Death stars and carbon bombs

In most of the country, Labor Day Weekend is where we make the psychic turn from summer to fall, even if the calendar doesn't quite yet agree. In Louisiana, September is a liar. School is back in session. Football has kicked off. The Halloween decorations have been up at Rouses for weeks now. But outside, the heat and humidity remain. And, of course, Hurricane Season moves into its most active period. The August 29 date marks not just the anniversary of Katrina, but also Isaac and Ida, so the seasonal transition can be an especially traumatic one.  This year the temporal ecotone delivers us into peak storm season from the most brutal heat most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. The state is still so hot and dry that the Governor is warning people not to fire up the grill for the holiday. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, as we head into the marquee part of Hurricane Season, the Washington Post greets us with a predictably depressing update on Louisiana's sinking coastline. 

A group of scientists at Tulane University have also been investigating the situation. They found that across more than 200 wetland monitoring stations, seas are almost always rising faster than wetlands are able to grow — meaning that most wetlands are in a state of “drowning.” Their work, which is unpublished, tracked changes between 2009 and 2021.

“The number of the ‘drowning’ sites is much more than I thought before I started” the research, said Guandong Li, a PhD student at Tulane who led the work. “About 90 percent of these sites are unable to keep up with this recent high rate of sea level rise.”

"In a state of drowning."  I'm petitioning for a bill next year that let's me buy a license plate with, "The Drowning State" printed on it. Anyway, we know this information all too well now.  The current effort to protect and rebuild the coast is proving to be no match for accelerating sea level rise.

Sea level rise is driven both by land sinking — or subsidence — and the rising of the ocean. In the case of the current Gulf Coast surge, research suggests it is occurring in regions with and without major subsidence, implying a dominant role for the ocean.  The faster seas rise, the less effective the state’s widely praised plans to protect its coast will be.

In 2012, Louisiana projected that, if sea level rise and other environmental threats remain modest, it would be able to rebuild land within 50 years. But a new plan released this year assumes faster sea level rise more consistent with current trends and shows considerable land losses by late this century — even in more optimistic scenarios.

“Over the period of 10 years, the state has gone from potentially being in a net gain situation to potentially being in [a] very significant net loss situation,” said Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “And that’s despite the best efforts of some very dedicated people.”

Those "best efforts" Kolker is talking about end up being cancelled out by all the carbon bombs 

In 2016, the U.S. exported its first tanker of liquified natural gas, or LNG, from Cheniere’s Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish. Since then, fossil fuel firms have built four more export terminals in the Gulf South with plans for 20 more. Even before the terminals were built, the initial emissions estimates to regulators were so alarming that some environmental advocates described the planned facilities as “carbon bombs.”

Now, it seems that the reality is more grim than the predictions. All five of the active LNG export terminals in the Gulf South have leaked pollutants. People who live near the export terminals say the facilities are belching higher levels of toxic and climate-warming pollution into the air than originally estimated – which threatens the air quality of communities already burdened by pollution. 

For example, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass export facility, in south Louisiana, exceeded hourly emissions limits of its air permits more than 100 times in 2022, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which sent the company a consolidated compliance order in June, warning that fines were possible. 

Industry marketing campaigns tout natural gas as a “cleaner” alternative, because burning it produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal, to generate the same amount of energy. But leaks and emissions can erase those benefits, because natural gas is primarily composed of methane, the potent greenhouse gas.

It's a real boom in these bombs. It makes me a little bit sentimental for the days of the Bobby Jindal regime when the Wall Street Journal heralded the coming of "Qatar on the Bayou."  At that time, Louisiana's industrial tax credit subsidies promised to bestow on us gleaming corridors of "fertilizer plants, boron manufacturers, methanol terminals, polymer plants, ammonia factories and paper-finishing facilities," up and down the Mississippi.  That article (yes it's paywalled but trust me) featured commentary from the fossil industry's resident.. uh.. fossil in Louisiana, economist Loren Scott who promised that once the 10 year tax breaks expired, our school districts would "find themselves with a bonanza" on their hands.  But fast-forward to this year and Louisiana public schools are seeing crashing enrollments, a drain on public funding that benefits private schools, and a superintendent who panders to the hate groups coordinating book bans. Some bonanza. 

Nevermind the formal education, though. Louisiana is more proud of its entrepreneurial spirit anyway. Just look at these creative solutions we're applying so we can make real progress here in 2023, the hottest year on record. 

Instead of lowering their emissions, two Gulf Coast LNG facilities, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, have asked state officials to make the situation right by increasing the amount of pollution they are permitted to spew into the air.

All together, in the United States, 25 planned projects to expand and build new export terminals will produce more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gasses annually, according to “Playing with Fire: the Climate Impact of the Rapid Growth of LNG,” a 2022 report from the Environmental Integrity Project that based its conclusions on the projected emissions given to regulators before the facilities were granted permits.

“That’s almost as much climate-warming pollution as 18 million passenger vehicles running for a year,” the report noted.

But uh oh. There's trouble brewing, says this Times-Picayune article. The precious boom in carbon bombs might be slowing down as the market becomes saturated. You might think it's time to rein the established players back in on all that methane and CO2 they're allowed to blow off into the air.  You'd be wrong, though. We're doing this instead. 

The Lower Energy Costs Act — which aims to speed up environmental review processes for LNG terminals and other energy projects, among myriad issues — passed the Republican-led House earlier this year but hasn’t moved in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The legislation was spearheaded by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Republican Rep. Garret Graves, both of Louisiana.

Loosening the regulatory burden would help the smaller projects that can’t handle lengthy reviews, though it would further exacerbate environmental risks for Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Slocum said.

“If you remove that FERC regulatory process, and you allow some of these smaller scale facilities to basically just take your local zoning board out for a steak dinner and you got yourself your building permit and you can start construction the next day and you can finish it in 12 months, obviously that’s a big advantage,” Slocum said.

Critics of Scalise and Graves's bill have been calling it the "Polluters over People Act" (missing an obvious opportunity to call it the Steak Dinner for Polluters Act.) It would place limits on the time and resources available to federal regulators charged with approving or rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure projects.  It would also limit the law's ability to protect communities from the inevitable harm these facilities produce.

