It's a tech 'trep's world

We're all just living in it. That is, if we can actually afford to live in it. Some of us may have already been priced out by some sort of "sharing" app. If not, don't worry. They'll get to you sooner or later. When they do, though, don't expect much sympathy from the media. Turns out they run that too.

Idea Village founder and CEO Tim Williamson, a nationally respected business leader whose determination to expand economic and leadership opportunities for New Orleanians sparked an entrepreneurial renaissance in his hometown, has been named President of NOLA Media Group.

Williamson replaces Ricky Mathews, who previously announced his intention to transition out of his role as NOLA Media Group president and help lead new initiatives with Advance Local, a group of affiliated websites and newspapers of which NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune are members.

It's a week for old favorites in the world of "volunteer entrepreneurism."  Yesterday it was Irvin Mayfield and Jim Bernazzani. Today it's Williamson. The guys should really get the band back together and play a number.  If only so many of them weren't in jail. Pour some out for Greg Meffert and Ray Nagin. Once upon a time Williamson and Meffert kind of made their careers locally by being in the circle of businessmen that produced Mayor Nagin.

It Helps to Know the Mayor
 
"We started out lucky, says Williamson. "I call it the MN [Mayor Nagin] factor. Ray Nagin, a former vice president and general manager for Cox Communications in Southeast Louisiana, who had never held political office, defeated New Orleans police chief Richard Pennington in the mayor's race in early 2002.


"He's entrepreneurial, says Williamson. "He understood business; he understood what we were talking about. There was finally a sense of possibility that we could actually create a world-class entrepreneurial community.


"What's critical to this is vision, continues Williamson. "The mayor stated that his vision is to make New Orleans the entrepreneurial capital of the world.

 But Williamson's neoliberal capitalist bona fides extend beyond mere cronyism.

Williamson, 51, is an Isidore Newman High School (1983) and Tulane University (1987) alum. He began his career as an investment banker on the East Coast, including a stint as Vice President of Investments at Bear Stearns in Boston. In 1996 he became regional general manager at Cox Interactive Media, responsible for building Internet markets in Austin, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Pittsburgh and his native New Orleans.

Cox cable, Bear Stearns, Tulane, Newman. You could add "Legion of Doom: founding member" to that resume and it wouldn't be the worst thing on there. This is pretty much a made man we're talking about. Which is why one wonders if he's really this dense or more likely just dishonest when he cites historian Lawrence Powell in this video in calling New Orleans  "The place where capitalism was founded. The original silicon valley."  This is true, of course. It conveniently glosses over all the slavery, though.

We've actually mentioned this before in the context of the Confederate monuments controversy. But the book to read is Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Baptist focuses on banking and credit "innovations" pioneered by the entrepreneurs (like Vincent Nolte in the passage below) trading humans and cotton futures at Maspero's during this founding of capitalism Williamson enthuses about.



Anyway, the inheritors of this proud legacy are pretty much running the town now so there's no point in objecting anymore.  Maybe if they manage to bump us up to three "Entrepreneur Week" features per month, they'll finally find the Golden App that solves everyone's problems. Probably not, though. The track record isn't very good.

Volunteer entrepreneurism

Kale and quinoa salads in a rustic bucket greeted visitors to the Jazz Market on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd in April

In the second week of September 2005, while much of the city of New Orleans still sat below flood waters, noted wrong person James K. Glassman wrote a prescription for the city's recovery published by the American Enterprise Institute, a well-known right wing think tank.

The inevitable commission that will oversee the rebuilding must realize that the world’s best designers, developers and innovators will be drawn to the city only if they are relatively unrestricted. New Orleans could become a laboratory for ideas like tax-free commercial zones and school reform. This is the ultimate libertarian city and the last thing it needs is top-down planning.

Glassman wasn't just talking to himself. Conservatives and business leaders in New Orleans were already chomping at the bit to get at the task of  building their libertarian "laboratory for ideas." We noted some of those on Sunday.  Glassman's ideas about New Orleans's need for "developers and innovators" were more than theoretical.  Some may remember that Glassman, before he became a full-time professional ideologue, founded the New Orleans alt-weekly Figaro.  Figaro was basically the precursor to Gambit.

