similar.

“Look, we understand now that when they say deportation that’s incarceration for black people,” said Alfred Marshall, a middle-aged African American activist with Stand with Dignity, also a project of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.

“When they say undocumented, we know that there are over 50,000-60,000 people in New Orleans who have outstanding warrants on them that can’t even go get a job because of the fear they have,” said Marshall.

“The language they use is different, but the problems are the same and now we understand that better than ever.”

The employers in this industry thrive on exploiting the H-2 program which subjects foreign workers to horrendous abuses and depresses the wages and working conditions of the Americans they are forced to compete with.   Here is an extended Buzzfeed feature from 2015 on the appalling conditions imposed on guest workers in Louisiana and elsewhere. 

Each year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and South Africa come to America on what is known as an H-2 visa to perform all kinds of menial labor across a wide spectrum of industries: cleaning rooms at luxury resorts and national parks, picking fruit, cutting lawns and manicuring golf courses, setting up carnival rides, trimming and planting trees, herding sheep, or, in the case of Valdez, Gonzalez, and about 20 other Mexican women in 2011, peeling crawfish at L.T. West Inc.

A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on government databases and investigative files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, thousands of court documents, as well as more than 80 interviews with workers and employers — shows that the program condemns thousands of employees each year to exploitation and mistreatment, often in plain view of government officials charged with protecting them. All across America, H-2 guest workers complain that they have been cheated out of their wages, threatened with guns, beaten, raped, starved, and imprisoned. Some have even died on the job. Yet employers rarely face any significant consequences.

Many of those employers have since been approved to bring in more guest workers. Some have even been rewarded with lucrative government contracts. Almost none have ever been charged with a crime.

In response to these outrages, the Department of Labor tightened some of the rules intended to protect against some of these abuses. This was immediately opposed by Senator Bill Cassidy and then-Congressman Charles Boustany. They both frequently boast of the "friends" they have in the industry.  Over the past few years, enforcement of the new rules has been de-funded and other restrictions on the guest worker program selectively modified by the Trump Administration although courts have ruled the DOL does retain enforcement authority should it choose to exercise it.

In any case, it's good to see the organizing efforts of both foreign and native workers in Louisiana meeting with some measure of success. That is, if the situation is as rosy as that Guardian story implies.  In not mentioning our industry-friendly Republican Senators or our insane President, they seem to have left some important villains out of the narrative.

He's a weird dude

What

An Illinois native who moved to Louisiana as a child and grew up about 20 minutes from the Jambalaya Capital of the World, Gonzales, Cassidy told a national audience: “I’m not sure there was a roux within that jambalaya. And as everyone back home knows, first you make a roux, r-o-u-x. And that is upon which you base your jambalaya. I’m not sure I tasted a roux.”

Not entirely sure Bill Cassidy knows what food is. 

Letters

The Louisiana ACLU has some things to say about Mitch Landrieu's plan to install surveillance cameras in every bar, restaurant, and corner store in the city.

The New Orleans City Council recently proposed an ordinance, No. 32-107, that would put the city's already-intrusive surveillance apparatus on steroids, subjecting New Orleanians to near-constant monitoring of their daily lives.

While presented as an innocuous measure to reduce crime, this heavy-handed government surveillance mandate would impose exorbitant costs, violate the constitutional right to privacy, undermine trust with the community and have a chilling effect on our public spaces - without reducing crime or making the city safer.

 See also, this

The Trump administration is spying on us. It’s wrong, un-American, and unconstitutional.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the National Security Agency operates at least two spying programs, PRISM and Upstream, which threaten our privacy and violate our Fourth Amendment rights.

Section 702 will expire in 2017, so Congress has to decide soon whether to reauthorize or replace it. We have a real chance at winning important reform to put constitutional limits back on government surveillance.

But how can we effectively push back against the fascistic Trump Administration's surveillance operations if our mayor and mayor elect endorse the same sort of policy?  I am of the belief that, all politics being local, we ought to start with the fascists on our own block and then go from there. We failed so badly at this this year in New Orleans... but that's another post.

The New Orleans DSA chapter has some things to say about Trump's tax plan.

This is the many-times-debunked "trickle-down economics" at its absolute worst. Kennedy professes to care about fiscal responsibility on the part of the individual citizen. What part of increasing the deficit by a trillion dollars is fiscally responsible? U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy claims to care about providing health care to the working poor. But the repeal of the individual mandate will raise premiums and increase uninsured rates drastically. This tax scam cuts almost $400 million in Medicare in Louisiana next year alone.