Such inevitable harm includes the 360 wildfires currently raging across the state due to an unprecedented drought brought on by fossil fuel driven climate change. It also would include a different kind of fire set off at the Marathon Refinery last week in St. John Parish, itself only the latest example of the tons of toxic chemicals released into Louisiana's air and water each year.  And of course who could forget the even more desecrated and faster sinking coastline wrought by all of this activity as well.

But the consequences of the boom are most visible on the Gulf Coast, mostly on the rural fringes of the Louisiana coast.

Grist reviewed dozens of state and federal records, and found that, even as regulators from state agencies like the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) hasten to greenlight new terminals, the handful of terminals that have begun operation are exposing residents of coastal parishes to dangerous levels of air pollution from flares and leaks.

Louisiana environmental regulators recently cited numerous violations at Venture Global’s LNG terminal in Cameron Parish in southwestern Louisiana. But five hours away, on the southeastern edge of the state, they are allowing the company to move forward with the Delta LNG plant near McAnespy’s home in Plaquemines.

In places like Plaquemines, gas exporters are building their plants on eroding swampland, where there is an increased risk of catastrophic accidents and explosions during floods and hurricanes. People like McAnespy, who live in neighborhoods surrounding the terminals, are right in the blast zone.

“It’s not just that each of these facilities is like a giant death star on sinking land, it’s that there’s so many of them,” said Elizabeth Calderon, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice who has worked on cases challenging LNG terminals in south Louisiana.

“This is how sacrifice zones are created,” she said.

And there's Louisiana 2023 in a nutshell. For the mere price of a few well placed steak dinners, you can deploy your very own Death Star to carbon bomb our sacrifice zone.  

But anyone can tell you there's a ton of money to be made in wartime for the savvy investor regardless of which side is actually winning. And why should the war on climate change be any different? Insurers understand this. They're already planning to win the next battle. There might not be much of a future in writing policies for homeowners in South Louisiana or Florida.. or California.  You know what you can insure, though?  More Death Stars. 

The companies no longer insuring Louisiana homes are well-known, but those insuring LNG terminals are not. Government agencies require proof of insurance for fossil fuel projects, but those documents are often shielded from the public as developers claim confidential business information exemptions, even going to court to prevent insurers’ names from becoming public.

In early June, anti-fossil fuel campaign Insure Our Future got a rare look into one gas export terminal in Texas: Freeport LNG. First published in E&E News, Freeport’s insurers are largely specialty or reinsurance companies, but a few are also involved in the property market, including Liberty Mutual, AIG and Chubb.

Most insurers and LNG companies contacted for this story – including AIG, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Venture Global – either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. While no insurance information for terminals in coastal Louisiana has become public, their insurers are likely to come from similar kinds of companies.

Oil and gas projects along the Gulf Coast have long been “a major market” for specialty insurance carriers, Keenan says.

This is how climate policy is formulated. Insurers, and investment capital firms are making decisions about what is viable. Such decisions carry massive impacts for ordinary people but allow them no input beyond their limited role as consumers. And, in accordance with the dictates of our capital de-risking matrix, anyone who can't afford the increasing costs of living along a sinking coast of a rising sea is allowed to fall off and fail on an isolated individual basis. Political factors, we are told, has no consideration here.  Most convenient for elected policymakers, these problems are all off their desks. The real choices are abstracted away to private investors and explained simply as market determinants. 

And the market has determined that we do not need to invest in sustainable equitable and healthy communities in order to generate profit. Those things, we can happily sacrifice in the fire or in the flood, whichever comes first. The net effect is a re-calibration of who and what can survive where. In this way,  New Orleans becomes a boutique resort where nobody actually lives.  Grand Isle can "boom" but only as an exclusive fishing camp for millionaires. And towns all up and down the bayou can be swallowed whole by extractive industry. 

Now here is where we have to remind ourselves not to go too far overboard with the "market decides" rhretoric. Remember, we're supposed to be moving past neoliberalism.  We're doing something called "Bidenomics" now. But mostly what that means is we are seeking the same sorts of policy outcomes as before but being slightly more explicit about the fact there's intention behind the program. Did you know, for example, that Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act "includes a bonanza for the carbon capture industry?"  That's what this headline says, anyway. And, hey, there's that "bonanza" word again. As we've already seen, that can only mean one thing.  More massive state subsidies for environmentally damaging heavy industry. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate on Monday and is poised to pass the House on Friday, includes a dramatic change in a crucial tax credit for the carbon capture industry—increasing the government subsidy for capturing CO2 from polluting sources from $50 to $85 per metric ton. Developers say that raising that incentive could tip many projects that once weren’t worth the investment over the financial finish line. The new bill also simplifies the process for receiving those tax credits, and opens the subsidy to smaller carbon capture projects, which together essentially fulfill a full industry wishlist for new carbon capture legislation. 

“The fact that [the legislation] actually happened isn’t a big surprise,” says Adrian Corless, CEO of CarbonCapture, a direct air capture startup. “The fact that it actually came out in such a good form and actually came out [so soon] is much better than we expected.”

What Democratic Party political consultants mean for us to get from this is the Biden Administration is directing a bold new industrial policy that fights climate change. What's actually happening, is much less impressive. In practice, Biden's initiatives are working out about as well for Louisiana as Bobby Jindal's program of industrial expansion did.  Consider that most carbon capture projects are "greenwashing" exercises. That is to say they are an elaborate token mitigation measure that allows polluting industries to carry on with business as usual.  

CCS does not do a good job of capturing and storage carbon. It struggles to exist, and when it does, it struggles to function. When it manages both, all it does is capture a tiny fraction of high-emitting process, supplying or burning fossil fuels, and the carbon it captures gets sent straight back to work worsening the climate crisis by jimmying the last dregs of oil from depleted reservoirs.

On top of all of this, it serves a rhetorical function; worsening the climate problem through the empty promise it provides.

And it's working. Joe Biden's carbon capture "empty promise" is enabling new projects in Louisiana.  A gas company called Air Products has, over the objections of local residents, already begun drilling a carbon pipeline that would inject waste material deep beneath Lake Maurepas.  Already they seem to have imploded a groundwater well in the process.  All of the new LNG carbon bombs and Death Stars are enabled by carbon capture promises as well. Maybe we're not quite ready to declare the next Qatar on the Bayou but you can see where we're going.  

Perhaps the biggest boondoggle in all of this, though, are so-called "direct air capture" projects like this one in Calcasieu Parish. 

Louisiana will receive up to $603 million in Department of Energy grant funding to create a direct air capture hub in Calcasieu Parish that is expected to generate about 2,300 total jobs, federal officials said.