In the case of each paper, "alt-weekly" is a problematic term. As we've noted before, there's very little that's "alternative" about Gambit. It isn't an underground paper or subversive niche publication.  Instead it is the city's premier mainstream arts and entertainment magazine.  It also produces news content, which, I should say, can often be very good depending on the strength of its frequently rotating and often sparse staff.  But the paper's raison d'etre is to sell advertising targeted toward young(ish), white (mostly) professionals.  New Orleans, you may have heard, has become something of a magnet for this demographic lately.

Last week, during an unrelated conversation, a  newcomer to town expressed some surprise to me at how mainstream, and at times, downright conservative the Gambit's editorial bent can be. I don't think this should be very surprising, though.  Gambit is a pretty OK paper. But its ownership is in the business of flattering our famously teeming young  libertarian-leaning "innovators."  So the difference between what the op-ed page does there and what people like Glassman do is less than you might expect.

Meanwhile, I wonder how long it will take before the rest of the network of "innovators" on the New Orleans fundraising wine and cheese circuit admit that the difference between what they do and what Irvin Mayfield does is.. pretty much nil. 

Mitchell resigned from the board in June 2008, more than two months later. Biava resigned — with Mayfield accusing him of failing to meet fundraising goals — in the fall of 2008. Both men told WWL-TV that they never saw the money from Mayfield's performances at Minneapolis' Dakota Club; Mayfield has declined to answer questions from WWL-TV about the fundraiser.

Mitchell called it "volunteer entrepreneurism," and said he got tired of always having to question the popular musician.

"Irvin's a charming guy. He's an impressive guy," Mitchell said. "So it got to a point where I got tired of butting heads, and trying to be the guy raising the flags saying, 'Hey, we got to sit down and look at this a little harder.'"

The problem here isn't really with a specific individual. After all, in "New New Orleans" dynamic ego-driven "entrepreneurial" types are our modern heroes. They're celebrated every other week on NOLA.com.  They are considered paragons of the business world.  They're also fast becoming our new model of governance. Mitch Landrieu brings back dozens of fliers from Aspen every year on how to farm out vital public services to heroic celebrity millionaire types. He's very close to finding us our very own Batman, I'm sure of it.

Although Katrina provided the opportunity for all of this volunteer entrepreneurism to blossom, its ideological roots go back before then. Here is an interesting but incomplete piece of history that flashed across my screen a few weeks ago. It's a Huff-Po post by Idea Village founder Tim Williamson bragging to us about how he was the original NOLA volunteer entrepreneur back in the day.

It was a late evening in 1999 at the stylish Loa bar in downtown New Orleans. Five local entrepreneurs, myself included, were having a conversation about how to reverse the last 40 years of fundamental economic and social decline. New Orleans was in a downward spiral and we wanted to stay in the city, grow businesses, and raise families. We believed the core problem was the lack of forward thinking amongst the existing leadership, as there were few individuals committed to thinking differently to redirect the economy and develop innovative solutions to address social issues such as crime, education, and housing.

Williamson doesn't tell you who the "five entrepreneurs" were in that post. But he's been telling that story for quite some time so you can find other versions of it. 

Williamson wasn't content with the nosebleed seats. He'd moved home—after working in New York, Boston, Atlanta and Pittsburgh—to become general manager of the New Orleans Internet Studio for Cox Interactive Media, and started InsideNewOrleans.com. And he wasn't alone—a lot of "local boys had moved home to start technology companies. Besides himself, Williamson lists Darin McAuliffe, founder of NewOrleans.com, former co-owner of Turbotrip.com and president of Hotel Booking Solutions; New Orleans CTO Greg Meffert (whose wife is the Louisiana native), founder of NetEx and two other software and services companies; Robbie Vitrano, founder of Trumpet Advertising; and Allen Bell, who started Nola .com. But running a technology company in New Orleans wasn't easy. 

You might remember Greg Meffert from such entrepreneurial ventures as going to prison for accepting over $800,000 in bribes and kickbacks during the Ray Nagin administration. Nagin, of course, shows up in Williamson's story too. Nagin was that "forward thinking leadership" the Loa boys were hankering for that night. They were among the "business leaders" credited with convincing him to run for Mayor.

It Helps to Know the Mayor

"We started out lucky, says Williamson. "I call it the MN [Mayor Nagin] factor. Ray Nagin, a former vice president and general manager for Cox Communications in Southeast Louisiana, who had never held political office, defeated New Orleans police chief Richard Pennington in the mayor's race in early 2002.

"He's entrepreneurial, says Williamson. "He understood business; he understood what we were talking about. There was finally a sense of possibility that we could actually create a world-class entrepreneurial community.

