I've got my attention divided in several directions at the moment. Some personal dealings, also the city is getting ready to experience a massive BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY (there's a city hall press conference scheduled for 11:15 that I think may be entertaining.) All of which is to say that I am well aware of that Trump II: The Trumpening is the major event of the day but there's only so much time I can spend with that just now.
Anyway, enjoy the circus.
A few months ago I posted some notes on a couple of semi-recent books, one of which was Ages of American Capitalism by Jonathan Levy. One of the main takeaways from that book for me was the extent to which Herbert Hoover's ideology of the "associational state" continues to dominate the policy program of both political parties to this very day. What that entails at its essence is: 1) an accession to the holders of concentrated wealth and their perogative to decide how capital should be allocated. 2) hoping that those decisions will sometimes accrue to the greater good if our elected representatives in government ask nicely. Here's the same quote I pulled the last time I brought this up.
On the telephone and at two White House conferences, the president personally pleaded with the corporate executives of the largest, most regulated industries to increase capital investment expenditures. In 1930 railroads and utilities obliged. Yet everywhere else, especially in residential construction, fixed investment kept falling. Hoover recognized that during the 1920s, corporate profits had run ahead of wages, and he believed that high wages would stabilize spending, a good thing. “The first shock,” he declared, “must fall on profits and not wages.” Whether because of Hoover’s promptings or not, the nation’s largest employers agreed not to slash wages, even as they continued to fire their less desirable employees, a pattern that would persist. Proudly, Hoover said the agreements were, “not a dictation or interference by the government with business.” Rather they were the result of “a request from the government that you co-operate in prudent measure to solve a national problem.” The president boasted, “This is a far cry from the arbitrary and dog-eat-dog attitude of the business world of some thirty for forty years ago.” Hoover believed his “associational state” transcended the Jacksonian sphering of public and private, state, and market, which under the banner of equal commercial opportunity, had withered state action throughout the Age of Capital. But he drew one line in the sand. He would not coerce capitalists to invest.
To make the point about how little things have changed, I highlighted this statement from Joe Biden shortly after Hurricane Ida. Biden publicly asked insurers and utitlity companies to please not exploit their policy holders and ratepayers in the wake of the disater.
“I’m calling on the insurance companies at this critical moment. Don’t hide behind the fine print and technicality. Do your job. Keep your commitment to your communities you insure,” he continued. “Do the right thing. Pay your policy holders what you owe them to cover the cost of temporary housing in the midst of a natural disaster. Help those in need. That’s what all of us need to do.”
Biden also expressed that, throughout the week, he’d expressed that same message to local officials and utility and energy company representatives during virtual meetings.
Like Hoover, however, Biden did not take any extraordinary steps to compel them.
The reason I bring this up again today is because we read in this morning's news that a "frustrated" Governor Jeff Landry is taking a similar approach with Louisiana's out of control insurance rates.
Landry, a Republican who took office in January, has convened lawmakers for three special sessions – on redistricting, crime and taxes – but hasn’t convened one for the insurance crisis.
In an interview, Landry said he’s open to holding another special session on insurance, but he has not seen a package of bills that would fix the problem. He called on insurers to offer up solutions that would lead to savings for homeowners.
The article goes on to point out that there are things the state could do in a legislative session to take on the problem. The easiest and least radical of these would be requiring insurers to discount homeowners who take advantage of a state subsidized fortified roof program. (Those roof grants could be bolstered as well.) Alli pointed out last week that coastal Alabama's success at controlling insurance costs (relative to the rest of the Gulf South) is at least partially attributable to its fortified roof program.
But so far, Landry would prefer that insurers "offer up solutions" themselves. He does sound mad, though.
Landry said he’s miffed that the package of bills pushed by the insurance industry that he signed in the spring hasn’t brought relief yet.
“I feel completely frustrated,” Landry said. “It leads me to believe the things the insurance companies told the commissioner of insurance, told the lawmakers, don’t seem to be coming to fruition.”
He means the package of bills that he himself signed at a high profile press event this spring. The explicit purpose of those laws was to give insurance companies more power to raise rates and drop coverage without penalty. Could anyone have predicted this program would not produce fantastic results for Louisiana residents? The Governor sure didn't. Now he says he's miffed. Maybe someone should do something. Not him, though. Someone.
While Temple supported bills to limit insurance companies’ exposure to lawsuits, Landry, who has support from prominent members of the trial bar, said insurers wouldn’t get sued if they didn’t delay and fight claims made by homeowners. And the governor said he’s open to a federal solution to the insurance crisis, given the global nature of the business that ties Louisiana premiums to reinsurers in London and Bermuda.
Gonna have to wait until we hear back from President Musk on that one. In the meantime, we'll go back to asking the insurers to come up with solutions for us. Maybe if we get them a nice Christmas card or something.
For whatever reason, I've taken up a project of transferring several years backlog of book notes I've had sitting in a spreadsheet onto more fleshed out reviews for Goodreads, an app I've been on forever but never really got into using. What is the purpose? Who even knows?
Anyway, in the process of going through these, I hit upon a couple titles I read in 2021 that seemed to pair well for a blurb here. Especially, so if one is in the mood to think about where we've been and where the US political economy has been and where it might be going a week out before, "the most important election of our lifetimes" again.
Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America by Darren Dochuk (2019)
This is a sweeping history of the American oil industry with a focus on its peculiar relationship to American Christianity. The book describes political and religious tensions throughout the history of oil between the rationalizing paternalistic ecumenism of the major firms vs the independent libertarian evangelism of the wildcatters.It's a division we can recognize as threaded through the long Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian archetypes of American political economy although I don't recall Dochuk stating this in the book.
In part, it explains why we see the inheritors of the Rockefeller and Pew fortunes involved in supporting liberal-ish causes today through legacy NGOs while a contrasting strain of evangelical cosmology can fold concepts like “peak oil” and climate change into their expectation that the Apocalypse is near and the fact they feel fine about that.
For an example of the latter, here is Dochuk writing about Ernest Manning, Premier of Alberta in the 1950s and an evangelical thought leader.
Manning, like Aberhart before him, held to a dispensational premillennialist view, which encouraged him to decode signs of societal strain as evidence that Christ’s return was nigh. His eschatology grafted onto contemporary theories of petroleum geology. At that moment, M. King Hubbert, a founder of the social movement known as Technocracy, which underscored the importance of engineers in the management of society and had ties to Social Credit, crafted his theory of “peak oil” holding that US domestic production would crest by 1971, then steadily decline. This prediction confirmed Manning’s belief that the world was entering its last phase. Not only did time seem to be running out on America - God’s City On A Hill - but it was now favoring non-Christians located in the very place to which Christ would return: the Middle East. His response was twofold: first, to train Western Christians’ eyes on the Middle East, where rising oil production and politics seemed to portend Christ’s return, and second, to extract expeditiously whatever oil was left under their soil before their dispensation expired. In Manning’s scheme, wildcatters offered North Americans a last glimmer of hope: they alone had the courage to find new reserves and inspire patriots with pure capitalist drive.
In other words, the rational response to “peak oil” was to keep on producing oil as quickly as possible. The mere prospect of a cataclysm is not necessarily going to cause a change in behavior. Which is why, now, as the climate crisis worsens in ways that more and more Americans can feel in their daily lives, the policy response from a rather loud faction of our body politic continues to be an unreserved chant of, “Drill, baby, drill!”
Anyway, in his conclusion, Dochuk entertains the notion that the wildcatters have "won" their battle with the patricians. Or at least, it appears their political and religious expression has retained a surprising power and resonance. Here is the key graph there.