Dubbed Project Cypress, the direct air capture hub will attempt to pull more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually directly from the atmosphere and sequester it deep underground, according to the Department of Energy.

No it won't. It will not do any of that. In the above cited article, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm enthuses that direct air capture projects are like “giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky.”  In reality, they are ineffective net energy consumers likely to produce at least as much carbon as they could ever remove. Ten days after the above article praising the supposed 2300 jobs (100 permanent jobs max) promised by Project Cypress, the T-P followed up with this explainer where we learn the dubious process is "like trying to mop the ocean." 

It is “a little bit like trying to mop the ocean,” said Jane Patton, plastics and petrochemicals campaigns manager at the Center for International Environmental Law.

Patton noted that Louisiana emitted somewhere between 211 million and 219 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2018, according to LSU’s most recent greenhouse gas inventory. At best, Project Cypress will sequester 1 million tons annually.

“We’re talking about a very big planet here and very small filtration mechanisms,” she said.

Patton said prior direct air capture pilot programs have missed their carbon dioxide sequestration goals while using more energy than promised. In addition, the filtration systems rely on amines and ethylene oxide, which are “very toxic.”

Patton is also wary of the injection aspect of both direct air capture and carbon capture, which requires liquefying carbon dioxide, transporting it via pipeline and injecting it deep under cap rocks within Louisiana’s “sinking geology,” as she put it.

“That has not been proven to work reliably anywhere in the world at the scale that industry is promising,” Patton said.

The very toxic inefficient process that has not been proven to work might not be good for de-carbonization.  But, as we've already seen, that's really beside the point. The Bidenomics bonanza here is in real estate. 

Ohio-based Battelle will be the project owner and will partner with Climeworks Corp. and Heirloom Carbon Technologies Inc. to develop the sequestration technology. Gulf Coast Sequestration will transport the carbon dioxide and bury it deep within Calcasieu Parish land owned by Stream Companies. Both Gulf Coast Sequestration and Stream Companies are led by W. Gray Stream.

Heir to a large oil fortune (and son of country singer Lynn Anderson), William Gray Stream is a well known Louisiana business and land baron with heavy political ties. Bobby Jindal appointed him to the state Board of Regents in exchange for a $10,000 campaign contribution.  He has also dabbled in the tech start-up world, having spent much of the past decade attempting to prop up the ill-fated Waitr food delivery app. Despite much cheerleading from the local press, that venture seems to have reached its ending last year. 

But it's the land investment where Stream is positioning himself for the real windfall. The land holdings corporation he has inherited and the "wetlands recovery" business he owns are primed to receive federal subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration, as well as any future attempts to prop up the waning carbon offset market which seem all but inevitable. And so, in this way, federal funds ostensibly meant to fight climate change are just being sucked up... kind of like a giant vacuum.... by a politically connected Louisiana failson.

Meanwhile the Drowning State, under attack from an arsenal of Death Stars and carbon bombs remains in a state of drowning.  And as Hurricane Season enters it peak, we may yet see another munition deployed. 

The heat dome responsible for record-breaking temperatures and drought in south Louisiana may have also created a ticking time bomb of "ridiculously warm" waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which could rapidly intensify any tropical storm approaching the state’s coastline, scientists say.

As the peak of hurricane season approaches — generally considered to be around Sept. 10 — conditions in the Gulf will be a major focus of concern for storm trackers.

"All of the shallow waters, including the coastal waters and tidal lakes, are ridiculously warm right now. So it’s primed for anything that works its way in," said Ben Schott, director of the National Weather Service office covering the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.

We got a look at this Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified to a category 4 storm before making landfall in Florida last week. Hopefully we won't get to see the Gulf "time bomb" explode anything in our path this year. We're doing a fair enough job at blowing ourselves to bits as it is.

Billy Nungesser: Climate pessimist

Plenty of interesting points in this story.  A lot of people in it are mad at Billy. Congressman Garret Graves is mad.  The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority's Chip Kline is mad. State rep Jerome Zeringue is mad.  I don't really know but it's likely he is exaggerating the impact the Barataria diversion will have on fisheries.  But he's also probably not entirely wrong.  There will be negative impacts. The fact that the CPRA plans for the state to spend millions of dollars mitigating those impacts is itself an acknowledgement of that.  

Frankly, Graves and Kline and Zeringue come off pretty arrogant here. They call Billy a "clown." They smugly accuse him of consulting "palm readers in Jackson Square" and making up "his own facts" that contradict what "scientists and engineers have verified."  But that line only makes sense if we assume Billy is arguing with them over the science.  Instead, this looks more like he is performing a political analysis.  And in that light, he actually has some valid points. For example,

Nungesser relayed many of these complaints to supporters at a meeting at the Covington Country Club late last month. In an impassioned speech, Nungesser said he thinks the diversions were conceived because former Gov. Bobby Jindal thought the innovative projects would help him run for president. Graves was Jindal’s CPRA head at the time.

He told the Covington audience that he got a “standing ovation” in Houma after he “called out Chip Kline,” according to a recording.

“Chip Kline texted me and called me a clown,” Nungesser said. “But I’m a clown that ain’t on the take.”

Okay well we won't go so far as to assume that Billy ain't also "on the take." It's just a possibility that has come up far too often.  We should not even dispute too heavily the notion that he is something of a "clown." But we have no doubt he's correct in suspecting his opponents have unsavory ulterior motives also. And we shouldn't discount his criticism out of hand.  

Besides, there is a certain internal logic to Billy's take on the future of the coast. He's always been pretty cynical in his approach to that. But that doesn't mean he's wrong. I mean, regardless of whether the Barataria plan happens I sure wouldn't bet against this prediction.

 Nungesser, in an interview, said he’s “tired of walking on eggshells about” the plan. He said the money doesn’t belong to Kline: “He’s not Jesus Christ.”

“I don’t care if I get elected to anything ever again. This is the biggest fraud ever pulled over our eyes,” Nungesser said. “There’s nothing to say this diversion will have any impact for 50 years. In 50 years we’re going to be having the Grand Isle fishing rodeo in Baton Rouge.”

Just cancel it

Tell the Corps to go run the dang money printer.  We've got enough problems here as it is.