"What's critical to this is vision, continues Williamson. "The mayor stated that his vision is to make New Orleans the entrepreneurial capital of the world.

The Idea Village, along with the city of New Orleans and Greater New Orleans Inc., is now developing a public/private plan for entrepreneurship. According to Williamson, he and Tommy Kurtz of Greater New Orleans Inc. have been working on different programs to build the ecosystem. The city is also evaluating what it needs to do in terms of permitting and programs.

One way Nagin would later go on to implement that "vision" was by appointing Meffert as his Chief Technology Officer.  This would prove problematic.  Later, Nagin appointed Irvin Mayfield to the library board. This proved problematic, too.

Mayfield found a better fit running the private non-profit foundation that helps support the library. This would also prove problematic, though not initially for Mayfield, since in the innovative non-profit world, you get to do more creative... entrepreneurial things with the money you raise.  

Public records show that in 2012, the library's foundation gave the city's cash-strapped public library system $116,775, a typical annual gift from the earnings off its $3.5 million endowment. But that same year, the foundation also gave $666,000 to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra for the $10 million New Orleans Jazz Market that ended up opening with fanfare in Central City just last month.

And in 2013, the library foundation gave the Jazz Orchestra, or NOJO, $197,000 more.

Mayfield and his friend, Ronald Markham, each make six-figure salaries from NOJO, a nonprofit Mayfield founded. At the same time, they were also two of the five members of the library foundation board when it gave the majority of its grant money that year to the Jazz Market project. In 2012, NOJO reported paying two salaries: $148,050 to Mayfield and $100,000 to Markham. It also paid $109,441 to Mayfield's publishing company for "concert productions."

Again, Irvin Mayfield, himself, isn't the actual problem. He is a symptom of the problem, though.  The problem is the post-Katrina ascendance of neoliberal "volunteer entrepreneurism" in rebuilding the "ultimate libertarian city" prescribed by Glassman. The club members who've worked so hard to bring the Glassman vision to life are hard-pressed to admit it, though.

Instead they're quick to offer up scapegoats from among their own number whenever one of them fails too stupidly or publicly.  Ray Nagin himself is the prime example here. Meffert is another.  Mayfield is only the latest. There will be more eventually.

The best way to understand this is to observe Gambit publisher Clancy DuBos throwing Mayfield under the bus and getting the lesson exactly wrong in the process.

Anyone who has dealt with Mayfield knows that behind his magnetic charm — and the young Grammy winner oozes charm — is an outsized ego. Like all self-promoters, especially those who have enjoyed huge success — Mayfield does not suffer from a lack of self-esteem. It takes enormous self-confidence, and of course talent, to do what Mayfield does on stage and in the nonprofit sector. But success often brings a mountain-sized dose of pride, which is probably what’s stopping Mayfield from admitting his mistakes and, more importantly, apologizing for them.

“That will never happen,” another prominent jazz musician (also a Grammy winner) recently told my wife, Gambit publisher Margo DuBos. Both were lamenting Mayfield’s recent troubles, and Margo suggested that Mayfield could do a lot to resolve the situation by simply apologizing. The fellow Grammy winner, who knows Mayfield well, has no doubt that Mayfield’s misplaced pride won’t allow him to do that.

This happens to Clancy a lot. Because he's spent a few decades among the elite clubs who rule our civic life, he often mistakes systemic political problems for the personal failings of individuals who have disappointed him.  It's no mistake that Clancy's voluminous moralizing on the shortcomings of Governor Jindal or former Mayor Nagin often takes on the heated tone of a scorned acolyte. Gambit enthusiastically supported each of them at the outset of their careers... you know, when they were running on the notion that we need to "run government like a business."

Thanks to Nagin, "run government like a business" is no longer the preferred term of art. We prefer to talk about  "public-private partnerships" now but, in practice, it's all the same thing. Fundamentally we're still putting our trust in the fundraising class... the various friends of DuBoses... who comprise non-profit boards and business incubators all over town to supersede democratically responsible public services.

The problem  isn't that some of those individuals are incompetent, or grifters, or incompetent grifters. The problem is that the system itself is designed for grifting. A person can be a volunteer or an entrepreneur. But the notion of "volunteer entrepreneurism" where we create a business and present it as a social service is pretty much a scam by definition.