Battered by oil’s bloody cut-throat system, yet determined to follow their calling, they clung to a personal trust in the supernatural, which came with a transaction. Place your faith in a higher being and honor his rules for holy living, the logic read, and ride the capricious offerings of the earth and the markets to heavenly fulfillment - no matter the heavy human (and ecological) costs. Place your trust in a God who giveth and taketh suddenly, but who is always there, and watch (and feel) the pain of oil’s boom-bust cycles and ever-present maladies melt away in the face of his saving grace. Our current age, in which the fluctuations of economy have intensified on a global stage and during which the inequalities of capitalist society have calcified, has only emboldened that ethic all the more. Its promises of spiritual and, in unpredictable moments, financial returns on the magical, miraculous workings of oil, its allowances for stark enigmas and contradictions in the modern condition - between hope and futility, empowerment and despair, hyperwealth and utter poverty - and its panic to drill, find and sell redemption before the Messiah returns have proved more than prescient and resilient.
Ages of American Capitalism: A History Of The United States by Jonathan Levy (2021)
A history of the United States from colonial times up until the time of the 2008 financial crisis. Much in the way Taylor Swift divides her career into eras, Levy breaks the American economy up into “ages.” There is an Age of Commerce (1660 until 1860), an Age of Capital (1860 to 1932) an Age of Control (1932 to 1980) and the Age of Chaos which we, presumably, are experiencing now.
After acknowledging the elusiveness of a proper definition of capital, Levy settles on this phrase: “The process through which a legal asset is invested with pecuniary value, in light of its capacity to yield a future pecuniary profit.” The political push and pull over the nature and direction of those investments; the tension between short term hoarding and long term redistribution is central to his narrative.
Obviously, this is a story told on a big sprawling scale. But it’s one well worth diving into for students of US history. One doesn’t need a whole lot of background in economics to access it. Rather than get too far into the discussion, here are a few items I wrote down in my notes as I read.
1) Levy’s commentary on Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man illustrates that a "booming" market in short term speculation is fundamentally the same thing as a stagnant economy.
Melville’s novel parses three contradictory desires and emotional states. His analysis was correct: the capitalist credit cycle of boom and bust, only just emerging in his day, is motivated by a contradictory drive of speculative investment. The contradiction consists in the fact that while credit-fueled and energetic speculation can lead to genuine capitalist investment booms, instigating wealth-generating enterprise, individuals can also succumb to the temptations of short-term speculation alone, in which, benefiting from the transactional liquidity of capital markets, they simply move their bets in and out of assets, confidently seeking short term gain. But speculations may not fix on objects of investment long enough for long-term economic development to happen. Capital just spins its top. And the speculative desire to leave all potential investment options open is only a fantasy. For if all options are kept open, but never exercised nothing actually ever happens.
2) Nostalgia is also a symptom of stagnation.
Capitalism demands an orientation of economic life toward the future, and so the constant urge to look back, and nostalgically stamp past ages “golden” is probably some kind of psychic compensation for the unremttingness of that demand, especially in moments when, to many, it feels difficult to muster a positive vision about the future.
3) By the time of the 1970s neoliberal turn, capacity for a coherent collective economic policy was diminished by a politics of alienation, fractionalization and “individual practitioners of narcissism.”
The federal government simply did not have the mechanisms at hand to master inflation. There was no notion of a unified public interest on the basis of which to act anyway. Instead the polity was splintering into Nixon’s Silent Majority, black nationalists, “back to the land” farmers, white ethnic revivalists (including neo-Confederates), Friends of the Earth, pro-live evangelical “family values” Christians, radial lesbians, international bankers, advocates of Indian sovereignties, Business Roundtable CEOs, black women activists of the National Welfare Rights Organization, white nationalist Vietnam veterans, and last but not least, individual practitioners of narcissism.
4) Finally, this book (along with Malcolm Harris’s Palo Alto later on. I may post about that one too, eventually.) drove home for me the huge impact Herbert Hoover has had on the American political economy of the 20th Century and beyond. Ideologically, Hoover was the equivalent of today's centrist Democrats. He believed the nation's business leaders should contribute to progress. But he wanted that to happen through public-private partnership or at his polite request.
On the telephone and at two White House conferences, the president personally pleaded with the corporate executives of the largest, most regulated industries to increase capital investment expenditures. In 1930 railroads and utilities obliged. Yet everywhere else, especially in residential construction, fixed investment kept falling. Hoover recognized that during the 1920s, corporate profits had run ahead of wages, and he believed that high wages would stabilize spending, a good thing. “The first shock,” he declared, “must fall on profits and not wages.” Whether because of Hoover’s promptings or not, the nation’s largest employers agreed not to slash wages, even as they continued to fire their less desirable employees, a pattern that would persist. Proudly, Hoover said the agreements were, “not a dictation or interference by the government with business.” Rather they were the result of “a request from the government that you co-operate in prudent measure to solve a national problem.” The president boasted, “This is a far cry from the arbitrary and dog-eat-dog attitude of the business world of some thirty for forty years ago.” Hoover believed his “associational state” transcended the Jacksonian sphering of public and private, state, and market, which under the banner of equal commercial opportunity, had withered state action throughout the Age of Capital. But he drew one line in the sand. He would not coerce capitalists to invest.
This is famously the path to failure. And yet it has persisted as canon for respectable politicians and pundits far and wide. Case in point, here is Joe Biden in 2021 taking the Hoover approach with insurers and utility companies after Hurricane Ida.
“I’m calling on the insurance companies at this critical moment. Don’t hide behind the fine print and technicality. Do your job. Keep your commitment to your communities you insure,” he continued. “Do the right thing. Pay your policy holders what you owe them to cover the cost of temporary housing in the midst of a natural disaster. Help those in need. That’s what all of us need to do.”
Biden also expressed that, throughout the week, he’d expressed that same message to local officials and utility and energy company representatives during virtual meetings.
How has that approach worked out?
A Louisiana State University survey last year found that 17% of Louisiana homeowners reported their provider canceled their policy. Sixty-three percent of policyholders said the cost of their insurance coverage increased from the prior year, the survey found.
There was roughly a 10% to 12% increase in homeowners’ insurance costs last year in the United States, said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit industry association.
You can't just ask these people to be nice. You have to force them. These “commitments to community” Biden imagines exist in corporate America are more tenuous than ever, if they even existed at all. And today’s political leaders, having abandoned the lessons of the New Deal, are less equipped to deal with that reality as a result.
Will he see his shadow this time?
All of this has the chattering class wondering if another Democrat should pick up the mantle. A half-dozen recently published lists of possible candidates — should Biden withdraw — all include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 41, who retains support among younger voters; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, 52, who won a state that backed Trump; California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 56, who has money, popularity and a growing national profile; and Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, who is the first woman in history to hold that office and is arguably the default choice.
So: What about Landrieu?
He has spent the last two years traveling tens of thousands of miles around the country. It's a role that has involved helping state and local officials, of both parties, quickly navigate the bureaucracy to get the federal money to start often long hoped-for infrastructure projects — not a bad launching pad for a campaign.
Of all the speculative lists of possible Biden replacements, Landrieu, 63, was mentioned in only one, in what amounted to a footnote.
While Landrieu has given no indication he's interested — and there's no way he could do so right now, without sabotaging Biden — five years ago he was openly flirting with a run.
Back then, Landrieu said he would never challenge Biden, and presumably that rule still applies.
Okay, well, consider the appearance of this article an "indication he's interested." That's how this sort of thing works. Mitch was extremely close to doing it last time around. Like, really close. A media whisper campaign had been dropping his name into the rumor mill as early as 2017. By mid-2018 the whisperers were clearing their throats and speaking more loudly. It came so close, in fact, that Mitch's friends at the Bayou Brief even coordinated an announcement day campaign puff feature that got posted prematurely and then quickly taken down. I happened to see it come across the RSS and read it in the meantime. I hope everyone involved is still embarrassed.