Louisiana may significantly trim the $100 million annual bill it pays to cover its share of the $14.6 billion post-Katrina New Orleans area hurricane protection system if a gambit by the state's congressional delegation to require the Army Corps of Engineers to renegotiate the state's terms is successful.

On Wednesday, a House Transportation subcommittee agreed to include a renegotiation requirement authored by Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, in the House version of the 2020 Water Resources Development Act, which includes various projects overseen by the Corps. The provision also was supported by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, and Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans.

Besides it will give us a leg up on paying off the next massive levee project that will definitely have to be built in the next 5-10 years anyway if we are going to continue living here.

Who are we trying to sustain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can always be a little bit more cruel

We've been kicking and shaming and making life more difficult for poor people for so long now, it's a wonder there's anything more we could possibly take from them.  Garret Graves is working on it, though.

When Graves says in his press release, “It’s become a lifestyle for some to actively choose government assistance over work,” it’s another dog whistle: White conservatives take a kind of perverse and ignorant pride in their work and in their value as members of society. They would only take public assistance if they absolutely needed it.

But for others, it’s a lifestyle to actively choose not to. This plays into the idea that the poor and needy have morally failed somehow, that they choose their poverty– and therefore, it’s fair to disdain them, shun them, and make their lives more difficult by adding onerous requirements such as this one. (It’s no coincidence that the bill introduces requirements for SNAP recipients similar to probation: These requirements reflect a conservative belief that being poor is a moral failing that shows someone to be untrustworthy and of low character.)

This isn’t serious legislation. It is cruelty marketed as conservatism, Changes to federal law as part of the welfare reform of 1996 already prohibit anyone able-bodied, age 18-49, and with no dependents– the same people targeted in Graves’ bill– from receiving this benefit for longer than three months at a time. 

The emphasis is original to the piece. I decided to leave it in there since it points out that twenty years ago Bill Clinton decided the best way to answer Republican cruelty was to latch himself on to the brand.  Just agree to the basic principles of conservative policy so they can congratulate you on your bipartisan wisdom and everyone can get on with their lives.

Of course for many of us, getting on with our lives means being ground into the dirt by unnecessary obstacles to basic necessities placed in our way for the sake of political expediency.  But hey, that's "compromise," right? Sometimes you have to give up a little now in good faith to ensure they won't come back for more later.  Until they do. Then what? Compromise again, I guess.  You'll be a hero.

It turns out Democrats still think like this.  Even in the face of a Republican threat to "end Medicaid as we know it," party leaders are promoting a "bipartisan" compromise response this week they say is meant to attract more Republican support. Of course it won't.  If Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress continue decrying Obamacare as "socialism" and if Garret Graves can come back decades after Clinton and rail against imaginary welfare cheats, it should be clear by now there is no bipartisan solution that is going to satisfy them. However cruel you agree to be for them, they can always demand you be a bit worse.

 So, we have to ask what is it Democrats actually want?

But today, the political dynamics are there - precisely because CAP cannot win this fight. The odds of any CAP-crafted healthcare bill making it through Congress as an alternative to Trumpcare are effectively zero. The GOP may fail to pass Trumpcare, but if that happens it will be because of the GOP, not because of any clever maneuvering from CAP.

Once we dispense with the pragmatic-compromise explanation for the MSPRA, it's much easier to understand what CAP is doing. They are proposing a "bipartisan" patch on Obamacare, not because they think they can win through compromise, but because they largely agree with what Republicans want to do. They are promoting market-based healthcare instead of embracing popular support for single payer because they do not want to see single payer succeed. There's no counter-intuitive chess game going on here; liberals are telling the left exactly what they want, and we would do well to take them at their word.

(I added the emphasis that time. I was also tempted to put it in 72 point flashing type just for fun.)  

Wating for the pivot

Garret Graves is taking a "wait and see" posture with regard to Trump's devastating... er... um... "transformational" cuts to Louisiana coastal research funds.

U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, who was previously chairman of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said he's still taking a wait and see attitude on Trump's budget, at least until details of the budget are delivered to Congress in May.

"I do think it's important to look back at the history of presidential budgets, where you often see the shifting of the deckchairs, you don't see a lot of fundamental changes of form," Graves said. "But as the president talked about extensively on the campaign trail, he wanted to do something transformational. I embrace transformational change and some disruption because that absolutely needs to happen and I came here to take part in that." 

Supertaser

Garrett Graves and Cedric Richmond are working together on a "bi-partisan" solution to sell more surplus military equipment to local police departments.

The bill would establish a new office within the U.S. Department of Justice to review, develop and deploy nonlethal technology, Graves said in an interview with The Advocate late Tuesday. It would also provide funds for training police around the country on de-escalation techniques.

The new Justice Department office would look at technology being developed by the military and at the Office of Homeland Security, then try to refine those weapons for law enforcement. Additionally, it would look to developing new technologies, Graves said.

Richmond added, “Is there anything between a Taser and lethal force? We’re the country that put a man on the moon. If we put the incentives out there, someone will develop it.”

Graves said the bill would authorize $150 million of spending in the first year, then $100 million for the next three years and $125 million in the fifth year. The new spending is offset against existing funding so that it doesn’t create new taxpayer liabilities, he added.

Does he mean he wants to find something that hurts worse than a Taser? What would that be?

"Macro-manager"

This is a pretty flattering Bobby Jindal profile in this morning's Advocate. 

Jindal has been described by State Treasurer John Kennedy as a macro-manager, someone who sets the broad overall policy, then relies on aides to carry out the details.

Though the two Republicans elected statewide agree on little, Jindal agrees with that description. His approach is wonkish, focusing on abstract policies, on numbers and charts instead of back slaps.

It’s also a style that has attracted much criticism from legislators and other elected officials who say he is out of touch. Unlike previous governors who parked themselves on the side galleries of legislative chambers, calling lawmakers over for a quick consult, Jindal made only one or two trips per session, and then only briefly. Legislators say they rarely speak directly with Jindal.

Kennedy said he hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Jindal in eight years. When the governor needed help passing a controversial college tuition tax credit bill, however, his then chief of staff, Kyle Plotkin, asked the treasurer to call some legislators, Kennedy recalls.

And Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, a Republican who is officially in charge of the state when Jindal leaves on one of his many trips, says he’s never had the governor’s cellphone number.

Under certain circumstances, these sound like pretty good qualities in a boss. It almost makes you want to work for a guy like that.  In Jindal's case, though, it's not that he's a "hands-off" manager so much as he is very interested in limiting his own political liability. He's not empowering the people under him. He's making sure nobody blames him when they get caught screw up.

