I've been around

It was in mid-June that the odds-on candidate for Man of the Year 2023 emerged in New Orleans. 

A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media he was dead, according to multiple reports.

Family of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY.

His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.

But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.

“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”

There's not a man, woman, or non-binary person in the city who couldn't relate to that in some way. We're around. We aren't sure if we want to be around anymore. But what else can we be?  

Despite keeping quiet on this website all summer so far, I am still here, me.  And it's time, once again, for me to try and get some notes in real quick about the things that have been happening before I forget them.  I keep making the joke about wanting to quit tossing everything into the Twitter memory hole. But each time the world's dumbest man gets a step closer to erasing everything I've tossed there forever, it gets less funny. 

It's worrisome to see what's happening to social media. But it's only one manifestation of a larger crisis in media and the internet that has been developing for a very long time. We see aspects of it reflected in the SAG-AFTRA strike over the question of who owns the right to profit from creative labor, in the proliferation of pyramid schemes like cryptocurrency and NFTs, and in the ongoing effort to impose stricter and more invasive censorship and surveillance on the population at large. S uffice to say, it's been a long time coming. We here at the Yellow Blog have been following the "kicking you off the internet" beat for many years. Recently, Cory Doctorow has coined a term that captures well the thing we've all been feeling. 

The pathology that I think that Musk is enacting in high speed is something I call “enshitification.” Enshitification is a specific form of monopoly decay that is endemic to digital platforms. And the platform is the canonical form of the digital firm. It’s like a pure rentier intermediary business where the firm has a set of users or buyers and it has a set of business customers or sellers, and it intermediates between them. And it does so in a low competition environment where antitrust law or competition laws are not vigorously enforced.

To the extent that it has access to things like capital, it can leverage its resources to buy potential competitors or use predatory pricing to remove potential competitors from the market. Think about Uber losing forty cents on the dollar for thirteen years to just eliminate yellow cabs and starve public transit investment by making it seem like there’s a viable alternative in rideshare vehicles. And we see predatory pricing and predatory acquisition in many, many, many domains.

This is the basic template for how everyone in charge of everything behaves now. Enshittification is what happens when everything in life comes down to someone with massively more amounts of power and money than you have actively making choices that put you in danger and/or rip you off.  And it's pretty much how we live now.

 

Anyway, all of this is to say that I need to post more things here in short form so I can look them up when I need them. Because tweeting them into space seems like a really weak bet for that. But I also need to get caught up a little bit. So, what follows is a small selection unrelated items I bookmarked over the past few months. It's not everything I need to save from the void. It's probably not even the most important stuff. It's just what I need to clear out in order to fire this thing up again. So bear with me a bit. 

The Ultimate Move for City Hall: From Duncan Plaza to... Duncan Plaza

I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your local indie outlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.  

Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.

In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space along West Stadium Drive.

There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens. 

One thing to keep an eye on will be the fate of the public space in the plaza itself. Recall in 2017 the city announced big plans to turn the park over to the DDD for a major renovation. But the goal seemed to lean toward limiting public space in favor of monetization.  Which would be a shame for reasons that then-DDD director Kurt Weigle acknowledged. 

Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.

“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.

“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”

It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.

Gordan Plaza residents suffer one more indignity

It almost seems intentional. 

One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000 profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.

The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund site.

But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New Orleans properties.

It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't. 

A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.

An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.

A retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at $475,000.

All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.

One SWB scandal just flows right into the next

A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems. 

A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by Arnold and his staff during work hours.

The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being “obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out contractor and permitting fraud.

Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find information on projects,” the letter said.

Those filing cabinets and index cards were confiscated by the FBI shortly after the story aired. Jay Arnold, the main target of the investigation, pleaded guilty last month. But the problems were more systemic than just one guy's actions. As of May, McBride was skeptical that any of that had been fixed. 

Other problems going un-fixed this summer: 

New Orleans entered its fourth week of sending untreated sewage into the Mississippi River on Saturday as the Sewerage & Water Board struggles to fix a 60-year-old underground pipe in the St. Roch area.

The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main, at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to repair it.

In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.

On the other hand, SWB did manage to shut some things down.  For example, it appears that the employee lounge is losing some of its frills.  

Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and unchecked harassment. 

In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.

Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.

Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going.  We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season.  It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though.  I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up.  Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.

Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.

Various other things are broken

In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.  

The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency situations. 

Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the last month, he said.

When he tried to order another 45, he said that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding invoices from other city departments.

Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.

"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point. 

Also, watch out for falling trees. 

Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.

In a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed obvious warning signs.

“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic arborist for the case.

Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks. 

I'm sorry. That's Special Assistant To the District Attorney, Morris Bart now.  Gotta remember that. 

Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been

Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration. 

“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s best to pursue other opportunities.”

Landrum, 50, declined to say what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason Williams.

She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has taken.”

It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some progressive groups.

Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction. 

Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.

Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.

Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.

See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper.  Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes. 