This is bad enough when we're talking about public libraries.  The good news is they're going to be okay. Thanks to Orleans Parish voters having passed a recent millage increase, the library will be less reliant on entrepreneurial partnerships in the future and can focus, instead, on being a taxpayer funded public service that belongs to everyone. So we're really bucking the trend in that regard.

Unfortunately we can't say the same for NORD. 

New Orleans voters approved a City Charter amendment creating the public-private NORDC in 2010. The change eliminated the city’s Recreation Department with the hope of establishing a more effective operation with greater services. At the time, the city’s public recreation offerings were widely viewed as having fallen far behind those in cities such as Baton Rouge.

NORDC’s budget is now $12 million, up from $5 million under the old arrangement, Richard said. It now employs about 170 people, up from 80 when it was formed.

Some speakers Thursday, however, said they longed for the days before the commission was created.

Amy Stelly, with the community advocacy group Justice and Beyond, said the commission has done a poor job of communicating how it operates. She said residents have questions about the body’s duties, powers, hiring practices, programming and capital projects. But she said she has found it difficult to get those questions answered because the commission doesn’t offer meaningful engagement at its meetings.

So that's bad. But it's still the recreation department. And while we care about quality recreation programs, at least we haven't gone and public-privated some crucial pubic safety function all to hell, right?  Something like that might start to raise some seriously frightening constitutional issues if you get the wrong sort of....

 Oh yeah.... wait a minute.   

A $75,000 donation from developer and hotelier Joseph Jaeger will help keep the off-duty New Orleans police officers of the French Quarter Task Force on patrol through the month June.

"What Mr. Jaeger has done is not just an act of generosity, but also leadership," task force founder Sidney Torres IV said in a release announcing the donation. "This is exactly the kind of support this program and our city need in order to tackle the crime problem."

Joseph Jaeger.  The guy who is getting public subsidies to redevelop a whole section of the city into a high-end condo/hotel fiefdom is providing "generosity" and "leadership" to volunteer-entrepreneur Sidney Torres's police force. What an innovative ultimate libertarian city sort of idea!  Can't imagine what could possibly go wrong.

Chewbacca defense

Ray Nagin's attorney Robert Jenkins wants you to know that Rodney Williams' testimony does not make sense.

Williams pleaded guilty in 2012 to paying Nagin more than $72,000 in bribes. He faces 37 months in prison, and is awaiting sentencing. Williams' plea deal is predicated on cooperation with prosecutors -- a point Jenkins tried to use to discredit his testimony.

Jumping back and forth in time, and from topic to topic, Jenkins grilled Williams on the details of his plea agreement, his meeting with Nagin's sons to his dealings with federal investigators. At one point, Jenkins' line of questioning was so confusing that Williams had to ask for clarification.

While asking Williams about his meeting with federal investigators, to whom Williams admitted lying on two occasions, Williams stopped the attorney.

"With all due respect sir, it's kind of confusing because you are jumping all around," Williams said.

"You're confused about who you lied to?" Jenkins replied.

 Veteran legal observers will recognize this as the famous "Chewbacca Defense"



Also today in the Nagin trial, Greg Meffert made it clear he had no qualms over selling out his erstwhile "undercover brother."

Meffert also testified that Nagin knew exactly who paid for a family trip to Jamaica shortly after Katrina.  He said Nagin and he used Blackberries to discuss sensitive issues so they wouldn't become public.

However, the government was able to retrieve the actual Blackberries in question and retrieve a few of the messages between Meffert and Nagin. Among the messages was one where Nagin advised Meffert not to deal with businessman Aaron Bennett because he talked too much, including to then-TP investigative reporter Gordon Russell.

There was also a message where Nagin was excited after finding out that Meffert had scored some tickets to the Saints' 2006 NFC Championship game.

"You the man, and has always been my undercover brother."

Meffert further stated that he tried to get a roofer to fix Nagin's roof, but that the contractor was spooked when he found out that St. Pierre's company would pay for it. Another time a $1,080 charge on a St. Pierre credit card went for liquor for Nagin's 50th birthday party.

 I also like the bit about the "spooked" roofer. If true, it means that St. Pierre literally haunted Nagin's house. 

Interesting that Jenkins wasn't very aggressive in his cross-examination of Meffert. It's been kind of a mystery as to why Nagin hadn't taken a plea deal up to this point. But now that we're at trial, it seems like a more vigorous effort at refuting Meffert's testimony would be in order.  Stuff like this, for example.