Besides, as we've seen, he can be very hands-on when he really wants to.  It's not the sort of management style that tends to inspire loyalty in those who get burned by it.

Left to the waves

Almost a decade's worth of hard work post-Katrina trying to get Louisiana its fair share of offshore oil revenues is about to be pissed away.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is proposing that off-shore revenue sharing -- slated to begin in 2017 -- be scrapped with a plan that would provide "broad natural resource, watershed and conservation benefits for the entire nation." The proposal is part of the president's $4 trillion budget, unveiled Monday (Feburary 2).

The revenue sharing, part of 2006 energy legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., was expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually for Louisiana for coastal restoration.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, who defeated Landrieu in the 2014 Louisiana Senate race, immediately promised a fight on the two Senate committees with jurisdiction over the revenue sharing legislation -- Appropriations and Energy. Last year, Landrieu chaired the Energy Committee.

"I will do everything in my power to use my seats on these committees to not only block the President's raid on oil and gas revenues, but fight to increase Louisiana's share of offshore revenue," Cassidy said. "Funding for coastal restoration must remain a promise to Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states."

Ha ha, freshman Senator Bill Cassidy will do everything in his power to help.  Great. 

Mary Landrieu made oil revenue sharing a top priority after Hurricane Katrina. Mary, like most Louisianians Republican and Democrat alike,  reasoned that, since Louisiana has borne the nearly immeasurable costs of an eroding coastline and increasingly catastrophic flooding in order to provide "the entire nation" the benefit of extracting the state's fossil fuels, we ought to be reimbursed for our trouble.  At least a little bit.  It's a big mess, all of this, and it will cost us at least $50 billion just to keep it in check.

For a while, we even got the rest of the country to agree with us on that small point.  Until 2015 when, I guess, Katrina is "over" so, hey, good luck!   I'd say maybe we should sue somebody but Governor Jindal and Congressman Graves have already told us that's a bad idea.

Tuesday Night Debateball

EWE vs. Garret Graves.  It's on the internet! You should watch.

Grifting the coast away

In the years ahead, South Louisiana will approach the coastal erosion event horizon; the point beyond which the more heavily populated places (Houma, Thibodaux, St. Bernard Parish.. New Orleans, eventually) will be inevitably lost to the sea.  Of course, the land we've already sacrificed amounts to a catastrophe in its own right.

Marshall reports for The Lens, a digital publication that collaborated with ProPublica on “Losing Ground,” an August investigation of Louisiana’s coastal erosion. The project used map simulations that drew wide media attention for a rendering of how much coastal forest has been swallowed and how far inland the Gulf is rising as south Louisiana sinks.

“Louisiana is drowning, quickly,” Marshall wrote in the main story. “In just 80 years, some 2000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy.”

An area the size of Delaware has disappeared. Acreage the size of a football field sinks in the Gulf on average once an hour. The federal government recently erased more than 20 communities south of New Orleans from the map – they’re underwater now.

But as the threat to more urbanized places rises, the more difficult it will be to ignore. This is not to say, though, that anything will be done to stop it.  Instead, the panic will mostly focus on who can squeeze the most money out of the land before it disappears forever and how.  So as we approach the sad end of this story, expect the true aim of what we'll call "coastal restoration" efforts to bear more toward maximizing profit than toward protecting communities.

One example of such was on display this New Republic article back in October.  The article described Billy Nungesser's plan to save Plaquemines Parish from floods by destroying it with chemical poison.

Nungesser and his critics are not as far apart as it might seem. Plaquemines Parish has made an unholy bargain with the energy industry. But nobody makes such a bargain without a reason; you only do so if you believe you’ve been forsaken. This is the situation in which Plaquemines found itself in 2006. When the White House announced its plan to rebuild the levee system after Katrina, it excluded the lower part of Plaquemines; a Bush administration representative questioned whether including the parish would be “economically justifiable,” given that its total population stood at just 15,000 before the storm. The unsubtle implication of this statement, and others like it in the months that followed, was that much of southern Louisiana would be abandoned to the Gulf of Mexico, cut off from the rest of the country like a gangrenous digit.

The Sierra Club’s Devin Martin believes Nungesser is luring industry to Plaquemines in order to extort the federal government into paying for flood protection. “They can’t justify getting federal funding if it’s just to save poor people in a flood zone,” Martin told me. “They need industry, in at-risk places.” Under Nungesser, said Martin, “the parish has made an art out of how to acquire FEMA dollars.”

It’s true. Since Hurricane Katrina, Plaquemines Parish, with the support of Baton Rouge, has done everything possible to entice fossil-fuel corporations—the very same corporations that have imperiled the existence of the fragile coast—to expand their business on the lower Mississippi. Once situated, the energy plants serve as a blackmail note. When you have industry, in at-risk places, you need insurance. You need levees. And, most importantly, the federal government needs you.

Nungesser, while placing his emphasis differently, doesn’t disagree with this interpretation. “If I had my choice, would I choose this kind of industry?” he asked. “Maybe not. I don’t know. But I do know that we’re going to have another hurricane. I know people don’t want to leave, but it’s coming. With industry there, we have a fighting chance to save these communities.”

But, of course, if the "community" belongs to a coal terminal, nobody will be able to live there.  Which means the only reason we're "saving" this land will be so that someone (say, Billy Nungesser) can sell it.

In 2012, the FBI launched a separate ethical investigation, but again Nungesser was not formally charged. More recently, Nungesser negotiated, on behalf of the parish, the contract to build the Port of Plaquemines on land near his home–land that he now intends to sell. “He put it where he owns land,” said Lawrence. “Now was that a coincidence, or did it happen for a reason?”

As the disaster becomes more and more desperate, the key to understanding Louisiana's coastal policy will not be a question of how many homes can be saved so much as a question of who is cashing out.  Think of this as a (quite literal) liquidation sale of South Louisiana.

It, at least partially, explains the state's tax-incentive driven "Qatar on the Bayou"industrial expansion.  It will probably explain what the city decides to do with the Wisner property once it finally establishes control of it.  And, to a large degree, it explains the nuts and bolts of Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan. 