Various other scoundrels on the loose

The freaking "Night Mayor" has been making friends on the streets and online recently. Actually, I'll save this for later but suffice to say the city's selective enforcement regime continues to nickel and dime struggling residents while cutting favors for landlords and bosses.  In the meantime, read this. 

There are other potential ethical concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.

Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project. 

Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp. 

Other stuff upcoming

Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest.  We're right on the cusp.  Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.  

Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week! 

And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it. 

And now we have another to throw on the pile.

That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.

Howling in the wires

In August of 2007, Sam Jasper wrote this. 

The lies and the greed and the corruption in this country, from the Prez at top of the ladder to the "great hope for New Orleans" councilman, have taken this country from the top of the heap to the depths of dysfunction. Things like infrastructure for this country are tabled in order to take our tax dollars and funnel them into corporate cronies' pockets to rebuild infrastructure that we blew up elsewhere. The feds say it's the states' responsibility to take care of the infrastructure once it's built, and some states can't afford to do that. The feds can. But instead they tsk tsk, shake an accusing finger at the local leaders and go on to their meeting with some war profiteering contractor---behind closed doors, no press allowed, and no logs of the meeting kept.

Forget about any kind of social services, we can't keep our levees and bridges up.

We're all so used to it that we skim the articles, rant over dinner if we're in our cups, and go on to work the next day because lord knows the insurance companies who never have to really, I mean REALLY, take on any risk have to be paid and the energy companies who get bailouts have to be paid, and the mortgage has to be paid to keep a roof over both the mortgage company's head (even if they made hideously stupid loans for the last several years, planting false hope in many family's futures--"No PROBLEM, the balloon payment won't come up for five years!") and our own, and we have to pay our taxes next April so they won't attach our paychecks or put a lien on our house to collect the bucks they want from us so they can rebuild that fucking bridge in Baghdad for the ninth, tenth, eleventh time. Don't take a breath. Keep running, Joe, like a hamster on a wheel, you're getting older now and you have no stock portfolio, no health insurance, no retirement savings, you don't have time to do anything about the lies. Remember, though, Joe, all those bucks you're sending in with your 1040 won't do you any good if a disaster strikes, whether it be a hurricane or a heart attack.

There is no social contract. Faith in government will surely break your heart. Faith in companies will break your heart. 

Interestingly, what prompted that particular moment of exhaustion and outrage at an entire system was then councilman Oliver Thomas's announcement that he was resigning after the discovery of his having accepted roughly $19,000 in bribes from Pampy Barre.  That might seem to some today like blowing a matter of petty local corruption out of proportion. But at the time, this sort of thing made the  national news.  

As the New York Times article linked above demonstrates, all eyes were on New Orleans. Mostly those eyes were scrutinizing us to discover reasons the very bad thing that happened to us in 2005 was actually our own fault somehow.  All too happy to aid in that project were an over-stimulated gang of federal prosecutors waiting to provide grandstanding quotes like these at a moment's notice.

Some 30 school system employees have been indicted. And the United States attorney here, James B. Letten, said Monday that a long-running investigation into corruption at City Hall in the Morial administration, which has already yielded 16 convictions, would continue.

“It’s just brazen down here,” James Bernazzani, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge, said at a news conference after Mr. Thomas entered his plea.

“In Louisiana they skim the cream, steal the milk, hijack the bottle and look for the cow,” said Mr. Bernazzani, who noted that his district ranked second in the nation in public corruption convictions and indictments — despite its relatively small population.

But this is cause to refer again to Sam's crisis of faith in institutions. Mr. Bernazzani, for example, would eventually go looking for a cow of his own. 

The indictment also alleges Mayfield sent $150,000 in library donations to the Youth Rescue Initiative. It claims he routed that money to the Jazz Orchestra, and himself, throughout 2012. One payment from the YRI, for $77,000, came in December 2012, the feds allege, after Mayfield had officially left the YRI board.

The president of the YRI at the time was Jim Bernazzani, former FBI special agent in charge of the bureau's local office. After Mayfield served on the YRI board, he made Bernazzani an advisory board member for the Public Library Foundation without official board approval, according to comments made last year by the current Library Foundation chairman, Bob Brown.

WWL-TV asked Bernazzani last year about Mayfield’s transfers and his use of an “Irvin Account.” Bernazzani insisted the federal investigation would show "there's nothing there."

The station called Bernazzani about the latest indictment and did not hear back.

The corruption of global capitalism is intertwined with the corruption of local politics. The same forces act on each and they feed back into each other.  Every now and then there comes along a moment of trauma so severe that the cultural bafflements and social silos that keep us from seeing these connections are removed. Such moments are irrefutably bad but they are also revelatory.  The post-Katrina period in New Orleans was such a moment.

People like Sam spent that moment looking for ways to break out of the pattern of "skimming the articles and ranting over dinner in our cups."  But they never really did. This wasn't their fault, of course. The universally embedded death drive of capitalism is bigger than any of us and will inevitably swallow us all. But that doesn't mean that communities under threat should just lie down and take it. So they did the thing that any threatened community tries to do. They reached out to neighbors. They shared information and experiences. They tried to, at least, provide a space where others could come together and build real organizing capacity.  