Anyway today's article doesn't mention this but we read a few weeks ago that Mitch's former deputy mayor and longtime political operative Ryan Berni has taken a job working for Biden 2024. In 2020 Berni was one of several familiar soulless Louisiana Democratic Party professional assholes who ended up collecting a few checks from the money bomb set off by former New York City Mayor/billionaire Michael Bloomberg's spectacular failure of a campaign flame out. One assumes they were all available to jump on board with Bloomberg because their schedules were cleared for Mitch.
Four years later there's an incumbent Democratic President on the slate. That's where all the dirty money is. And so that's where characters where Berni are going to be. For now, anyway. But that Democratic President is looking shakier every day. And maybe some of that money is looking for other places to go. The appearance of fresh rumors in the press would indicate someone is at least hedging bets on it.
In most of the country, Labor Day Weekend is where we make the psychic turn from summer to fall, even if the calendar doesn't quite yet agree. In Louisiana, September is a liar. School is back in session. Football has kicked off. The Halloween decorations have been up at Rouses for weeks now. But outside, the heat and humidity remain. And, of course, Hurricane Season moves into its most active period. The August 29 date marks not just the anniversary of Katrina, but also Isaac and Ida, so the seasonal transition can be an especially traumatic one. This year the temporal ecotone delivers us into peak storm season from the most brutal heat most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. The state is still so hot and dry that the Governor is warning people not to fire up the grill for the holiday. We'll see how that goes.
Meanwhile, as we head into the marquee part of Hurricane Season, the Washington Post greets us with a predictably depressing update on Louisiana's sinking coastline.
A group of scientists at Tulane University have also been investigating the situation. They found that across more than 200 wetland monitoring stations, seas are almost always rising faster than wetlands are able to grow — meaning that most wetlands are in a state of “drowning.” Their work, which is unpublished, tracked changes between 2009 and 2021.
“The number of the ‘drowning’ sites is much more than I thought before I started” the research, said Guandong Li, a PhD student at Tulane who led the work. “About 90 percent of these sites are unable to keep up with this recent high rate of sea level rise.”
"In a state of drowning." I'm petitioning for a bill next year that let's me buy a license plate with, "The Drowning State" printed on it. Anyway, we know this information all too well now. The current effort to protect and rebuild the coast is proving to be no match for accelerating sea level rise.
Sea level rise is driven both by land sinking — or subsidence — and the rising of the ocean. In the case of the current Gulf Coast surge, research suggests it is occurring in regions with and without major subsidence, implying a dominant role for the ocean. The faster seas rise, the less effective the state’s widely praised plans to protect its coast will be.
In 2012, Louisiana projected that, if sea level rise and other environmental threats remain modest, it would be able to rebuild land within 50 years. But a new plan released this year assumes faster sea level rise more consistent with current trends and shows considerable land losses by late this century — even in more optimistic scenarios.
“Over the period of 10 years, the state has gone from potentially being in a net gain situation to potentially being in [a] very significant net loss situation,” said Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “And that’s despite the best efforts of some very dedicated people.”
Those "best efforts" Kolker is talking about end up being cancelled out by all the carbon bombs
In 2016, the U.S. exported its first tanker of liquified natural gas, or LNG, from Cheniere’s Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish. Since then, fossil fuel firms have built four more export terminals in the Gulf South with plans for 20 more. Even before the terminals were built, the initial emissions estimates to regulators were so alarming that some environmental advocates described the planned facilities as “carbon bombs.”
Now, it seems that the reality is more grim than the predictions. All five of the active LNG export terminals in the Gulf South have leaked pollutants. People who live near the export terminals say the facilities are belching higher levels of toxic and climate-warming pollution into the air than originally estimated – which threatens the air quality of communities already burdened by pollution.
For example, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass export facility, in south Louisiana, exceeded hourly emissions limits of its air permits more than 100 times in 2022, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which sent the company a consolidated compliance order in June, warning that fines were possible.
Industry marketing campaigns tout natural gas as a “cleaner” alternative, because burning it produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal, to generate the same amount of energy. But leaks and emissions can erase those benefits, because natural gas is primarily composed of methane, the potent greenhouse gas.
It's a real boom in these bombs. It makes me a little bit sentimental for the days of the Bobby Jindal regime when the Wall Street Journal heralded the coming of "Qatar on the Bayou." At that time, Louisiana's industrial tax credit subsidies promised to bestow on us gleaming corridors of "fertilizer plants, boron manufacturers, methanol terminals, polymer plants, ammonia factories and paper-finishing facilities," up and down the Mississippi. That article (yes it's paywalled but trust me) featured commentary from the fossil industry's resident.. uh.. fossil in Louisiana, economist Loren Scott who promised that once the 10 year tax breaks expired, our school districts would "find themselves with a bonanza" on their hands. But fast-forward to this year and Louisiana public schools are seeing crashing enrollments, a drain on public funding that benefits private schools, and a superintendent who panders to the hate groups coordinating book bans. Some bonanza.
Nevermind the formal education, though. Louisiana is more proud of its entrepreneurial spirit anyway. Just look at these creative solutions we're applying so we can make real progress here in 2023, the hottest year on record.
Instead of lowering their emissions, two Gulf Coast LNG facilities, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, have asked state officials to make the situation right by increasing the amount of pollution they are permitted to spew into the air.
All together, in the United States, 25 planned projects to expand and build new export terminals will produce more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gasses annually, according to “Playing with Fire: the Climate Impact of the Rapid Growth of LNG,” a 2022 report from the Environmental Integrity Project that based its conclusions on the projected emissions given to regulators before the facilities were granted permits.
“That’s almost as much climate-warming pollution as 18 million passenger vehicles running for a year,” the report noted.
But uh oh. There's trouble brewing, says this Times-Picayune article. The precious boom in carbon bombs might be slowing down as the market becomes saturated. You might think it's time to rein the established players back in on all that methane and CO2 they're allowed to blow off into the air. You'd be wrong, though. We're doing this instead.
The Lower Energy Costs Act — which aims to speed up environmental review processes for LNG terminals and other energy projects, among myriad issues — passed the Republican-led House earlier this year but hasn’t moved in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The legislation was spearheaded by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Republican Rep. Garret Graves, both of Louisiana.
Loosening the regulatory burden would help the smaller projects that can’t handle lengthy reviews, though it would further exacerbate environmental risks for Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Slocum said.
“If you remove that FERC regulatory process, and you allow some of these smaller scale facilities to basically just take your local zoning board out for a steak dinner and you got yourself your building permit and you can start construction the next day and you can finish it in 12 months, obviously that’s a big advantage,” Slocum said.
Critics of Scalise and Graves's bill have been calling it the "Polluters over People Act" (missing an obvious opportunity to call it the Steak Dinner for Polluters Act.) It would place limits on the time and resources available to federal regulators charged with approving or rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure projects. It would also limit the law's ability to protect communities from the inevitable harm these facilities produce.
Such inevitable harm includes the 360 wildfires currently raging across the state due to an unprecedented drought brought on by fossil fuel driven climate change. It also would include a different kind of fire set off at the Marathon Refinery last week in St. John Parish, itself only the latest example of the tons of toxic chemicals released into Louisiana's air and water each year. And of course who could forget the even more desecrated and faster sinking coastline wrought by all of this activity as well.
But the consequences of the boom are most visible on the Gulf Coast, mostly on the rural fringes of the Louisiana coast.
Grist reviewed dozens of state and federal records, and found that, even as regulators from state agencies like the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) hasten to greenlight new terminals, the handful of terminals that have begun operation are exposing residents of coastal parishes to dangerous levels of air pollution from flares and leaks.
Louisiana environmental regulators recently cited numerous violations at Venture Global’s LNG terminal in Cameron Parish in southwestern Louisiana. But five hours away, on the southeastern edge of the state, they are allowing the company to move forward with the Delta LNG plant near McAnespy’s home in Plaquemines.