In the works, for instance, is a last-minute media blitz in which Edwards will play up the links between Garret Graves and Gov. Bobby Jindal. Edwards figures that if Republicans can damn U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu as the handmaiden of the dreaded President Barack Obama, Graves might be similarly vulnerable as Jindal’s proté gé .

Edwards’ commercials, previewed by Louisianavoice.com, will not only stress Graves’ fealty to the floundering Jindal administration but suggest that it produced financial rewards. When Graves was Jindal’s top coastal adviser, his father’s company landed $130 million in Corps of Engineers contracts, of which $66 million was subcontracted out to companies that were suddenly consumed with a desire to make campaign contributions. They gave $250,000 to Graves and $360,000 to Jindal.

Remember Jindal and Graves worked very hard this year to halt a lawsuit that could have sped the process of getting the plan fully funded.  But this is really more about the direction of the money than it is the efficacy of it.

Oil and Gas Lawsuits

Yesterday, amid all the other news, we learned the details of a settlement between the Southeast Lousiana Flood Protection Authority East and two oil companies named in its much talked about and kicked around lawsuit for coastal damage. Here's more from Clancy DuBos.

Two privately held Texas oil companies that were among nearly 90 defendants named in the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East’s (SLFPA-E) landmark environmental lawsuit have settled with the flood authority for a combined total of $50,000 in damages, according to documents filed in federal court and statements by the attorneys involved.

The terms of the settlement were announced a few hours after attorneys for SLFPA-E, White Oak Operating Co., L.L.C. and Chroma Operating, Inc. filed a “Joint Motion for Order of Dismissal With Prejudice” in federal court on Thursday. Parties typically file joint motions to dismiss when they have reached an out-of-court settlement. Because the SLFPA-E is a public entity, the terms of the settlement had to be made public.

While the dollar amount of the settlement seems small at first glance, the fact that two oil companies have admitted responsibility for increased public exposure to hurricane-related flooding due to their operations in coastal wetlands — and agreed to pay damages — is huge. The settlement marks the first time an admission of this kind, along with payment of damages, has ever been made by energy companies.

Even the small.. call it a moral.. victory won there could never have happened had Bobby Jindal and the man he put in charge of Louisiana's coastal restoration effort, congressional candidate Garret Graves,  gotten their way.

At a minimum, the decision by some energy defendants to settle with SLFPA-E completely undercuts, if not outright disproves, the “frivolous lawsuit” meme that Gov. Bobby Jindal, former coastal “czar” Garret Graves (who is now a candidate for Congress in the 6th District) and legislative foes of the lawsuit have parroted ever since the suit was filed in July 2013. If the suit were truly “frivolous,” as Jindal continues to claim, defendants in the energy industry (who are accustomed to environmental litigation) would not have settled — particularly when a lawsuit breaks new legal and environmental ground, as the SLFPA-E suit clearly does.

This morning Graves finds himself in a runoff with former Governor Edwin Edwards. Edwards has crawfished a little on the lawsuit himself; at times appearing to support it and at others speaking more vaguely about "finding the parties responsible" for coastal erosion and holding them accountable.  But it's Graves who has stayed in lock step with Bobby Jindal as a critic of the "frivolous" lawsuit.  I don't think either has been asked to comment on this settlement just yet.

Meanwhile, speaking of "frivolous" Oil and Gas lawsuits, check this one out.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A North Texas city that sits atop a natural gas reserve is preparing for an extended court battle after voters made it the first in the state to ban further hydraulic fracturing — a fight that cities nationwide considering similar laws will likely be watching closely.

An industry group and the state's little-known but powerful General Land Office responded quickly to the measure Denton approved Tuesday night, seeking an injunction in District Court to stop it from being enforced.

See, it's frivolous when we (meaning our public bodies) sue them. But they, apparently can sue the hell out of us whenever we sneeze on them.. or spit up blood or whatever it is you do after drinking frack-tainted water.   That's what this guy thinks, anyway.

Battling the fracking ban will be Texas Land Commissioner-elect George P. Bush's first fight. The founding manager of an energy and infrastructure consultancy, Bush promoted the economic benefits of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, throughout his campaign.

Oh yee-haw the Daddy party really is back.  

Well what do you say?

Actually not gonna say much tonight about the national picture except just this little bit of told you so.  It's just a few paragraphs in the middle of this post from this morning about why Democrats lose these kinds of elections. Nothing I haven't said a million times.

When you insist on not being for anything in particular at a time when people are grasping for answers, they are going to grasp for the answers the other guy is offering no matter how bad those answers are for everyone. The cable news pundits are already on to wondering what the GOP will be like now that they are the "governing party."  But the answer is they won't change at all.

It's a dumb question anyway. Republicans aren't interested in governing. They're interested in protecting privilege while fanning the flames of phony outrage.  Where will they find the outrage now? It doesn't matter. But they do have subpoena power in the Senate now so it will be a fun hunt.  The point is the next two years aren't about governing. They're just pre-2016 political stagecraft.

As for the state races, we'll look at it tomorrow but a few points.

It will be interesting, now that the national question is no longer a factor, whether or not Bill Cassidy can run as well against Mary Landrieu  in the runoff as he did against Barack Obama during the primary.

Edwin Edwards told a reporter tonight, "I beat nine Republicans today." He's in a runoff against one now. And that one has a shit ton of money to spend. Hope EWE enjoyed himself, though.

McAllister is out of the runoff and Zach Dasher is also out of the runoff in District 5.  The Duck Dynasty has truly come to an end there.

The local stuff.. okay definitely will look at it tomorrow.  Play around with The Lens's precinct maps in the meantime.  These should become standard for every local election.

More than zero

$50K won't pay for a whole lot. 

The east bank levee authority and White Oak Operating, LLC and Chroma Operating, Inc., released a copy Monday of a settlement agreement in which the two companies will pay the authority $50,000 in exchange for being dismissed from a wetlands damage lawsuit.

The agreement was signed Oct. 30 by representatives of the companies and Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East President Stephen Estopinal, but the document had not been made public.
On Tuesday, Estopinal said the settlement money would be directed to coastal restoration.

Maybe it will buy one pump.. if they get the kind with the hand crank.

"The attorneys will not be taking a cut from the $50k settlement," he said in an email response when asked if attorneys representing the authority would receive a portion of the settlement. "Every penny is going to be spent on coastal restoration."

Ooh in that case, maybe they can buy two pumps.  In any case, it's more than Bobby Jindal.. or District 6 Congressional candidate Garret Graves wanted. 