Mostly they wrote things down and posted them on the internet. (Which was a fairly novel tool at the time!)  A lot of that, like Sam's 2007 post about OT, is still there. But a lot of it isn't.  Around the time of the last Rising Tide, Sam approached a few of us and told us we needed to curate and preserve as much of that material as we could before time and link rot consigned it all to oblivion.  After all, sacrificing the collected cultural memories of a trauma only heighten the risk that they will be repeated.  We didn't know how to do any of that, though. We probably should have tried harder to figure it out.  

Sorry, Sam.

Who will Cedric choose to be the next US Attorney?

 People said he would lose influence after giving up that congressional seat but I don't know about that. 

Though U.S. senators hold an informal veto power over such choices, Louisiana’s two Republican senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, figure to hold little influence over the choice. Sources say all roads to the post lead through former New Orleans-area Rep. Cedric Richmond, now among President Joe Biden’s closest White House advisors. Richmond did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Who do we think he might choose?  There's a lot of interesting names here. 

Leading names floated to succeed Strasser include former Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Keva Landrum, who lost a December runoff for district attorney; former state Sen. Walt Leger; St. John the Baptist Parish District Attorney Bridget Dinvaut; Desiree Charbonnet, the former New Orleans Municipal Court judge and mayoral candidate; and Duane Evans, who served as interim U.S. Attorney in New Orleans after Kenneth Polite left in 2017.

New Orleans City Attorney Sunni LeBoeuf also is thought to be in the early mix, sources said. Other names that may be in play include former federal prosecutor Matt Chester, now a local defense lawyer, and Marquest Meeks, a former federal prosecutor in New Orleans who is now senior counsel for Major League Baseball.

Keva Landrum gets special attention in this article in part because she just lost a run for District Attorney despite having garnered an endorsement from Richmond as well as from Mayor Cantrell and the BOLD organization (which has grown more closely affiliated with the mayor over the course of her term.)  It's not unheard of that a candidate would receive support from both sides of that sometime rivalry but it is interesting that such a candidate would have lost their election. 

Anyway it's not out of bounds to think that Landrum would be in for a consolation prize of some sort (although we would have to consider this post more than just that.)  Still, her current gig seems pretty chill. Are we sure she'd want to give that up?

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dall Kammer and his team will have until March 2 to present their own list of potential witnesses to testify at sentencing, at a date that’s not yet been set.

The U.S. Probation Office has already filed a draft sentencing report. Sentencing guidelines depend on several factors, including the amount of money involved. It’s not unusual for people to write letters to judges vouching for defendants’ character before they are sentenced, but hearing testimony from both sides before sentencing is less common.

Mayfield “will probably want to bring forth people to say he was of good character and maybe this was just a simple mistake,” said WWL-TV Legal Analyst Keva Landrum, a former state criminal court judge and district attorney. “And then the prosecution may want to bring people who they thought would have been their witnesses in the trial to say otherwise.”

On the other hand, that story does point out that she already has eyes on a federal case that could be of significance to several of her political patrons. So maybe she is just the person for the job after all.

Plenty more where that came from

 Somebody wrote that five years ago. Or something to that effect

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.

And when, eventually, there are more, we will wash our hands of those individuals as well and go on pretending everything is fine.

The politics grifter industrial complex

All of these "bugs" are features. It's how an entire class of politically oriented professional/managerial types sustain themselves.  And it isn't just a quirk of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the national politics grifter industrial complex.  It's not something that you just see on the cable news that operates at a great remove from you. It's here in your city fucking your shit up too. The rot in the national political expression is a function of the local level corruption from which the national parties are built.  And that's what we've been describing here in New Orleans for... well.. for a very long time now.

This McGowan person and the various Obama/Hillaryites who circled in and around her company are no different from the cast of amoral crooks circling in and around the halls of power in your home town.  The game is exactly the same.  Make yourself rich pretending your for-profit service or app or whatever can or should replace basic social welfare functions. 

Unlike most digital strategists, her operation is what the IRS classifies as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — meaning a majority of its funds must be used to promote “social welfare.” And yet, Acronym has a web of for-profit companies beneath it: a campaign consulting firm (Lockwood Strategy), a political tech company with a peer-to-peer texting product (Shadow) and a media company investing in local left-leaning outlets (FWIW Media). In the works is an apparel arm (Rogue Swag) that would be the first major liberal answer to conservative companies that skirt campaign finance laws by selling politically branded clothing over Facebook and elsewhere — spreading political messaging without having to report the spending.

It means the nonprofit Acronym is able to raise money, invest in for-profit companies to advance progressive aims and then return any profits back into its mission. “People don’t understand why I am creating a model that I can’t get very rich off of. Because I don’t own the companies; the (c)(4) does,” she says. And that’s a huge threat to political consultants’ bank accounts

The emphasis in that quote is mine because it is horseshit as anyone who understands how money laundering works can see.