In one msg, Nagin seems to be promising Meffert a bigger role in admin based on his fund-raising prowess. #nagintrial
— Gordon Russell (@GordonRussell1) January 31, 2014

Of course, if we are gonna go down that road of looking through mayoral aides' text messages, that road goes to interesting places.

As the mayor’s race entered the home stretch, some department heads at City Hall received text messages requesting that they attend a campaign debate and canvas neighborhoods for Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s re-election effort.

The Silicon Bayou's true captain

Rob Ford

Mayor Rob Ford snorted cocaine, swilled vodka, popped a dose of Oxycontin and partied with an apparent prostitute during an all-night binge last year that raved from his office to a private room in a Toronto bar, Ford staffers and bar employees alleged to police investigating the mayor. 

Ford's greatest regret is never having had the opportunity to work with Greg Meffert or Aaron Bennett.

Fractured Fairy Tales: Pay for performance program

It started out one afternoon when Ray Nagin was relaxing in his office with his copy of  Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine which he had been using as a how-to manual for governing post-Katrina New Orleans. Nagin would later offer this review of the book in an interview with Ethan Brown.

“I understand exactly the premise that they’re presenting,” Nagin says, holding the book aloft, “that’s for sure. Look, man, after this disaster there is big money! The shock-and-awe piece of what they’re talking about is absolutely correct.”

Nagin was reaching for his highlighter when Jonathan Vilma and Gregg Williams burst into the room and slammed an envelope down on his desk. Audio provided by filmmaker Sean Pampilon (who was following Williams around constantly at the time) reveals the following exchange.

"You want it?" Williams asks. "[Expletive] no," a voice answers, as others in the room applaud. "OK, it's $200 – you got it for a 'whack,' " Williams says. The rest of his words are drowned out by loud cheers.

We believe the "others in the room" at the time may have been Kip Holden and Bob Ellis although the only thing we're certain of at this point is that "Public Official A" is definitely Nagin.

Curiously Williams appears to have misspoken on the tape.  As it turns out, the money was actually distributed in $10,000 increments by somebody named Fradella.  Furthermore the money was not awarded for "whack" hits but instead for "cart-offs" of Fradella's granite.

During Nagin's tenure at City Hall, Fradella also donated "numerous truckloads" of granite -- the document does not say what its value was -- to the Nagin family's countertop business, Stone Age LLC.

Immediately upon leaving office, Nagin began working for Fradella as a paid consultant, according to the document, which is signed by Fradella. Fradella paid him $10,000 a month, an arrangement that lasted until March 2011, roughly 10 months after Nagin exited City Hall, it says.

None of these inaccuracies should surprise us, though, since anyone who watched the final minutes of the Saints-49ers Divisional Round playoff this year is aware that Gregg Williams never has any idea what he's doing or saying.

We're told that there may have once been some supporting evidence for the Nagin-Fradella pay for performance program at the bottom of an email to Nagin ,allegedly sent by Mike Ornstein but the email was subsequently erased by Greg Meffert.  Meanwhile Jonathan Vilma is suing Roger Goodell for having been implicated in this business at all.

Also due to some unfortunate internet commentary leveled by members of the totally not legitimate media, NFLPA spokesman, Fred Heebe, has already asked that the US Attorney in New Orleans recuse himself.

So everything seems pretty murky at this point. But Pamphilon, for his part, wants to remind us to please think of the children which he'll be available to do via any outlet that will give him air time.

This investigation continues

Here's where I think it gets interesting.

The rumor about town is that Flanagan's legal fees were actually paid for by Dell and I will address that issue in a subsequent post on Humid Beings. It's apt because Sir Flanagan invoked Dell right out of the gate. He tried to convince the jury that St. Pierre couldn't have been doing anything all that illegal if he was working with this fine, upstanding, national mega-corp., Dell Computers. He also noted that the business practices which Dell conducts in the state of Louisiana, with Veracent as a sub, were a "standard way of doing business" in any state.

This was in reference to the loop Veracent/St. Pierre had created where they would build the cameras, ship them to Dell and Dell would in turn sell them back to the Louisiana municipalities through their state contractor's license.

Flanagan's claim that this process is standard for Dell is absolutely, positively, not-fucking-true. I will merely invoke the name Kim Fury Jennings and let you dig back in the catacombs of AZ. More will come in the HB post.

Much more here. And I assume more forthcoming at Humid Beings.