In places like Plaquemines, gas exporters are building their plants on eroding swampland, where there is an increased risk of catastrophic accidents and explosions during floods and hurricanes. People like McAnespy, who live in neighborhoods surrounding the terminals, are right in the blast zone.
“It’s not just that each of these facilities is like a giant death star on sinking land, it’s that there’s so many of them,” said Elizabeth Calderon, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice who has worked on cases challenging LNG terminals in south Louisiana.
“This is how sacrifice zones are created,” she said.
And there's Louisiana 2023 in a nutshell. For the mere price of a few well placed steak dinners, you can deploy your very own Death Star to carbon bomb our sacrifice zone.
But anyone can tell you there's a ton of money to be made in wartime for the savvy investor regardless of which side is actually winning. And why should the war on climate change be any different? Insurers understand this. They're already planning to win the next battle. There might not be much of a future in writing policies for homeowners in South Louisiana or Florida.. or California. You know what you can insure, though? More Death Stars.
The companies no longer insuring Louisiana homes are well-known, but those insuring LNG terminals are not. Government agencies require proof of insurance for fossil fuel projects, but those documents are often shielded from the public as developers claim confidential business information exemptions, even going to court to prevent insurers’ names from becoming public.
In early June, anti-fossil fuel campaign Insure Our Future got a rare look into one gas export terminal in Texas: Freeport LNG. First published in E&E News, Freeport’s insurers are largely specialty or reinsurance companies, but a few are also involved in the property market, including Liberty Mutual, AIG and Chubb.
Most insurers and LNG companies contacted for this story – including AIG, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Venture Global – either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. While no insurance information for terminals in coastal Louisiana has become public, their insurers are likely to come from similar kinds of companies.
Oil and gas projects along the Gulf Coast have long been “a major market” for specialty insurance carriers, Keenan says.
This is how climate policy is formulated. Insurers, and investment capital firms are making decisions about what is viable. Such decisions carry massive impacts for ordinary people but allow them no input beyond their limited role as consumers. And, in accordance with the dictates of our capital de-risking matrix, anyone who can't afford the increasing costs of living along a sinking coast of a rising sea is allowed to fall off and fail on an
isolated individual basis. Political factors, we are told, has no consideration here. Most convenient for elected policymakers, these problems are all off their desks. The real choices are abstracted away to private investors and explained simply as market determinants.
And the market has determined that we do not need to invest in sustainable equitable and healthy communities in order to generate profit. Those things, we can happily sacrifice in the fire or in the flood, whichever comes first. The net effect is a re-calibration of who and what can survive where. In this way, New Orleans becomes a boutique resort where nobody actually lives. Grand Isle can "boom" but only as an exclusive fishing camp for millionaires. And towns all up and down the bayou can be swallowed whole by extractive industry.
Now here is where we have to remind ourselves not to go too far overboard with the "market decides" rhretoric. Remember, we're supposed to be moving past neoliberalism. We're doing something called "Bidenomics" now. But mostly what that means is we are seeking the same sorts of policy outcomes as before but being slightly more explicit about the fact there's intention behind the program. Did you know, for example, that Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act "includes a bonanza for the carbon capture industry?" That's what this headline says, anyway. And, hey, there's that "bonanza" word again. As we've already seen, that can only mean one thing. More massive state subsidies for environmentally damaging heavy industry.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate on Monday and is poised to pass the House on Friday, includes a dramatic change in a crucial tax credit for the carbon capture industry—increasing the government subsidy for capturing CO2 from polluting sources from $50 to $85 per metric ton. Developers say that raising that incentive could tip many projects that once weren’t worth the investment over the financial finish line. The new bill also simplifies the process for receiving those tax credits, and opens the subsidy to smaller carbon capture projects, which together essentially fulfill a full industry wishlist for new carbon capture legislation.
“The fact that [the legislation] actually happened isn’t a big surprise,” says Adrian Corless, CEO of CarbonCapture, a direct air capture startup. “The fact that it actually came out in such a good form and actually came out [so soon] is much better than we expected.”
What Democratic Party political consultants mean for us to get from this is the Biden Administration is directing a bold new industrial policy that fights climate change. What's actually happening, is much less impressive. In practice, Biden's initiatives are working out about as well for Louisiana as Bobby Jindal's program of industrial expansion did. Consider that most carbon capture projects are "greenwashing" exercises. That is to say they are an elaborate token mitigation measure that allows polluting industries to carry on with business as usual.
CCS does not do a good job of capturing and storage carbon. It struggles to exist, and when it does, it struggles to function. When it manages both, all it does is capture a tiny fraction of high-emitting process, supplying or burning fossil fuels, and the carbon it captures gets sent straight back to work worsening the climate crisis by jimmying the last dregs of oil from depleted reservoirs.
On top of all of this, it serves a rhetorical function; worsening the climate problem through the empty promise it provides.
And it's working. Joe Biden's carbon capture "empty promise" is enabling new projects in Louisiana. A gas company called Air Products has, over the objections of local residents, already begun drilling a carbon pipeline that would inject waste material deep beneath Lake Maurepas. Already they seem to have imploded a groundwater well in the process. All of the new LNG carbon bombs and Death Stars are enabled by carbon capture promises as well. Maybe we're not quite ready to declare the next Qatar on the Bayou but you can see where we're going.
Perhaps the biggest boondoggle in all of this, though, are so-called "direct air capture" projects like this one in Calcasieu Parish.
Louisiana will receive up to $603 million in Department of Energy grant funding to create a direct air capture hub in Calcasieu Parish that is expected to generate about 2,300 total jobs, federal officials said.
Dubbed Project Cypress, the direct air capture hub will attempt to pull more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually directly from the atmosphere and sequester it deep underground, according to the Department of Energy.
No it won't. It will not do any of that. In the above cited article, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm enthuses that direct air capture projects are like “giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky.” In reality, they are ineffective net energy consumers likely to produce at least as much carbon as they could ever remove. Ten days after the above article praising the supposed 2300 jobs (100 permanent jobs max) promised by Project Cypress, the T-P followed up with this explainer where we learn the dubious process is "like trying to mop the ocean."
It is “a little bit like trying to mop the ocean,” said Jane Patton, plastics and petrochemicals campaigns manager at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Patton noted that Louisiana emitted somewhere between 211 million and 219 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2018, according to LSU’s most recent greenhouse gas inventory. At best, Project Cypress will sequester 1 million tons annually.
“We’re talking about a very big planet here and very small filtration mechanisms,” she said.
Patton said prior direct air capture pilot programs have missed their carbon dioxide sequestration goals while using more energy than promised. In addition, the filtration systems rely on amines and ethylene oxide, which are “very toxic.”
Patton is also wary of the injection aspect of both direct air capture and carbon capture, which requires liquefying carbon dioxide, transporting it via pipeline and injecting it deep under cap rocks within Louisiana’s “sinking geology,” as she put it.
“That has not been proven to work reliably anywhere in the world at the scale that industry is promising,” Patton said.
The very toxic inefficient process that has not been proven to work might not be good for de-carbonization. But, as we've already seen, that's really beside the point. The Bidenomics bonanza here is in real estate.
Ohio-based Battelle will be the project owner and will partner with Climeworks Corp. and Heirloom Carbon Technologies Inc. to develop the sequestration technology. Gulf Coast Sequestration will transport the carbon dioxide and bury it deep within Calcasieu Parish land owned by Stream Companies. Both Gulf Coast Sequestration and Stream Companies are led by W. Gray Stream.
Heir to a large oil fortune (and son of country singer Lynn Anderson), William Gray Stream is a well known Louisiana business and land baron with heavy political ties. Bobby Jindal appointed him to the state Board of Regents in exchange for a $10,000 campaign contribution. He has also dabbled in the tech start-up world, having spent much of the past decade attempting to prop up the ill-fated Waitr food delivery app. Despite much cheerleading from the local press, that venture seems to have reached its ending last year.