[Update: For more on how the money laundering works, see Pareene here.]

But to return to the point, this isn't a new phenomenon. It isn't an aberration.  It's how things are done in the age of neoliberalism.  LaToya Cantrell expressed this quite emphatically to her supporters on election night 2017. 

 "I’m not talking now about taking from the rich and giving to the poor and all that kind of crap," Cantrell said at a victory speech Saturday night. "What I’m talking about is creating balance so everyone feels like they’re winners.

We can't tax rich people and use the money to provide basic public services anymore.  Instead we leave it to "entrepreneurs" to flatter "philanthropists" into funding a series of amusements, and shiny things that we pretend will mitigate the social ills caused by the lack of those services. The important people make more money that way. Especially when we subsidize the process through public-private partnerships.

As long as "everyone feels like they're winners," the con can perpetuate itself.  An associate of Irvin Mayfield once described this as "volunteer entrepreneurism."  We've described that in as much detail as we could muster quite a few times. Here is the one I'm thinking of currently.  It is the dominant ideology that is currently eroding your democracy. And the erosion begins here in your backyard.

La banque c'est moi

BIG NEWS today in the BIG federal investigation that everyone has been watching with rapt anticipation.  There is a new indictment in the FNBC scandal.

First NBC Bank's former top lawyer was charged in federal court Friday with conspiracy to defraud the New Orleans bank, which failed two years ago in the biggest U.S. bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis.

Gregory St. Angelo served as First NBC's general counsel for a decade until 2016, and during that time, he took out loans totaling tens of millions of dollars from the bank, many of which went into default. He is accused of conspiring with two former top First NBC officials to defraud the bank: President and CEO Ashton Ryan, referred to in court documents as "Bank President A," and former Chief Credit Officer Bill Burnell, referred to in the documents as "Bank Officer B."

It says here that St. Angelo is and has been cooperating with prosecutors and is likely to plead and roll, probably on Ryan.  Seems like he's still keeping his spirits up, though. 

Ryan continues to maintain his innocence, according to his lawyer, Eddie Castaing.

“Anyone who committed fraud on the bank also committed fraud on Ashton Ryan and the board, and they should plead guilty," Castaing said Friday. "Ashton had nothing to do with it.”

Ashton Ryan IS the bank. Also he had nothing to do with any of the shady stuff the bank has been involved with. That's pretty good.

It's also a good sign. The further up this goes, the better it's going to be when someone like Ryan actually goes to court.  There are a lot more people and institutions that could get named in this thing.  One example, among many, is the soon-to-reopen African American Museum.

In 2012 the museum cut expenses by eliminating its executive director position. At the time, a board member said that NOAAM’s yearly income had fallen to $200,000, less than half the ideal $500,000 operating income. In March 2013 the museum announced it had closed to complete renovations and never reopened.

According to a report by WWL-TV, the museum’s troubles continued when Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield briefly became a board member. Mayfield had served as chairman of the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, and was accused of unlawfully steering nearly $1.4 million from that organization to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. He left the African American Museum board in 2016 after reportedly incurring a $1 million bank loan on behalf of the museum. The loan had been granted by First NBC bank, which dissolved in 2017.

According to WWL, a philanthropic group called Treme Guardian led by businessman John Cummings assumed the bank loan in the interest of the museum. In 2014, Cummings, an attorney, opened the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La., an institution designed to confront the history of slavery. But in 2018, Treme Guardian sued the NOAAM in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, alleging the museum had failed to make payments on the $1 million loan, continued to allow it historic properties to deteriorate and neglected to carry proper insurance.

There are more than just that, of course.  Hopefully this keeps going. 

Oh hey they found Irvin (maybe)

Seems like we should follow up on this.  Irvin missed a fantastic opportunity to embark on a globe-trotting adventure as a fugitive just to come back to New Orleans during July. Seems like a bad choice, right? Especially so considering he came back just to be arraigned again.

Mayfield and partner Ronald Markham again pleaded not guilty at Monday’s arraignment, just as they had to the original charges in January. The government did not ask for a new bond and they were released to continue their music careers as they await an October trial date.

Mayfield’s less famous partner, Ronald Markham, walked in and out of court with his attorney for Monday’s hearing and proudly flashed a copy of Mayfield’s latest album.

But Mayfield, who was declared indigent and appointed a federal public defender, managed for the second time to avoid the cameras and get in and out of public defender Claude Kelly’s office without being seen.

Wait! Are we absolutely sure he was there? 

Okay but did Irvin make it back yet?

All this says is that Irvin Mayfield is going to face additional charges now that he is back from Soweto.  He did come back, right?

In a related matter, the American Library Association is holding its annual conference in New Orleans this weekend. What do those people do, exactly?

Uh oh is Irvin coming back?

Looks like that festival Irvin Mayfield left the country to go play is running into some weather related problems or something.