Eventually this could end up being all about Dell, and not just in regard to dealings in New Orleans.

The part where Clancy tells us what it all means

It's kind of like the end of a Harry Potter novel. Only Clancy isn't a wise old homosexual man in a long purple robe and nobody gets any chocolate frogs. But we live in Chocolate City already so I guess we can overlook that. Oh and that thing we learn at the end is something we knew throughout the whole story anyway.

Lesson No. 1 — Don’t try to run government like a business. This is a lesson for us all. Businesses are dictatorships; our government is a democracy. The two are not designed to work the same way. The next time you hear some puffed-up businessman saying we should run government like a business, remind him that Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre were successful businessmen — and ask him if he likes how they ran things. If nothing else, we now know the danger — and the folly — of running government like a business.

Adding: Of course this is far from the end of the story. It's like splitting the novel into separate movies or something.

Don't forget Billboard Ben

This morning James Gill's column is titled "If only Ray Nagin had lost the New Orleans mayoral election in 2006" In it, he pins blame for the dumbfounding tragicomedy of the second Nagin administration on the Meffert-St. Pierre cohort and their willingness to raise campaign money under the table.

Hardly anything that Meffert, St. Pierre and their associates installed ever did work. They were billed as the young thrusters who would bring the city's antiquated IT systems up to whiz-bang standards. Meffert left City Hall several months after the 2006 election, while St. Pierre and his associates remained as contractors.

By the time Landrieu took over, we had not only malfunctioning crime cameras, but email systems that had insufficient storage space and regularly crashed. The financial tracking system had gone haywire. Records were still stored on an aged mainframe.

If only Nagin had lost that election in 2006, as, indeed, he feared he might. That's why he told Meffert to raise $250,000 pronto. Meffert then turned to St. Pierre, who kicked in $100,000 by handing cash to various minions who then each made a $5,000 contribution, the maximum allowed by law. The use of proxies to evade the limit is illegal, but St. Pierre isn't worried about such trivial infractions right now. He is in some serious soup.

So Gill's thesis is not without merit. But it's also incomplete. Meffert and St. Pierre weren't the only big contributors to the Nagin campaign that year to end up with legal difficulties.

Longtime S&WB member Benjamin Edwards sentenced to 21 years in kickback scheme
Published: Thursday, June 24, 2010

Initially a Nagin skeptic, Edwards became an ardent supporter, pumping $270,000 into Nagin's 2006 re-election -- roughly one-sixth of what the Nagin campaign itself spent. He was the board's longest-serving member at the time of his resignation.

In pleading guilty to wire fraud, Edwards acknowledged receiving part of a $63,279 payment made on Feb. 15, 2006, by a major Sewerage & Water Board contractor, MWH of Colorado, to Management Construction Consultant Inspection, which was secretly controlled by Bruce Edwards.

It's one thing to say, as Gill does, that a few corrupt bugs in the technology department can wreak a lot of havoc on a system. But it's appropriate once again to ask if those bugs were actually more of a feature.

"License to steal"

Just when you think the St. Pierre trial can't get any funnier, today we get this testimony from Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre's attorney Danny Drake.

Central to St. Pierre's defense is that he had a "reasonable reliance" on Drake's advice that what he was doing was legal. But the defense is no good if the advising lawyers don't have all of the relevant facts or if their advice isn't followed.

Referring to notes he took at the time, Drake said he wrote down that Meffert had used the credit card for $50.

Drake said he had no idea the card charges actually amounted to $130,000, or that St. Pierre had paid Meffert $38,000 in October 2004.

He also didn't know that Meffert had persuaded Nagin to issue an executive order exempting technology contracts from the city's bidding rules, at least not until prosecutor Matthew Coman showed it to him a few weeks ago.

"That's a license to steal," was Drake's shocked reaction.

In 2002, as Nagin was preparing to take office, T-P reporters Frank Donze and Gordon Russell wrote,

Listen to the small circle of friends and advisers that Nagin has drafted to help him assemble his administration, and you might think the age of techno-government is about to dawn in New Orleans.

Did it ever!

Meff Memories

Meffert after his civil trial guilty verdict in 2009.

Though I am relieved that the jury saw through some of this witch hunt, I'm disappointed that a majority of the jury found that I may have been liable for a small portion of the accusations, and we have a strong appeal underway. I am not giving up: the truth will win out and our significant advancements will be reinstated as the record of my service to the city I love.