Heckuva job

Today at a 6th Congressional District candidates' forum:

During the forum, the moderator asked each candidate to rate both President Barack Obama and Louisiana's governor, on a scale of one to 10.

The 5.6 rating is generous, too, since Jindal's highest rating of 10 was delivered in a somewhat joking tone from Garrett Graves, Jindal's former coastal restoration director. "I give (Jindal) a 10 on coastal restoration."

Dirty job but somebody has to...

There are two seats up for reappointment on the SLFPA-E and nominations are due next week.  Depending on how the nominating committee decides to package things, the process could result in opponents of the board's lawsuit against oil and gas companies gaining a majority.  The guy who is supposed to tip that balance sounds really enthusiastic.

Morgan said Wednesday that while he “didn’t really want” to serve on the board because of the time and work involved, he felt compelled to submit his name after being asked to do so by officials including Jindal’s former coastal protection chief Garret Graves, who is now running for Congress in the 6th District. While serving in state government, Graves was one of the leading opponents of the suit.

Jay Lapeyre, the chairman of the nominating committee, said Wednesday that he was among the people who encouraged Morgan to put his name in for the position, and he said he has encouraged anyone qualified to do so. Finding qualified candidates for the authority has been difficult in the past.

“I encouraged, as I always do, everyone with ability and competence to run,” Lapeyre said.

If he is appointed, Morgan is expected to be a fifth vote against the lawsuit.

Graves and Lapeyre must have appealed to his noble sense of civic duty.. or something like that. 

Yes he can

Misunderestimate Edwin Edwards at your own peril, guys. Of course he is an obvious long shot to become the next US Congressman from Louisiana's 6th District for various good reasons. But this does not mean he won't have a puncher's chance of stealing this thing.

LA -06 is a grossly gerrymandered Republican district. But, as Adrastos puts it, Edwards has "got the full Blue Dog pander on."  And, in typical EWE fashion, it's of an especially slick variety.  Earlier this week we poked him a bit for backtracking on the Affordable Care Act. But a careful reading of his statements on that as well as other issues reveals some subtle calculations already at work.

Even in what we like to think of as a hyper-partisan and hypocritical environment Edwards is able to sound like a credible moderate.  Here he is, in the same breath, expressing support for the Keystone Pipeline and inviting a dialogue with Russell Honore's "Green Army."

On issues, he said he favors the approval of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline and would like to spur along a study to look at securing funds for high-speed rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He also said he's also been in touch with another famous Cajun -- Lt. Gen. Russel Honore -- to discuss his Green Army's environmental concerns regarding Baton Rouge's aquifer.

Don't expect Edwards to be too gung-ho in this arena, though.  His website states that he "will fight to protect our coastline," but, unlike supporters of the SLFPAE's lawsuit against the oil and gas industry, Edwards leaves the identity of "those responsible" for the damage open to interpretation.

I promise to join with local government to find those responsible for the damage caused, and I will work to ensure the perpetrators pay for restoring our coastline in so far as it is possible.

That's probably not a statement that will fire up the greens.  There's an O.J.-esque search for "the real killers" quality to it. But politically speaking, it's a well-positioned approach to voters in that district.  It acknowledges, however lightly, the fact of damage caused to the coastline and that there are "perpetrators" worth pursuing. It does not resort to reactionary drivel about "protecting job creators" or any language that explicitly rules out the possibility that oil companies might be among the vaguely defined "perpetrators."

This might not satisfy me or probably most of the people who check this site regularly but it does toe a line appropriate to Louisiana's uncomfortable and complicated relationship with the oil industry.  Yesterday, for example, $850 million in new Gulf oil leases were sold in New Orleans.  It was an especially significant sale because it took place under new terms.

About $2.1 million from nine of the leases sold Wednesday will go directly to Louisiana coastal restoration efforts, and the state is expected to gain billions more from the leases over time. That's because the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which was passed in 2006 by Landrieu and former Sen. Pete Domenici, allows Louisiana to share in 37.5 percent of today's bonuses and bids, as well as the same percentage of royalty and rental payments once the tracts start producing. The money goes to rebuilding coastal wetlands, as well as hurricane and flood protection projects, many of which have already been delineated in the state's coastal master plan.

Oil and gas production is Louisiana's dominant industry.  It's killing us. But it's also helping us pay for our pain medication.  Any serious candidate in the 6th District is going to tread carefully around this.

This week, on his entertaining Twitter account, Edwards was asked specifically about his role in enabling oil and gas activity in Louisiana.  His answer came in three tweets:

1) Oil and gas permits are let by the feds.  This is technically true but sort of a dodge.

2) "Most of it was done in the 30s"  Also a dodge and difficult to interpret.  It's possible that he means the most crucial damage to the Louisiana wetlands occurred when oil exploration began to take off there.  But this doesn't answer anyone's questions about what might have been done to mitigate the ongoing damage as such activities continued throughout the century... a good portion of which included Edwin Edwards' career in government.

3) "I never gave permission to damage the coast" Yes, well, we're not likely to find any tapes of him having done that explicitly.

These are not particularly strong statements from Edwards but here is what is interesting about them. Among the announced candidates for this seat, Edwards is the only one whose statements about the Louisiana coast even suggest that there are "perpetrators" who need to be held responsible and that those perpetrators just might be oil companies.  Garret Graves also acknowledges the causality between oil exploration and coastal loss but he has famously taken the lead in Bobby Jindal's efforts to shield the industry from being held accountable.  At this point, it's Edwards who has managed to say the most while risking the least.

Similarly, Edwards's shifting position on the Affordable Care Act is more subtle than the "flip flop" some have characterized it as.  Yesterday, Gambit described Edwards as "foursquare against it now ... unlike, say, six months ago."  But this is a gross misreading.

Here is what Edwards told Larry King six months ago. 

King asked whether he supports the President’s health care reforms, or Obamacare.  “Oh, absolutely,” he said, saying that, at 86, he remembers when Social Security was first introduced, with cries that it would bankrupt the country and ruin society.   Repeating the populist theme echoed several times Sunday, Edwards said it was the poor, the young and the elderly who are most in need of government’s help, which he said the health care reforms would do.

He is clearly no fan of current Gov. Bobby Jindal and criticized him for rejecting the Medicaid expansion that Edwards said would help thousands of poor Louisiana residents without health insurance.  When King asked whether Jindal’s decision was motivated by a desire for higher political office, Edwards revealed that he has never met or spoken to Jindal, whom he called a “different sort of person,” before adding he wishes Jindal well.