The organisers of the Soweto International Jazz Festival have cancelled the second day activities of the inaugural musical event.

“We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances, today’s planned festival activities and evening concert are cancelled.”

The programme for the second day of the festival was supposed to be themed under the ‘Power of Women’ and include workshops from 10am to 4pm.

The evening concert was scheduled to feature the likes of American R&B singer Deborah Cox, Jamaica’s Kreesha Turner, New Orleans artist Yette Summer, Zamajobe Sithole, Lady Zamar and more.

All media interviews with artists were cancelled.

The festival got off to a slow start on Thursday with performances beginning several hours later than the set times. The event was moved inside the Soweto Theatre venue due to the cold weather.

There festival is supposed to be a four-day event that sees artists of different genres from around the world perform and entertain music lovers across the board.

Saturday and Sunday line-ups include performances from Charlie Wilson, Neville Brothers, Marion Meadows, Third World and Spyro Gyro, Irvin Mayfield, Gordon Chambers, Ernie Smith and Micasa among many others.

I'm trying to find out more about this Soweto International Jazz Festival. I think this is the first one although it is described here as "iconic" which is a little confusing. Most of the press I can lazily google up suggests, at the very least, that it is relatively new.  This article talks about its aspirations. 

"We want young people to see themselves represented. We want people who can afford to buy a ticket and to support local vendors to generate revenue in Soweto,” said Baynes, adding that there would be significant free tickets and discounted tickets for Soweto residents.

But the festival is aimed at the entire city – the entire planet, in fact. International Night will also feature a multigenre line-up, among them Grammy winners, including Deborah Cox, Third World, Bob James, Spyro Gyra, The Neville Brothers and, in his first performance in South Africa, R&B legend Charlie Wilson.

His first ever performance in South Africa, the legendary @ImCharlieWilson, alongside the dynamic local gospel artist @khayamthethwa will be gracing our stage this year! A tribute to Hugh Masekela and Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday.

"We love jazz, but the economic reality of a purely jazz line-up is limited in scope. We are attempting to duplicate the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Newport Jazz Fest or Montreal Jazz Fest models,” said Baynes.

After attending an event at the Soweto Theatre last year, his plan to host a jazz fest became an imperative. His ultimate goal is “to have Pan-African, American and European music fans descending on Soweto”.

If they're trying to duplicate Jazzfest, they're going to have to be a little bit tougher about the weather.  How bad could the cold have been?  This is sweater weather, right?

Also it is difficult to discern how much of the program was actually cancelled. Some stories say "the second day," was cancelled. Some say last night was. And others suggest the whole thing is off.  According to the festival's Twitter account (33 followers) part of the slate is going to be replaced with a "jam session."

So.. if you happen to be in Soweto this evening, maybe stop by the theater to check in on Irvin. Dress warmly!

Run, Irvin, run

Okay, not really.  But what if he does?  He won't. But, man, how much fun will that story be?

It all moves in a circle

I think I see the problem here.

NOJO Chairman Ron Forman, the broadly respected head of the Audubon Institute, told WWL-TV on May 12 that the NOJO board had agreed to pay all of the Library Foundation money back, as soon as they can raise the money from private donors.

Brown said none of that money has arrived yet, but he is working to craft a written agreement with Forman and NOJO as soon as possible to memorialize the Jazz Orchestra's commitment to pay back the money and so the Library Foundation can budget for a specific amount.

Just a stab in the dark here but it seems like if NOJO could raise the money through only its own donors, they never would have had to raid the library foundation in the first place. Also, there is the problem of this being a small town where the pool of possible donors to any of these non-profits is pretty tight.  Odds are if you're giving to one, you are at least getting pitched to by all of the others.

Sometimes you end up in one of these funny situations where the organization you are donating to this year needs your money to pay back what it stole from the one you gave to last year.  And the odds are Ron Forman is on both boards anyway so that saves a lot of work. It's very convenient.

Searching for Perricones

The new tactic in public corruption defense is to start by going after the press and hope their sources lead back to the US Attorney's office. Irvin Mayfield's lawyer is taking a crack at it now.

Kelly declined to address the specific allegations against his client outside the courthouse, but he laced into the U.S. Attorney's Office and WWL-TV reporter David Hammer, who has been investigating Mayfield for years.

Kelly claimed he had evidence that the U.S. Attorney's Office leaked information from the grand jury proceedings in the case to Hammer, and that prosecutors had admitted doing so. Kelly said he had filed a motion seeking to dismiss the indictment due to the alleged grand jury leaks. He repeatedly described the alleged leaks as a "miscarriage of justice."

"The case begins with a cloud over it," he said.

And, hey, as we've seen, sometimes it works! So far it's allowed Fred Heebe and the Danziger 7 to walk.  Maybe you can decide where the "miscarriage of justice" figures in the process, though. I'm not sure it's what Kelly thinks.

FNBC is looking to "lawyer up"

Some of the principles at the failed First NBC bank are starting to worry about the legal trouble they find themselves in. From the looks of things, they planned for this very scenario ahead of time.