This verdict and trial attest to the injustice of a politically-motivated newspaper partnering with profit-driven plaintiff lawyers. This unholy alliance destroyed my reputation and my ability to make a living for my family; clearly, the justice system can be manipulated in the name of money and politics.

The paper’s actions went beyond bad journalism in its efforts to deprive me of my civil rights. The newspaper obviously feels it is an authority higher than our legal system, even betraying the public trust, and I am forced to pursue legal recourse against them for intentional damage.

My family has suffered relentless, intentionally erroneous and mean-spirited attacks by the newspaper attempting to prejudice a jury. This indecent alliance aborted journalistic objectivity and misled our justice system.

Together as a family we will attempt to rebuild lives that have been irreparably damaged. I remain grateful and humbled by the steadfast love and support of my wife, family and many others.

In 2007 Meffert gave a famously embarrassing interview to Garland Robinette which might still be available via the audio link in this post from Oyster. I can't check it right now. It might be worth your while to track down, however. Oyster's summary:

Meffert stumbled and bumbled so badly, he made Robinette sound like George Plimpton.

Also see this breakdown of the interview a few days later by Dambala.

Whole new meaning to the name Silicon Bayou

Stephanie Grace tweets from the St. Pierre trial:

Meffert admits St Pierre bought yacht for him to use as "perk."Also paid for strippers who'd "perform sex acts" on the boat. Weekly.

Update: More from Meffert's testimony

But Meffert took the story a step further on Wednesday, saying the promise of a more permanent, larger contract was the "carrot" for Ciber to take the initial contract, in which they simply turned most of the money over to St. Pierre's company.

For that so-called "5.5 contract" -- so called because Ciber got to keep 5.5 percent as a management fee -- to be a permanent deal, it had to be offered through a competitive process. Meffert said he arranged for St. Pierre and Ciber to work together to come up with the requirements for bids, thus assuring that Ciber would win the work.

"So they were literally able to have the answers before the questions were even posted," Meffert explained. "It's not open and fair. This was done to make sure Ciber would win the contract."

Upperdate: But..um... yeah back to the strippers.

On Wednesday, Meffert told a federal jury of eight women and four men that St. Pierre, the defendant in the trial, paid for strippers to come to the yacht on a weekly basis and perform sex acts on Meffert, St. Pierre and some of the other City Hall technology team members who worked for St. Pierre.

"They would strip, take their clothes off during the poker games, and sometimes perform sex acts," Meffert said sheepishly. "On me and on everybody. (St. Pierre) paid for myself, himself and sometimes some key Imagine partners or whatever."

Meffert said St. Pierre would also finance Meffert's bets in poker games on the boat. He said there would be two games per trip, each with a $100 buy-in. He never had to pay for any of it, thanks to St. Pierre. Even if St. Pierre wasn't in attendance, he would have his friend, welder Jimmy Goodson, who later became Meffert's driver, pay for everything.

I like that David Hammer takes a moment to inform us of the number of women on the jury before going into the frat party stuff. Nice touch.

Note also Dambala has been saying for some time now that Ray Nagin took a few party cruises on the boat himself. Was he on any of these deluxe package trips? Must be one of "Katrina's Secrets"

"Big Jim"

More big fun at the St. Pierre trial. The testimony here is from an employee of St. Pierre named James "Big Jim" Goodson who, if his various responsibilities (bodyguard, driver, landscaper, bag man, pimp, maintenance specialist) are described accurately, can best be likened to a Bond villain's henchman. I think my favorite line is the one below in red.

The government showed the jury a paper trail of most of the payments on an overhead projector. Goodson testified that St. Pierre had him give $5,000 to Nagin's re-election effort in May 2006 and confirmed the payment was in the form of a check to GNOR. He said he didn't know what GNOR was, but it's likely the Greater New Orleans Republicans, who openly supported Nagin's race against then-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

That may help explain earlier testimony from former New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert, who said that Nagin's campaign asked him to raise $250,000, and that when he enlisted St. Pierre to raise $100,000 of it, he met the target by reimbursing others so he could exceed the individual $5,000 donation cap without being detected. Campaign finance records don't show that much money coming into Nagin's campaign coffers from sources associated with St. Pierre, but Goodson's testimony shows some of it went to other campaign committees that supported Nagin.

There's such a wealth of elaboration on the Greater New Orleans Republicans and their "strategic" relationship with the Nagin campaign that I had trouble finding the appropriate place to direct you to start with this if you're new to it. Try this YRHT link.