But it's the land investment where Stream is positioning himself for the real windfall. The land holdings corporation he has inherited and the "wetlands recovery" business he owns are primed to receive federal subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration, as well as any future attempts to prop up the waning carbon offset market which seem all but inevitable. And so, in this way, federal funds ostensibly meant to fight climate change are just being sucked up... kind of like a giant vacuum.... by a politically connected Louisiana failson.
Meanwhile the Drowning State, under attack from an arsenal of Death Stars and carbon bombs remains in a state of drowning. And as Hurricane Season enters it peak, we may yet see another munition deployed.
The heat dome responsible for record-breaking temperatures and drought in south Louisiana may have also created a ticking time bomb of "ridiculously warm" waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which could rapidly intensify any tropical storm approaching the state’s coastline, scientists say.
As the peak of hurricane season approaches — generally considered to be around Sept. 10 — conditions in the Gulf will be a major focus of concern for storm trackers.
"All of the shallow waters, including the coastal waters and tidal lakes, are ridiculously warm right now. So it’s primed for anything that works its way in," said Ben Schott, director of the National Weather Service office covering the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.
We got a look at this Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified to a category 4 storm before making landfall in Florida last week. Hopefully we won't get to see the Gulf "time bomb" explode anything in our path this year. We're doing a fair enough job at blowing ourselves to bits as it is.
There's so much to say about the way the "trifecta" Democratic government elected in 2020 failed to move on critical matters that could have warded off the coming collapse once they're out of power again. We've been warning about this for a while. The "one job" they had was to pass voting rights protections and the PRO Act. They refused to do either because Joe Biden didn't want anything to fundamentally change. And now it's just a waiting game until the Republicans take back the White House and can undo the temporary rulemaking that's been holding the dam back somewhat.
For example, watch what happens when President DeSantis gets a hold of the SEC in a few years. All of this will start to go the opposite way really fast.
The SEC also proposed a new rule this month that would force institutional investors like pension or hedge funds to use qualified custodians to hold crypto assets, which would make it more costly for them to do so.
This aggressiveness has spread to the rest of the government. In January, a group of banking regulators essentially warned financial institutions against holding crypto assets, citing the risk of fraud. Banks have already begun to pull away from the industry. In addition, the Federal Reserve denied access to the payment system to a crypto bank called Custodia.
It should be said that this crackdown is happening without any new legislation from Congress. The SEC is using existing securities laws to contain the industry and section it off from the rest of the financial system. Discretionary enforcement and regulatory guidance depend on the regulators, and does not have the permanence or force of law. But a law from this set of legislators is unlikely to produce much of value for the public. Provisions like the one proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to force crypto firms to comply more stringently with anti-money laundering laws would be welcome. But the more likely legislative outcome from a Congress littered with recipients of crypto cash would be some definitive de-fanging of the SEC’s efforts to enforce existing law.
Because they refuse to pass new laws and prefer to just shake a finger at the criminals for a few years, we're going to see major unmitigated looting of people's retirement funds. In the interim it's all just borrowed time.
The economy is teetering precariously on the brink of recession now. We'll just go ahead and mention that this is a deliberate policy goal. Hopefully I'll have time to say more about that later. For now, it's worth noting that the policy choice is not only being made at the Fed where they're leaning hard on the monetary lever. But it has also already been enacted on the fiscal side as well by a feckless President Biden and the Democratic controlled congress.
In other words, the United States is currently undergoing a great deal of austerity. Indeed, President Biden has repeatedly bragged that the government will reduce deficits by about $1.5 trillion this fiscal year.
By itself, this austerity will have negative effects on the economy, including job loss and wage reductions, which is not at all good. But it should also substantially ease the pressure on Powell to hike so quickly. With fiscal policy pressing hard on the economic brakes, there is less reason for him to be doing the same thing, especially because the Fed can’t affect half the reasons inflation is happening except by making them worse. There is also no reason for President Biden to listen to advisers who reportedly want to counter the effects of canceling some student loan debt by restarting remaining student loan payments. Since we’ve had no payments on these loans for over two years, from a current policy baseline this would translate into even more austerity, in the form of a substantial tax hike on approximately 30 million people.
There’s also a looming health insurance price spike coming this fall, as subsidies for Affordable Care Act exchanges expire. When asked whether he was concerned about this severe inflationary action, Senator and Emperor for Life Joe Manchin (D-WV) responded, “you gotta start paying down debt” to fight inflation, and “there’s only so many dollars to go around” to … prevent inflation in health insurance rates. The Fed shouldn’t be aiding and abetting steel-trap logic like this by pushing very hard with its economic lever in the same direction to bring investment, hiring, consumer spending, and economic activity to a halt.
And, of course, after the Republicans take back control of Congress this fall (and assuming the Supreme Court continues its radical agenda of dismantling the state entirely) the prospects for doing anything besides accelerating the pace of this double punishment are slim to none.
It seems like forever ago but we did say at the start of the Biden Administration that these were the stakes.
This is all so so much cart before the horse. If Biden and the current Congress fail to pass the PRO Act and the For The People voting rights reform, then the resurgent right is going to burn everything down in a few years. https://t.co/ZOWbBa6I3e
— skooks (@skooks) March 27, 2021
In fact, the rationing doesn’t stop with formula and vaccines; it’s our formal economic policy. Federal Reserve interest rate hikes to stop inflation are designed to “tamp down demand,” a euphemism for throwing people out of work in the hopes that millions will lack enough money to buy things. The current strategy is to ration our way through inflation, despite the fact that interest rates can’t end lockdowns in China or halt the war in Ukraine, the primary current drivers of the price squeeze.
What this comes back to is that public policy has relied—absurdly—on belief in an automatic process of capitalism, where shortages not only shouldn’t but cannot happen. When that internalized promise is not kept, people get really damn angry about it, and they should. They should know that it’s the result of decades of bad policy: monopolization, centralization of production, lax regulatory response. Until we recognize this deficiency and start re-engineering policy to ensure the general welfare, that anger will reap a whirlwind in November and beyond.
An angry "whirlwind" whipped up through a public deliberately kept ignorant by an aloof ruling class indifferent to its suffering is not going to be a good time for anybody. But don't worry. They've got another button to mash on if that starts to get out of hand. It's the one that buys more cops.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday urged states and cities to use unspent money from last year’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package to fund crime prevention programs and hire police officers.
The president stressed the need for more funding of public safety programs at a White House event with mayors and law enforcement officials.
“To every governor, every mayor, every county official, the need is clear, my message is clear: Spend this money now; use these funds we made available to you; prioritize public safety,” Biden said. “Do it quickly before the summer, when crime rates typically surge.”
News: @CedricRichmond is expected to leave the White House next month, making him one of first close Biden advisers to leave. He'll enter the private sector but also likely be a consultant to @DNC, which has not forged close ties to the White House
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) April 25, 2022
There's an odd mirror universe that exists in the minds of openly racist commenters on Twitter and Nextdoor and, I guess, also in the minds of the elected leadership of most cities, that assumes we don't spend enough money on cops. I don't know what can be done about that anymore. I mean you can plainly point out that they do, in fact, live in a mirror universe. But they aren't going to listen to you. Police funding can only go up. If you are in politics that is the only way the crank turns.
The effort to funnel federal COVID relief dollars toward law enforcement began less than a year after protests in 2020 in response to George Floyd’s murder made “defund the police” a national rallying cry. More than 20 cities took action to reduce police budgets on the heels of that movement, though many have failed to follow through on those cuts.
As the midterm elections approach, Republicans and Democrats now appear to be competing to see which party can be the most outspokenly pro-police. Republicans have blamed Democrats for recent increases in violent crime, which they say are a result of reduced police budgets—though, in reality, there appears to be no correlation between crime rates and law enforcement funding. Biden and leading Democrats have disputed claims that they want to “defund the police,” holding up the ARPA funds given to law enforcement as proof.