Well before the bank failed, it took out five insurance policies aimed at protecting bank directors and officers from personal liability for bank business, court filings show. The company held roughly $60 million in insurance policies.

On Tuesday, attorneys for First NBC Bank founder and former CEO Ashton Ryan Jr. and former Chief Financial Officer Mary Beth Verdigets appeared before Magner after filing motions for their clients to begin collecting money from insurance policies, long held by the bank, to cover their mounting legal costs.

Magner deferred making a ruling on the insurance policies. At least one former bank official raised questions about how the proceeds would be tapped.

"People are getting demand letters, and they need to lawyer up," said William Aaron, a New Orleans lawyer who was a director of both the bank and its parent company. "The question is, is the court going to be a gatekeeper every time somebody needs to lawyer up?"

The Advocate reported a few weeks ago that a federal grand jury is looking into the bank now but we don't know what specific charges might be under consideration. We already knew that the bank collapsed as a result of Ryan's suspiciously risky bets on post-Katrina rebuilding tax credits that never paid off for the institution itself.

In the meantime, the scheming appears to have financed ventures benefiting some interesting public figures. Irvin Mayfield secured a pile of money from them he could throw into a pit. LaToya Cantrell bought a house which either she or the bank botched tax payments on for a while.  Then there was this elaborate scam where FNBC financed the "tuition rebate" portion of Bobby Jindal's school voucher program.

The tuition donation program is less generous but more flexible than vouchers, and it has grown fast after a slow start. Following an approach adopted by some other states, it relies on the tax code to direct money to private schools rather than the state appropriations that fuel vouchers. Last year, the tuition donation program allowed about 1,700 Louisiana children to attend 167 private schools, double the enrollment of the year before. Donors to the program are set to recoup about $7 million in taxpayer-funded rebates from last year's scholarships.

The program has been tweaked some in recent years. But it's still a means by which private schools and participating "donors" are heavily subsidized through an elaborate tax credit shuffle.

The basic setup is the same. Donors underwrite part, but not all, of a child’s private school tuition. Later, donors get back 95 cents for every dollar they give. And they can write the whole thing off as a charitable donation on their federal taxes.

Starting Jan. 1, though, donors to the program will no longer get recompensed via a state rebate that's paid out of general state tax collections.

Instead, donors will be repaid in the form of a credit on their state income taxes. That’s in line with how 16 other states already organize their own private school choice programs. Their tax payments then will be redirected out of the state treasury and into the hands of Louisiana private schools to offset student tuition.

The changes to the law will also limit participants to organizations who pay Louisiana income taxes. This will be sad news for some of the out of state participants who had been benefiting such as Chick Fil A and, yes, believe it or not, the Atlanta Falcons.

Anyway, getting back to FNBC, there's so much going on there that it's hard to pin down just what the Feds might be looking into. But you can see why they might be looking to being to lawyer up. You can also see why they might be reaching out for friends and allies who could still help them. One wonders, for example, if John Kennedy might be one such person.

WASHINGTON — In a Capitol Hill battle over the financial industry's use of arbitration clauses in contracts to limit class-action lawsuits, a key undecided Republican has attracted the attention of bank lobbyists and consumer advocates.

That person is U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana's recent arrival in D.C. with a seat on the Senate's banking committee. So far, as the debate has started to percolate, Kennedy has kept his cards close the chest on how he might vote on a Republican-led effort to scrap an Obama-era regulation making it far easier for customers to bring class-action lawsuits against banks, credit-card companies and other financial institutions.

Kennedy is playing coy for now because he likes being feted by finance lobbyists, no doubt.  And maybe FNBC is more worried about criminal prosecution at the moment. But we're pretty sure John will be there, if not for FNBC, then for whoever the next fraud looking for legal protection might be.

The money pit

Hammer's report on the still shuttered and bankrupt African American Museum in Treme has all sorts of fun stuff going on including Irvin Mayfield, First NBC, and Wisner Trust funds which I think may be some sort of super trifecta. 

Some of this is just the comedy of organizational chaos. But it's also a window into the way the local non-profit sector spreads public subsidies around among the same familiar circles of professional fund-raisers, bankers, and lawyers operating in New Orleans.  Some of them, like the unfortunate Mayfield, tend to get themselves into sticky situations and become scapegoats.  But, really, it's a whole system of backslapping corruption that brings together neighborhood associations, historic preservation purists, and start-up entrepreneurs along with the aforementioned money people to direct public and private money toward feel good projects that don't really help anyone not invested in tourism or real estate. 

This sector has done well for itself under the Landrieu administration. As the post-Katrina money begins to dry up, the party may be ending for the con-profiteers. It's never a bad time to have a friendly mayor in the pocket, though. LaToya Cantrell, you may notice, delivered her platform vision thing speech last week at Irvin's Jazz Market.  There's probably more to that than just symbolism.

Not just Mayfield

I know I sound like a broken record at this point. But I want to flag this month's Antigravity for what is, as far as I can tell, the first article written about this fiasco that really goes after the point.