Also, this explains a lot about why the crime cameras didn't work so well.

And Goodson, who said he could build "about anything," eventually did hands-on work for city technology projects. He constructed crime cameras for the cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Gretna, Westwego and Savannah, Ga., he said. And he would climb to uncomfortable heights to hang the equipment, he testified.

Ritual de lo Muppetto

Meffert's testimony in the St. Pierre trial.

Disgraced former New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert testified Tuesday in federal court that vendor Mark St. Pierre wined and dined him and treated him to nearly weekly strip club visits totaling $20,000 in 2003 and 2004.

Meffert said the money for what he called "ritual" Tuesday and Thursday night visits to Visions Men's Club in eastern New Orleans ultimately came from his department in City Hall, thanks to the contract work Meffert made sure St. Pierre's firm Imagine Software got.

So in his deposition, when Meffert says, "Sometimes I'd pay for myself, sometimes they'd pay" what he really meant was it didn't matter since the money ultimately all came from the same place anyway.

Incompetent corruption

I half expected Kevin Houser to be in this story.

A City Hall technology contractor bought suite tickets for Mayor Ray Nagin and his wife to attend the New Orleans Saints' first NFC Championship Game appearance in 2007, but the tickets turned out to be invalid, the company's executive testified today in a corruption trial.

Funny thing about public corruption

In municipal cases like, the Meffert-St. Pierre-Nagin business for example, it really doesn't do us a lot of good to see the criminals prosecuted once they've left office. I mean, it does allow us to say "I told you so" and shake our fingers and stuff but at the end of the day those guys go to jail, our lives aren't any better because of it, and the next group of corrupt bastards is well into the next corrupt scheme. Putting these people in jail only make a difference if they stop the damage from being done while it's happening which never happens. It can get very frustrating after a while.

I am open to arguments based on maintaining rule of law and shining a light on the nefarious workings of government for the benefit of the citizenry and so forth but we live in a world where that cow is clearly well out of the barn anyway.

Assembled QsOTD

Krugman:

Look, it might have been slightly better if Obama had acknowledged the economy’s problems more forthrightly, rather than continuing to insist that the ARRA was doing just fine. But that’s not about focus — and not at all opposed to doing health reform too.

What’s crucial to remember here is that economic policy is about actually doing things, not about saying “Message: I care.” A bigger stimulus — and, importantly, one that wouldn’t fade out just in time for the midterms — would have mattered. “Focus”, not so much.

First Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin at the City budget hearings (as paraphrased by The Lens):

Kopplin says government efficiency consultant could help government identify needless consulting contracts.

Also via The Lens Twitter feed from the budget hearing:

"I'm not sure who's in charge of things, but we just lost several lights here," (Councilman Arnie) Fielkow said. Lights blown out in the chamber.

Former Mayor Ray Nagin on former Technology Officer Greg Meffert's decision to reach a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

“The reality is this was an independent act by Meffert,” Nagin said. “I’m not the target, have never been a target of any of these investigations. In fact, during the civil trial, I wasn’t even called as a witness. I don’t see it. I haven’t done anything wrong, so I hope he tells it all.”

Just for kicks, Dambala digs up a famous radio interview in which Meffert aggressively denied any and all wrongdoing.

Drew Brees on Saints' offensive tackle Zach Streif to whom Brees almost completed a touchdown pass Sunday night while running a play some of have been waiting years to see.

"I remember throwing about three balls in practice right at about his face mask, and he'd just snatch 'em," Brees said. "He's a really good athlete. You should see him play basketball."

Whiz Kid

Meffert is expected to plead guilty today. The question on my mind right now is which T-P editorial columnist will be the first to trot out the phrase "whiz kid" to describe him this week?

A Good Circuitry Soldier

Sometimes the way will have an eye on them
Other times the ass will snatch the morsel
Clive licks the eyes of the lonely ones
Here at the time when the mission kicks the tribe
The commission takes the bribe

The schadenfreude portion of the Dragonslaying process is usually where I begin to lose interest but HOLY SHIT 63 counts is an awful lot.

Suing for libel is the new black

Former Public Service Commission member John Schwegmann calls columns libelous

Greg Meffert: “The Times-Picayune is the biggest bully in town.”

This is why you have to read all the news

A seemingly... um... infinite number of threads can end up relating back to one another eventually.