This will cost lives. Any appeal they invoke to ideology is a sham: this is a giveaway to the rich and corporations. Our senators are appeasing their donors off the backs of the poor. Not only that, but the bill was passed in the middle of night with illegible handwritten notes scribbled in the margins. Those are not the signs of a healthy democracy. That is a sign of extreme disregard for the voices of the people. Stand up for your constituents, senators, and use your seats in the Senate to stop the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

So now Bill Cassidy is all freaked out about the commies under his bed or something.  Meanwhile, the bill itself looks like it's on its way out of conference. So if anybody has any more ideas on how to scare Cassidy, now would be the time. 

I wonder what the term is

It's hard to imagine a descriptor for something an attorney can become that is worse than what they already are. (Bam! Lawyer joke! Nailed it!)

There is an old saying among attorneys about what one of their number turns into on becoming a federal judge.

The unflattering term they employ cannot be quoted here.

But whether it will apply to Wendy Vitter will not be the focus of their attention when, as seems highly likely, she joins the bench in New Orleans. In her case, the question must be not how she will treat counsel appearing before her, but whether she will have any idea what she is doing.

Judge Wendy Vitter

Bill Cassidy continues to deliver the goods for his key constituents. 

Cassidy has taken the lead on the nomination, under an agreement between Cassidy and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, also a Republican.

Her nomination could generate controversy given the potential appearance that Cassidy is returning a political favor. David Vitter played a decisive role in helping Cassidy win election to the Senate three years ago. 

Vitter served two terms in the Senate before losing the 2015 governor’s race and then announcing he would not seek a third term in 2016. He is now a lawyer and lobbyist.

Simple as that

Cassidy: Y'all are on your own.

Cassidy acknowledged that his legislation will cut federal spending on health care. He said states that think they need more money should raise their own taxes to pay for it.

Republicans control 32 of 50 state legislatures. Let's go ask them how they feel about raising taxes to make up this gap. 

Block grant funding in 2020 would be $26 billion, or 16 percent, below projected current law federal funding for Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies.  The block grant would grow by only 2.0 percent annually, well below medical cost inflation and even general cost inflation.  By 2026, block grant funding would be $83 billion, or 34 percent, below projected current law federal funding.  States would be forced to sharply scale back coverage as these block grants became increasingly inadequate.

Maybe Cameron Henry has some ideas about that.... 

Bill's bad bill is bad, still

I think maybe now, Cassidy just wants to be the guy in the news. It doesn't look from the outside like he's making any progress. But he sure thinks he is. Anyway he's having a great time.

Cassidy cited a Thursday closed-door Republican lunch as a turning point in favor of the bill.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll get there on the Republican side,” he said, calling the midweek discussion what "may have been my best day as a senator."

“We’re probably at 48, 49, and talking to two or three more," he said.

An aide to Cassidy said later that they still believe there’s a path to 50 votes, even without Paul’s support.

Cassidy and Graham are also expecting Senate Republican leadership and possibly President Donald Trump to lend support in the coming days, to push it over the finish line.

“I’m hoping that the president will show the same enthusiasm to repeal Obamacare that President Obama showed to pass it,” Graham said on Wednesday.

Cassidy's plan is dogshit, by the way.  And since there's no substantial difference between this and the last repeal plan, they're going to face the same issues trying to pass it. Maybe McCain will maverick the other way next time or something. But that's not likely. 

Make it stop

See what we've got here is a choice between a "liberal" plan and a "moderate" plan.

WASHINGTON -- Liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont plans Wednesday (Sept. 13) to unveil his bill for creating a system where the government provides health insurance for everybody. Moderate Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and his Republican colleagues plan to release details of a last-ditch effort to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law.

Of course there is nothing "moderate" about Bill Cassidy or his plan to gut Medicaid.  But still this framing persists.

#NeverForget

Bill Cassidy is still trying to kill Medicaid for some reason.

WASHINGTON — For months, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy has poured his time into possible replacements for the Affordable Care Act. And he's continued to plug away, even after most other Republicans moved on to other priorities after this summer's dramatic defeat of their proposal to overhaul Obamacare.

A deadline for Republicans to undo the healthcare law on a party-line vote in the Senate, widely viewed as their only shot at repeal, looms at the end of the month. The exact language of Cassidy’s plan remains a work in progress. Meanwhile, some of his Republican colleagues have sounded skeptical notes about its chances.

Yet Cassidy, who plans to unveil a new draft of the bill he’s been writing with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Monday, struck an optimistic note in an interview this week.

Probably because of bipartisanship or something.

Can we please stop praising Bill Cassidy?