While the conflict of interest between NOJO and the Library Foundation has particularly far-reaching implications, unfortunately Mayfield’s decisions were made within the context of increasingly common public-private funding structures, whose actions take place outside the public eye. Consider the Audubon Nature Institute. While public money funds the Audubon Commission, the Audubon Zoo and its associated parks, the Audubon Nature Institute is a private nonprofit which runs the Audubon Commission, and its financial records are not available to the public. Nonprofits are exempt from financial disclosure laws even if they run on public money. The Institute recently received scrutiny for attempting to enter an exclusive contract with the Sazerac Company, who would then be the only alcohol vendor permitted to sell in a new sports development intended for the Fly. The Sazerac Company is run by Paul Fine and Jeffrey Goldring, who are both on the board of the Audubon Nature Institute. The implications of this contract strengthened an already firm public stance against further developing this public green space. By the time The Advocate, NOLA.com, and WWL-TV had covered the backroom deal with the Sazerac Company, any remaining enthusiasm for the sports complex fizzled, and the project was derailed. However, public disclosure laws, which do not require board members to declare financial interests, remain unchanged.

The Audubon Nature Institute also uses public funds to pay the $500,000 plus salary of its Director, Ron Forman. Forman has been at the center of New Orleans business and politics for decades. In the past he headed the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District Board, and in 2006 ran for Mayor. Incidentally, he was also Chairman of NOJO’s board and on the board of the Library Foundation (along with his son, Dan Forman) when Hammer’s story broke last year. In a May 2016 WWL-TV interview, Forman emphasized the “complexity” of the issue, and insisted that any improperly spent money would be repaid, though he defended the use of library money for the Jazz Market. When he was asked about whether the board majority of he, his son, and Mayfield and Markham could have made some dubious decisions in handing over the reins to Mayfield, Forman became defensive and questioned the “values and ethics” of the accusation.

We want to point and shout at the one with the $1400 breakfast, but the problem is far more widespread and ingrained than that.

Movie pitch

Prologue: You think you know a story...

For eight years, Kenneth Landrieu wore the six-pointed brass star of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office and carried a laminated “reserve” deputy card signed by Sheriff Marlin Gusman.

Whether the honorary designation gave Landrieu the power to chase down a driver, whip out a gun and threaten a man with arrest will be for an Orleans Parish jury to decide in a trial slated to start Tuesday before Criminal District Court Judge Laurie White.

Landrieu’s attorney claims his client was well within the law when he pursued the driver and announced he was a law enforcement officer following a near-collision on Magazine Street last September.

According to police, Landrieu pulled in front of the other vehicle in the Lower Garden District, hopped out of his baby blue 2004 Cadillac DeVille and pointed his gun at the driver, cursing and threatening to arrest him.

Okay so here's the scene. Times are tough in the city of New Orleans. The camera pans over monuments cracked and crumbling under the shame of their own hypocrisy. Smoke from a nearby marsh fire wafts into view. A sinkhole of dread lurks beneath every street. Resilience is running thin.   

In a desperate attempt to restore hope... not to mention his own relevance.. Ceremonial Sheriff Marlin Gusman laminates some badges in order to commission a elite force of freedom fighters. The fake credentials issued by the fake sheriff combine to equal actual legitimacy due to the power of the double negative.  They are called the Faux-Po Five.

Recent Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office records list Landrieu among 49 people granted “honorary special reserves” status by Gusman, though it’s unclear just what, if any, special powers it confers.

Among others on the list are former New Orleans City Councilman Jay Batt, singer Irma Thomas, jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and frequent political candidate Gary Landrieu, who is Kenneth Landrieu’s brother.

Irma, Batt, Mayfield and the lesser Landrieus set about the work bringing scofflaws throughout the city to justice. Sewerage and Water Board Director Cedric Grant builds and furnishes a secret headquarters for them atop the Broad Street Whole Foods where they use his magic white board to spot petty municipal violations wherever they may occur. (Jeff Landry shows up to help drive them around sometimes too.)

Dramatic scenes from the trailer show Ken brandishing his pistol at a motorist with an expired break tag. Drums sound in the background as Gary files to run for five different municipal offices simultaneously. Irvin bludgeons noise violators in the street with his golden trumpet. Jay drinks lots of martinis and tells people to start calling him "Battman."

Not sure how we're going to afford the effects in the scene where they all have to cross streams and fight the 200 foot tall Savory Simon, though.  That Hollywood South money ain't what it used to be.

How we grift now

Broken record alert:

The problem illuminated by the Irvin Mayfield NOJO/NOPLF saga extends beyond the story of one egotistical grifter and his hubris. It's really about the larger consequences of outsourcing public services to so-called public-private partnerships via quasi-political "philanthropic" boards. Thanks to one guy's high profile carelessness/cluelessness the Mayfield thing just happens to be an easy one to spot. Like Bill Jefferson's freezer cash, $18,000 in hotel amenities gets a lot of attention. 