Now go watch the Chuck Todd interview that Gambit is calling a reversal.  Edwards tells Todd that, were he a Congressman at the time, he would not have voted for ACA because it was "too long, too technical, too involved, and subject to pitfalls."

These things are all true.  The ACA is an unnecessarily complicated bank shot scheme to protect the insurance industry from the most serious threat of an American single-payer health care system it is ever likely to face.  It was a huge disappointment to advocates of real health care reform. There's no fault in considering having voted against it on those grounds.  And yet, now that it is the law of the land, there are clearly beneficial aspects of it that are worth supporting.  This is precisely Edwards' position.

Here is his statement on ACA from his campaign website. 

I will work to keep good provisions within the Affordable Care Act. For example, the demand should be kept for people with pre-existing conditions to not feel afraid of losing insurance, or not being able to afford a policy. Children should be allowed to remain on the policies of their parents until they reach the age of 26. Many of our young people are seeking further education after undergraduate degrees, and they deserve to feel secure if they become ill or injured.

I will always see the importance of benefits of coverage for children, the elderly, the unemployed and underemployed. Statistics state that nearly 400,000 of our citizens do not have healthcare benefits. That in itself is a shocking figure. If the Federal Government agrees to the continued 100% costs of insurance for three years and 90% costs thereafter, that is a bargain that Louisiana cannot afford to pass up. Louisiana needs this. If not us, then another state will reap these benefits, and where will that leave those 400,000 citizens?

No other candidate in the race talks about Obamacare in these terms. Certainly no candidate who "opposes" the ACA talks about it terms of "the poor, the young, and the elderly who are most in need of government's help."  This was what Edwin Edwards emphasized to Larry King.  And it is what he emphasizes now, as a candidate, who supports keeping "good provisions within the Affordable Care Act." Edwards hasn't made a "180 degree flip-flop" as Gambit says.  He's refined his rhetoric to reflect a moderate approach while keeping the substantive policy implications constant.

These are the skills that made Edwards such an effective southern populist throughout his career.  He is able to talk about issues from a wholly independent perspective and with a knack for appearing to err on the side of common folk. And this is why I say Edwards has a puncher's chance of winning this race. Put aside the question of whether you agree with his positions (I especially think he's wrong on energy policy) and ask if he plays them convincingly in comparison with his opponents.

Edwards wants to build the Keystone Pipeline because he believes doing that will employ "20,000 good local men and women."  But he leaves the door open to punishing the "perpetrators" of Louisiana's coastal loss.  Any position his strongest opponent, Garret Graves, takes in this regard is colored by a perceived fealty to oil and gas based on his role in the Jindal administration.

Edwards favors accepting the Medicaid expansion in order to strengthen the admittedly flawed ACA. Graves has refused to take any public position regarding Medicaid.  Suffice to say, Graves will be tasked with distinguishing himself from Jindal in general.  If that process somehow obliges Graves to recalibrate his rhetoric in relation to any of his prior statements, it will be interesting to see how quickly anyone jumps to call that a "flip-flop."

Look out, Washington!

No, really, look out.  The graphic LAPolitics created to go with Garret Graves' announcement that he's running for Congress is scary.


Actual image from LAPolitics.com

Graves looms over the Capitol like a sleepy-eyed Godzilla (Graveszilla?)  preparing to strike at all that damn wasteful gubmint going on in there.

“We need to get the government out of our healthcare decisions, private communications, economic markets and daily lives. Government is increasingly part of our nation’s problem and it is not bringing forward solutions. We must reverse the trend of subsidizing federal failures,” said Graves.

Graves's press release also highlighted some of the "solutions" he's brought forward as the head of the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

In six years, Garret replaced decades of repetitive studies, wasteful spending, bloated bureaucracy and red tape with results. In carrying out his vision for hurricane protection, coastal restoration and flood control, the state protected more homes, businesses and jobs than ever before.

It's true that Graves's CPRA produced a master plan everyone agrees would be key in the desperate effort to halt the disappearance of the Louisiana coastline... if such efforts are ever funded.  But Graves and his boss Bobby Jindal have taken steps to hamstring at least one high profile gambit for funding the plan in their opposition  to the SLFPAE lawsuit against the oil and gas industry.

So with coastal loss unabated, it's difficult to know just what Graves has "protected more homes, businesses and jobs" from.  Maybe giant monsters.

Dug his own Graves

The latest victim of Bobby Jindal and Garret Graves's political purge of coastal and flood protection boards is... Garret Graves.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's coastal chief, Garret Graves, is leaving state government this month.

Graves has been chairman of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority for six years. Jindal announced Tuesday that Graves' last day will be Feb. 17.

The governor's office didn't give any reason for Graves' resignation, but praised his time leading the state's coastal restoration efforts.

We're pretty close to parade season now and John Barry is already King of Krewe Du Vieux so it's difficult to squeeze Graves in somewhere now.  (In the time it took me to type that, Rob Ryan just joined Argus.)  Graves might do well in Krewe Delusion. Sounds appropriate anyway.

Well that's all over with, then

Most of the remaining Katrina flood litigation has been dismissed.

The clean-up ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr., filed Dec. 20,
marks the end of an unprecedented series of class-action lawsuits aimed at collecting damages from insurance companies or the federal government that could have totaled billions of dollars.

The final ruling was not unexpected. In earlier decisions Duval found the Army Corps of Engineers was immune from damages caused by failures of levees and floodwalls they designed and built, or from failure to maintain the rapidly eroding Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a now-closed shipping channel that helped decimate wetlands east of St. Bernard Parish.

In a ruling in April involving one of those cases, Duval pointed out that he had presided "over this hydra-like 'Katrina Umbrella' litigation for almost eight years. One central theme has been painfully obvious throughout this entire process," he wrote. "Many of the levees protecting New Orleans and the surrounding area were tragically flawed. ...

"However, lamentably, there has been no judicial relief for the hundreds of thousands of people and tens of thousands of businesses impacted," he said. "The Flood Control Act of 1928 as interpreted over the years gives the United States Army Corps of Engineers virtually absolute immunity, no matter how negligent it might have been in designing and overseeing the construction of the levees."

Can we copy Garret Graves and Bobby Jindal on this so we don't have go through it all again?