Are we finally ready to get over our obsession over Bill Cassidy's "bipartisanship"?   You might think it would be enough now that he is continuing to lead the charge against the Affordable Care Act even after the defeat of last month's repeal effort. This week, Gambit highlighted the release of a CBPP report that's been in the works for a while.  The report shows the potential devastating effect of passing the latest version of Repeal/Replace Cassidy has been hawking.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, released a new analysis this morning evaluating the effects of the Cassidy-Graham amendment attached to the Senate's most recent health care plan. Should Cassidy-Graham form the basis of a new ACA repeal effort, as some have speculated it might, the report warns it may share many problems with earlier Senate plans. According to the analysis, under a Cassidy-Graham plan, Louisiana could lose $2.3 billion in health care funding by 2026.

"In general, the plan would effectively punish states that have been especially successful at enrolling low- and moderate-income people in the Medicaid expansion," the report said. (More than 400,000 people in Louisiana are estimated to be covered under the state's Medicaid expansion.) "It would cause many millions of people to lose coverage, radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid [and] increase out-of-pocket costs for individual market consumers."

And yet any given afternoon this past month, we have been liable to find local commentators like Stephanie Grace here hopeful, as ever, that Cassidy finally has an opportunity to get together with some Serious People and "actually do some good."

While President Donald Trump has tauntingly threatened to let Obamacare "implode" by withholding key payments due insurers who offer policies on the law's exchanges, HELP chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic ranking member Patty Murray of Washington have scheduled hearings next month aimed shoring them up instead. So Cassidy — along with the two other Republican opponents of skinny repeal, Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, who are also on the committee — may finally get to do something on health care.

Unlike all those repeal and replace proposals that died, this is an effort that would likely get bipartisan support. And more importantly, it could actually do some good.

What the "some good" that we're expecting to be done here could actually be, Grace doesn't say.  It is implied, though, that the aforementioned bipartisan support would be all the validation she or any of us should require of any policy. 

The week prior, Grace based yet another column on the ridiculous premise that, during the latest round of Obamacre Follies, Bill Cassidy represented some "less draconian" approach to denying people health care.  Grace asserts in that column, "There's a lot of work left to do in the middle," implying that Cassidy really wants to approach health care policy from what we are to presume is a reasonable, "centrist" position.  By framing the debate this way, Grace does her readers and anyone concerned about health care policy a disservice.  Cassidy is trying do work "in the middle." Therefore Casssidy's radical proposal to cut and block grant Medicaid is suddenly a "centrist" position.  In searching for a virtuous middle to praise, we've allowed the the bounds of the discussion to list still further to the right.

Also curious has been Grace's continual fascination with Cassidy's citing of the so-called "Jimmy Kimmel Test," which came into the vernacular because a professional celebrity interviewer told a story about how the pre-existing conditions provision of the ACA affected him personally.  Because no hardships actually exist in this country until they are experienced by millionaires on TV, Kimmel's name became attached to anyone wishing to express vaguely defined doubts about the various repeal bills.  The "test" itself was defined differently by different people. It could have meant a requirement that pre-existing conditions remain protected, but Cassidy never committed to such a thing so that didn't really happen.  Generally it just meant, let's not make Jimmy Kimmel immediately sad.

And the thing that makes Jimmy Kimmel the most sad is "partisanship."  Which made this an especially stupid test.

Note that Kimmel laid the blame for this “nonsense” at the feet of “partisan squabbles.” In his telling, the fault lies not with one of the “teams” but with the games they play in Washington, at the expense of the rest of us. But this is an untenable analysis of the political present.

Kimmel might have paused to ask exactly why the positive change in health care reform that he described occurred in 2014. If he had, he might have noticed that it was the result of another “partisan squabble”—i.e., a bill that the Democratic Party had pushed and passed and that the entire Republican Party had made it their singular mission to oppose.

All politics is a "partisan squabble." Politics is a thing what we have to do because we have serious disagreements about policy goals.  Some of us want to make quality health care available to everyone regardless of their material circumstances.  Others among us would prefer to give rich people huge tax cuts regardless of the consequences.  There's no "bi-partisan solution" to this.  There is conflict. From that conflict inevitably comes imperfect results and even what we might call compromise. But there are also winners and losers determined in the process. So it matters which "team" you are on. Which means, also, you have to be on one.

I suppose it's fine that celebrity muffinheads like Kimmel don't really understand this. But it's more difficult to understand how someone like Grace, whose job it is to write about politics, does not. Or that she pretends not to when it suits her or her paper's preference for promoting "bipartisanship" as a virtue unto itself. Media gatekeepers who trade in this delusion are not only obscuring the substance of the policy debate they describe.  By setting the limits of what is politically possible when the health care of millions of Americans is at stake, they may even be endangering lives.