Of course it's all well and good that that the NOJO mess get sorted out. But you aren't really attacking the problem unless you're also talking about Audubon or Ogden or LEH or GNOF or many many other boards with overlapping memberships and the day to day abuses of privilege that go on there in the name of "serving the community" through privatized discretion over public funds.

Robert Cerasoli used to tell us the most striking thing about local corruption was in how unsophisticated it was.  But that really only refers to the boneheads who get caught making scandalous headlines out of their booty. But public-private "volunteer entrepreneurism" is the way the grifting is done now. And when it's done correctly, it's at least sophisticated enough to pass.

The dominant industries

The saga continues.

NEW ORLEANS -- A few weeks ago, when Irvin Mayfield’s New Orleans Jazz Orchestra formally agreed to pay back $1.1 million in public library donations, the Jazz Orchestra considered the matter “closed.”

But WWL-TV has learned the Public Library Foundation is now demanding payback of an additional $150,000 that Mayfield directed from the library charity to his Jazz Orchestra, this time routed through a third nonprofit where Mayfield also sat on the board.

The third nonprofit, the Youth Rescue Initiative, is run by Jim Bernazzani, the former head of the FBI field office in New Orleans. The centerpieces of the Youth Rescue Initiative are called Illumination Centers, described by the nonprofit’s website as “safe havens for at-risk youth to learn and develop computer skills.”

Ha ha. Y'all remember Jim Bernazzani,  right? He sort of peaked about eight years ago when he tried to use his position as the head of the local FBI office as a springboard to a political career. That didn't work out so well for Jim. Instead he retired from law enforcement and skipped politics altogether once he figured out you can grift just as easily in the non-profit sector. Especially in this city where Mayfield and friends are really just the tip of the iceberg.

Former mayor, and Mayfield patron,  Ray Nagin once gave an inspiring interview about his motivation for getting into public service politics.  "It seemed to be the dominant industry," he said.  But if you can't do that,  con-profiting also works.

The "ethics" of insulting The Club

How dare you, sir!

There’s another issue that Forman has not addressed over the last 10 months. His son Dan was on the Library Foundation board with Mayfield and Markham when they changed the charity’s mission and began sending six times as much money to the Jazz Orchestra as it granted to the city’s library system. Ron Forman bristled when asked if he was concerned with how that looked.

“You’re going into an area where I’m questioning your values and ethics in what you’re asking,” he said. "There’s no conflict in any of those areas and I have no problem at all in what role my son serves as a volunteer, the role I serve as a volunteer. None of us gets paid a penny.”

State records show Dan Forman signed the official Library Foundation resolution changing its articles of incorporation to expand its mission beyond just supporting public libraries. The younger Forman told WWL-TV last year that Mayfield told him the resolution was about adding more members to the foundation board. He also said he didn’t remember voting as a board to pay the Jazz Orchestra “that amount.”

The ethics-fu is strong at The Club. Who are we, without membership, to question the mysteries of their ways?

It's all one swell little club

You know, as much as New Orleans cultivates and promotes an image of itself as a bustling, forward-looking hub of innovation, the "volunteer entrepreneurs" who run that scene sure do seem to be the same tight little circle of people passing around the "public-private" funds.

The NOJO audit, performed by an independent accounting firm, found material weaknesses and significant deficiencies in the nonprofit's accounting -- including wide use of a NOJO debit card without supporting documentation, poor record keeping for revenue from tour groups and patrons at a bar NOJO runs and hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to Mayfield without a written agreement for his services.

The audit comes as the New Orleans Public Library Foundation continues to seek recovery of the money Mayfield and partner Ronald Markham transferred between 2012 and 2014. They changed the Library Foundation’s articles of incorporation to expand its mission beyond simply supporting the city’s public library system, passed resolutions granting themselves special powers to make unilateral financial decisions and immediately began sending money to the NOJO, which paid them each six-figure annual salaries.

The money – given to the Library Foundation by donors to support the libraries – instead went to help build a $10 million NOJO headquarters, jazz club, bar and community space called the People’s Health New Orleans Jazz Market. Markham stood by the use of the money, saying it would provide much-needed library-style services in Central City and would offer access to some of the city library’s jazz collection.

NOJO’s board is led by Ron Forman, the head of the Audubon Institute and city Audubon Commission, and Forman promised last May to pay the entire amount back. But discussion of a formal agreement to pay the money back last summer never materialized. And recently, NOJO appeared to balk, insisting that its own legal review determined the money had been properly spent.

Oh look Ron Forman is here. Ron Forman is fresh off the LSED board where he oversaw Tom Benson's lease. Benson is giving money to Forman's friends at the Carrollton Boosters so they, along with Forman's Audubon Institute, can turn a park into a profit center.   Ronald Markham, late of the Library Foundation, is also on the Audubon Institute board.  Remember, though, these are the 'treps and visionaries who love to accuse the rest of us of being "provincial." So know your place before you speak ill of them.