Amid the current political debate, “Republicans have easily, barely lifting a finger, pushed Democrats into an ‘anti-police’ corner,” Kay Whitlock, co-author of the new book “Carceral Con: The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform,” said in an interview with The Appeal. “The result is that denunciation of ‘defund the police’ as a strategy and slogan has taken root among mainstream Democratic Party politicians.”
But Biden and top Democrats are now going beyond denouncing the “defund” slogan and are calling to substantially increase funding for law enforcement.
Of course none of that will mean anything come this fall when Republicans are sure to re-take Congress all the while hooting at the top of their lungs that Joe Biden, who just shifted $350 billion originally meant to protect people from the ravages of a pandemic over to newly aggressive efforts to lock them in jail, is somehow trying to "defund the police."
Probably "The Left" is to blame.
Joe Biden announced today that the US will contribute the following to the growing pit of death and destruction in Ukraine.
The new $800M package includes:
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 16, 2022
- 800 anti-aircraft systems
- 9,000 anti-armor systems
- 7,000 small arms
- 20 Million rounds
- Unmanned aerial systems
And more.
It surprises no one to learn that this expenditure did not immediately elicit a chorus of "BUT HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT" howls from the psychopaths who dominate American media and politics. They do love to yell that. But only when it refers to expenditures on things like food or medicine for poor people. It's fine when we spend the money on murder. That's what our enlightened rulers enjoy most.
So, anyway, how will we pay for it?
Next week, the White House says it will start to wind down a COVID-19 program that pays to test, treat and vaccinate people who don't have health insurance.
It's one of several immediate impacts after Congress declined to add $22.5 billion in funding to a broad government spending bill passed last week. President Biden signed the bill into law on Tuesday, hailing it as a bipartisan achievement without mentioning the lack of COVID-19 funding.
The COVID-19 funding request met with political pushback from Republicans and concern among some lawmakers that the White House has not fully explained how trillions in COVID money has been spent so far and what funding remains. Republicans in particular have been unwilling to agree to new spending.
Ah okay we've given up even pretending to care about COVID and kicking millions of Americans off of Medicaid. That's plenty money right there. What else, though?
The bill also does not include further Hurricane Ida aid, but time likely remains to appropriate more dollars for that storm, which hit in August and affected a range of states, including New York, whose congressional delegation holds strong sway.
Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, sought an amendment to include $3 billion for 2020 and 2021 disasters, but the proposal was rejected. He said that while he supported the billions appropriated for Ukraine, and noted aid being sent to Haiti and elsewhere, needs here should be taken care of as well.
“How do you do that and not provide aid for our own citizens, for people that are in need?” he said. “You’re treating people of other countries better than we're treating our own. I want to be clear: I'm not necessarily saying that with Ukraine. We're not under missile attack right now. But for some of these other countries, that’s exactly what's happening.”
Garret Graves isn't "necessarily saying that with Ukraine" but I will. It is unconscionable to let people suffer the effects of multiple major hurricanes in order to send even more instruments of death into a war zone. Despite what the hunky Ukranian guy everybody loves says, the US can still choose to do some actual good things for people instead of helping him start Word War III. But in American politics it's always easier to kill a million people in Europe than it is to figure out how to feed and clothe them here.
Biden's probable pick for the open Supreme Court seat.
Childs’s experience is worth scrutinizing closely. As a lawyer, Childs served as an associate and then partner at Nexsen Pruet Jacobs & Pollard, from 1992 to 2000. At Nexsen Pruet, Childs worked primarily in labor and employment law, principally working on behalf of employers against allegations of racial discrimination, civil rights violations, and unionization drives.
Bloomberg Law has 25 cases registered in which Childs participated during her time at the firm; 23 of those involve alleged employment discrimination or other employment-related civil rights violations. Race and gender were common factors in such suits; seven such cases entailed race-based job discrimination, and another three involved sex-based job discrimination. In all but two registered instances, Childs was not representing the plaintiff but the defendant, meaning that she overwhelmingly represented employers accused of violating civil rights and gender discrimination laws in the workplace.
Not considered the "front runner" at the moment, but all the elements are there. Clyburn is pushing for her. Apparently, Lindsey Graham is on board so it's "bi-partisan." Add to that the concept of a figure who checks all the indentitarian boxes while also upholding a conservative ideology and you've pretty much got the flavor of the moment in Democratic Party politics right now. Hard to imagine this isn't the direction they go in.
It now looks like they are (probably) going to pass the bi-partisan infrastructure-privatization bill. Hooray?
While it's nice to think they might move ahead with putting some money into highways and bridges and water systems, there are fundamental problems with the way this bill would deliver such projects. We talked a little bit about that the other day and I'm sure there will be plenty opportunities to bring it up again once the consequences become apparent. But at the moment most commentators are skipping over those details to raise questions about the process. Like, for example, what was even the point of all this?
What may appear to be an imminent victory for bipartisan deal-making was in fact a drawn-out demonstration of how broken the Senate is as an institution. The Senate (with the White House’s support) wasted months cajoling and rehabilitating a handful of key Republicans only to pass a smaller version of something Democrats could theoretically have passed entirely on their own. Moving the bill forward only looks like a victory if one accepts the sclerosis and dysfunction of the Senate as a natural obstacle to be overcome with cunning and patience, not a self-imposed limitation on effective and responsive governance.
They could have chosen to just put all of the "infrastructure" through reconciliation and be done with it. Instead they stripped out all the best parts and put those on a shelf that they promise...really.. fingers crossed and all... to pass right after they get this shitty thing through and pretend it's an accomplishment.
What incentive do either of the famous trouble-Dems Sinema and Manchin have to pass the reconciliation bill now, though? I have no idea. Neither of them has committed to it. And then, of course, there are the labor and voting rights items the whole future of this congress and Presidency rest upon still sitting out there to be taken up later. Does anyone think any of that is going to get done now? I'd love to hear how.
We've hit another first of the month again. There's one every month! But this one has been the most first of the month that has yet firsted since pandemic crisis began. And it has gotten dark.
NEW ORLEANS — Deputies with the First and Second City Courts of New Orleans will be required to get a coronavirus vaccination. Constable Edwin M. Shorty Jr. has mandated all commissioned deputies must be vaccinated as COVID-19 case counts are rising with the spread of the delta variant. All full-time and reserve deputies must meet this vaccination mandate by Aug. 16, the constable said.What duties will the constables and the courts be performing that will have them "at capacity in the coming weeks?"
Officials said vaccination rates among law enforcement entities are high, but it has not been mandatory in the past. The mandate will ensure SCC deputies are not leaving the public at risk when performing duties of the department and ensuring their personal safety, according to the constable. The use of personal protective equipment will also be mandated while remaining socially distanced when possible and minimizing interactions with other employees or the public when possible.
Shorty said he expects the courts to be at capacity in the coming weeks. He says that we are not out of the woods of the pandemic, and will make sure all CDC guidelines are followed in addition to the mandatory vaccination decision.
Second City Court handles eviction cases for Algiers and the West Bank of Orleans Parish. This decision comes after the federal eviction moratorium expired over the weekend. First City Court officials confirm that all East Bank deputy constables for Orleans Parish are fully vaccinated, and any new deputy constable will be required to vaccinate as well.
Perhaps when the constables go about their busy work evicting people, they could bring some vaccines with them. It's about time we get a bona-fide door-to-door vax program going in this city that actually reaches the most vulnerable. Of course this would be the way it happens.
Evictions are not just about to spike in New Orleans. They're about to spike nationwide. Some parts of the nation will be spiking harder than others, though. You will not be surprised to see which they are. The maps in this NYT opinion piece by Sema K. Sgaier and Aaron Dibner-Dunlap show how many renters are behind and how far behind they are on rent in each US county or parish.
Just the other night someone reminded us, as the South goes, so too goes the nation. The South is not going well at the moment. In Orleans Parish (which, despite much contrary popular myth making, is located in the South) 19.6% of renters currently owe back rent according to numbers cited in that NYT article. The average amount owed is $3,187. Sgaier and Dibner-Dunlap write that state and local governments "can prevent this rental crisis from becoming a homelessness crisis" by speeding up distribution of Emergency Rental Assistance funds made available by the stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year by Congress. But we already know that isn't going to be enough.
As of last Thursday, the Times-Picayune reported the City of New Orleans had already run through $18 million of the $52 million in rental assistance that has so far been distributed for the entire state processing only 5,000 of 16,000 applications. The state has another $87 million to disperse but it's not clear how that gets divided. That total will still not be sufficient to meet the need so, no matter what, everyone will be waiting on the feds to release the second tranche of ARP funds. But, as we will see, that tranche may not arrive at all.
Meanwhile, we learn by that same T-P article there are approximately 400 evictions cases queued up to file as soon as the moratorium ends. This story says 58 were filed on Monday. Which is a very bad time for that to happen because it follows right on the heels of this.
Louisiana residents will no longer receive an extra $300 a week on top of the state’s maximum $247 benefit. The state will also pull out of federal programs that provided jobless aid to self-employed workers and gig workers and allowed people to get jobless benefits past the 26-week state cap.
The benefits were made available by Congress until Labor Day, but Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, ordered Louisiana to stop accepting the federal payments effective July 31 in exchange for support from GOP lawmakers and business groups for a permanent $28 hike to the state’s weekly unemployment benefits, beginning in six months.
The move spells the end to jobless aid for nearly 86,000 residents who make their living as self-employed contractors, musicians, tour guides or gig workers. Another 65,000 residents who have exceeded the state’s 26-week-long limit on unemployment benefits will also get the boot, according to data from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
For the 35,000 residents who will remain on unemployment rolls, weekly checks will be cut in half – as Louisiana joins 25 Republican-led states that have rejected the $300 supplemental payments under pressure from business groups who argue the payments are discouraging employees from returning to work.
Is that $300 pittance discouraging people from returning to their demeaning and dangerous service jobs in the middle of a fourth wave COVID spike? So far there isn't any solid evidence that cutting those benefits has sent them all rushing back.
So far, early data suggests that cutting the benefits given to Americans who lost their jobs during the covid-19 pandemic has not led to a big pickup in hiring. The 20 states that reduced benefits in June had the same pace of hiring as the mostly Democrat-led states that kept the extra $300-a-week unemployment payments in place, according to state-level data from the Labor Department. Survey data from the Census Bureau and Gusto’s small-business payroll data show similar results.
Many economists and business owners say other issues such as health concerns, child-care problems and workers reassessing their career choices appear to be larger factors keeping them home.
The same week that the governor is cutting off the $300 is also the week the landlord wants that $3,000 average back rent or thousands of people are going to be be put out. Hard to imagine they're all jumping on one of those $8 or $10 an hour jobs so they can hope not to get sick before figuring out the math isn't gonna work. What are people supposed to do?
For much of the past week, the President's message has been that he isn't supposed to do anything. Last week, he insisted that a month old Supreme Court ruling prevented him extending the moratorium without congressional action. On Friday, as congressional leaders were giving up trying to take that action and punting the problem back to him, Biden turned the blame onto governors and mayors saying in this statement, "there can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants who have been hurt during this pandemic." Biden's statement also contained a passive aggressive suggestion that the mayors and governors, "should also be aware that there is no legal barrier to moratorium at the state and local level."
Neither John Bel Edwards nor LaToya Cantrell has imposed or even spoken in favor of a local moratorium on evictions. Maybe they didn't think Biden was talking to them. We've already mentioned they seem to be doing an adequate (relatively speaking.. not objectively great) job of spending the rental assistance money so he probably wasn't talking to them about that either. And it's true there are states doing a much worse job. For example, Florida, under the psychopathic governorship of Ron DeSantis, has withheld 98% of its allotted rental assistance funds in what we have to assume is an act of deliberate cruelty.
Having said all that, we should point out that governors and mayors (not just DeSantis types) are nonetheless reluctant to spend their stimulus funds. Partially this is because Joe Biden and the bi-partisan infrastructure deal making its way through Congress now is about to yank a bunch of it back. That has already become an issue in New Orleans city government as the Cantrell administration discussed its plans to spend its stimulus funds with the City Council last week.
But officials said they are resisting the urge to spend the windfall immediately to supplement the $633 million budget for 2021. They recommend the money be stretched out until revenue improves. That’s particularly crucial because the forecast calls for the lost revenue from 2020 to total more than $290 million by 2025 -- more than City Hall has received so far from the stimulus, codified in the American Rescue Plan.
“Even if we’re using that ARP money, we could still end up in a deficit,” City Council member Helena Moreno said.
City officials are nervously eying negotiations over President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan. While such a plan would likely mean more federal money for New Orleans, city officials worry that Congress might cancel the second stimulus payments to cities and counties to help pay for infrastructure.
They aren't at all wrong to be worried. That's exactly what the current version of the infrastructure bill is set to do. And that's not really even the worst of it. The infrastructure bill is best understood as a privatization bill. The American Prospect's David Dayen explains in this breakdown. He actually thinks it's been improved in the latest negotiation. I'm less encouraged and will explain in a bit. Here is what Dayen has to say.
The revenue offsets did change quite a bit. We knew about Republicans ditching the tax enforcement piece. But there was a big victory here for progressives. A few weeks ago, it looked as if much of the bill would be financed by selling off public assets and allowing investment firms long-term concessions of roads and water and power systems and whatever else they could land. The privatization agenda was extremely dangerous, and in my view enough to oppose the effort entirely.
But it has mostly vanished in this new version. After significant pushback from the left, a good deal of the privatization schemes are gone. That was an important show of force.
There is $100 million in “asset concession incentive” grants to help cities establish public-private partnerships (P3s). Some larger transportation projects will also be required to evaluate a P3 option, to ensure it’s given “a fair shot.” Tipping the scales to P3s is bad news, and these measures give them a foot in the door. But there was talk that the overall bill would save up to $100 billion by offloading the investment to P3s, which would really have been a fire sale. This is definitely more minor.
It's clear that someone in Gilbert Montano's office keeps a close eye on these developments. Not only has the city been anticipating the ARP claw backs from the very beginning of the infrastructure negotiations, they've also started the ball rolling on a "framework" for the privatization component of the bill as well.
Anyway, Dayen's description of the reduced emphasis on privatization is too optimistic. These changes he is describing are just the fluid argument over how to write the bill. The purpose remains the same. To put it plainly, public-private-partnerships (P3s) are privatization. Just putting them into the process this way practically guarantees they will get implemented through the regular corrupt local patronage networks. And the way New Orleans spends public money is especially suited to just that kind of arrangement.
A good little book to check out on this topic is Aaron Schneider's Renew Orleans?: Globalized Development and Worker Resistance after Katrina (2018) There, we find an analysis of the city budget based on the processes and institutions in place during the late 00s, which haven't changed a whole lot since then. The big takeaway is there's a lot of activity that goes on "off the books." A quick excerpt summarizing this point:
The most important finding of this simple comparison (of New Orleans finances to those of similarly sized and situated cities) was that New Orleans taxes not too far below what is to be expected but has far fewer revenues and even lower expenditures. Taxes were only $7 million less than predicted by the model, but revenues were approximately $100 million lower and expenditures were almost $250 million lower than expected. New Orleans appears to tax its citizens the same but undertake less public action than other cities.
A reasonable explanation is the proliferation of satellite entities, many of which are off-budget, difficult to monitor, and undertake significant fiscal action in the form of revenues, expenditures, and accumulation of assets. To explore these entities, data were drawn from 2007 and 2008, gathering information from city budget documents, Louisiana Legislative Auditor reports, and accounting documents collected directly from some entities. City budget totals include revenues and outlays by some boards, commissions, and public-benefit corporations, as they are considered component units of city government, and therefore government accounting practices require them to be included in the city's comprehensive financial report. Not all entities are so considered, however, and they vary in the degree to which their accounts appear in the public record. Some provide comprehensive financial reports to the Legislative Auditor's Office, others keep accounts according to government accounting standards but do not report them anywhere, and still others do not keep accounts in any easily comparable fashion.
What this says in so many words is that New Orleans is crawling with public private partnerships and conceded public assets already. The city is run through an impenetrable network of semi privatized commissions and non profits who operate with almost zero public transparency. Schneider's analysis in fact shows this is actually the largest sector for public expenditures.
Take for example tourism promotion agencies like the mostly private New Orleans and Company seen here preparing to spend millions of dollars in public money on an ad campaign encouraging more people to travel and gather here during a pandemic. Back in February, NO and CO's head Stephen Perry sent out an inflammatory email to agency clients wherein he blamed local COVID victims for preventing the cabal of tourism owners from making money. Here we see the Convention Center arguing over how to spread half a billion public dollars around to contractors
and cronies to renovate and expand its facilities and develop whole new "entertainment district" for private profit while hundreds of New
Orleanians are about to be evicted. And still the Cantrell Administration insists the city gets its #fairshare from these agencies. Maybe this is because dispersing public money through private conduits and expecting it to trickle down is precisely their idea of "fair."
It's important to understand this context because when you see administrators claim there are multi-year deficits which obligate them to hold back federal relief funds rather than use them to help people now, you have to question where they actually intend those funds to go. People are going to be evicted on August 1, 2021 October 3, 2021... actually the moratorium doesn't cover everyone and evictions have been ongoing this entire time. What good does it do them if we are hiding money away until 2025?
The administration is considering setting aside whatever money it might need for the latest 2025 estimates first and then work backward, only adding to next year’s plan at the end, Montaño said.
Given that we know the city is preparing to implement the privatizing functions of the infrastructure bill, and given that Montano is arguing here that the City Council should butt out of his budget process, we have to conclude that the purpose is to consolidate as much of the pub-private patronage power through the mayor's office as possible. At least that is one way to read this "efficiencies gained through the pandemic process," comment.
“It’s easiest to go back to the way you were and its easiest to go back to normal, but I’m not willing to lose the efficiencies we gained through this pandemic process,” he said. He added that the council reopening the process “takes away executive authority. The mayor gets to propose what we’re putting in the budget, not an agency director.”
Actually that's pretty much just a naked admission. It would also explain why the same administration expressing concern over the ARP claw backs is simultaneously promoting the passage of the bill that will make them happen. They don't care if there is less money than people actually need so long as they get to be in charge of passing it out.
Why is this acceptable? Or more critically, why does our political system allow this state of affairs to obtain? To answer that, let us refer to a book by Arizona Senator and budding professional troll, Kyrsten Sinema. The book, by the bearer of the now famous "fuck off" ring, is titled Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last, funnily enough. In this excerpt, Sinema relays to us some important lessons she learned serving in the Arizona State Legislature.
I showed up all right. And for the first several months, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, coming to work every morning full of vim and vigor, ready to face off for justice—which made me rather annoying. I’d stand up four or five times a week on the floor of the house and give scathing speeches about how this bill and that bill were complete and utter travesties of justice, and the paper would capture one or two of the quotes, and then we’d vote on the offending bills and they’d pass with supermajorities. I’d get righteously indignant and head back to my office, incensed that my colleagues could not only write but actually support and vote for such horrid policies!
Meanwhile, everyone else went to lunch. In short, my first legislative session was a bust. I’d spent all my time being a crusader for justice, a patron saint for lost causes, and I’d missed out on the opportunity to form meaningful relationships with fellow members in the legislature, lobbyists, and other state actors. I hadn’t gotten any of my great policy ideas enacted into law, and I’d seen lots of stuff I didn’t like become law. It was just plain sad.
At this point the reader may begin to wonder. Is Kyrsten "just plain sad" that the bad laws are passing? Or is this more about missing out on all those terrific sounding social opportunities? It's not entirely clear yet, but it's not a great sign that the "offending bills" and "horrid policies" are left undefined while the author's self-image and personal comfort level becomes the center of the narrative. Anyway let's read on.
I spent the summer figuring out what I wanted to change. I knew that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing because it wasn’t working for me and I hated it. I had, without actually planning to do so, fallen quite easily into the role of the loyal opposition, the righteously indignant crusader, the bomb thrower. In legislative lingo, a bomb thrower is a legislator who chooses to yell from the sidelines, cackle at the rest of the body, and generally raise hell from the corner of the room. A person who chooses to be a bomb thrower in the legislature is choosing to remove himself or herself from the work of the body: negotiating on bills, working to find compromises, and sometimes teaming up with unusual allies to promote or kill legislation. This person plays an important role at the capitol because he or she calls out the body on a regular basis (which is needed, especially considering that the general public hears or reads roughly 0.3 percent of what happens each day inside the legislature). However, the bomb thrower has made a choice—whether consciously or not—to be excluded from the actual process of negotiating proposed legislation. You can’t play both roles in the legislature; if you choose to be a bomb thrower, you will not get the opportunity to amend bills, participate in bipartisan meetings to craft good legislation, or work with people on the other side of the aisle to kill bad legislation. I unwittingly chose to be a bomb thrower my first session, which led to my unhappiness and regret.
Over the summer, I consciously chose to reject the bomb thrower role. For me, it was not a hard choice to make. I was miserable as a bomb thrower. And since I hadn’t consciously chosen that role, I was even more depressed when I realized that I had become a bomb thrower and worked my way right into that lonely corner. It didn’t fit me. I do love to give fiery speeches. But I also love people. I love talking with people, working together, and making friends. The bomb thrower doesn’t get to make friends much (understandably so), and she certainly doesn’t get to work with all the people she’s throwing bombs toward.
Remarkably, the younger Sinema was wrong about all of this. Now at the apex of her career she has figured out you really can throw bombs and make friends at the same time. As long as you make sure the bombs fall on the appropriate people outside of the Senate, you'll never be lonely inside of it.
There's a kind of class politics at work here. But it's the politics of a consensus class within the halls of power charged with managing the hyper-concentration of societal wealth into ever more exclusive circles. That retreat has been going on since the 1970s but it took a significant turn in the response to the 2008 financial crisis. That's when we learned capitalism can sustain itself just by passing around federally
guaranteed credit among the wealth hoarding class and leaving a growing class of surplus humans to more or less fend for themselves. As we've tried to show over the past year, the pandemic response has been a continuation of this project. Anyway that's why a
completely captured political apparatus can be indifferent to a
homelessness crisis and cut off already miserly safety net payments in
the height of a pandemic. It's just doing its work of laying down terms of the harsher readjusted social
contract.
So that about sets the table for the rest of the year. We're looking at another round of political buck passing to cover for a national policy of austerity and privatization. Locally, this will set off a bonanza of petty patronage delivered through local pub-private and non-profit networks. Come October, the new moratorium will expire. By that time, nothing will have fundamentally changed for the renters facing eviction, and we'll have another version of this same argument. Only by then, Biden will have celebrated the success of his bipartisan Infrastructure Week, Sinema will be back from vacation, and, in New Orleans, the same mayor and (basically same) city council who are running with no meaningful opposition will be on their way to reelection. And so at every level of government, the next round of calls to "do something" will be one degree easier to ignore.
Of course the rent will still be due. Just like every month.