Mid- morning news spittoon

• Last week, Michele Krupa reporting on the newly "Institutionalized Recovery" wrote the following.

  Three days after Austin Penny was named a top director in Mayor Ray Nagin's next-generation recovery bureaucracy, a city spokesman confirmed Thursday that Penny is poised to leave city government, setting up another leadership transition in New Orleans' ongoing rebuilding effort.
  
  Meanwhile, Kenya Smith, a former top advisor to Nagin who quit last year to run for Congress, is returning to City Hall as a recovery manager and may replace Penny in the high-profile post, spokesman James Ross said.

  More like re-generation recovery bureaucracy, thought I. Today we see this process continues unabated.



• Meanwhile, la la la, MWI, pumps shmumps. Whatever. All this stuff is soooo 2007, right?

  A federal whistle-blower continues to claim that temporary hydraulic pumps in New Orleans outfall canals aren't properly tested and contain potentially fatal flaws that could cause them to fail catastrophically in a hurricane.
  
  Since late 2006, California resident Maria Garzino has repeatedly lodged these complaints against some of her Army Corps of Engineers co-workers, mostly in New Orleans, and the Florida company that manufactured the 40 pumps in question.

  
  



• RTA's new streetcar proposals are continuing to be "floated" Personally I think floating streetcars in New Orleans is a pretty damn good idea, especially given the questionable status of the pumps. Probably at least as good as levitating trains anyway. There are three proposed routes here. Typically, the proposal that makes the most sense to locals is the one with the least solid funding status.
  



• A contrarian's view of the Obama speech to schoolchildren non-issue:
  
  When I was in grammar school, my classmates and I were routinely subjected to various assemblies where a supposed role model... or often just the school principal... would belt all sorts of propaganda at us about the value of "study and hard work" and how we were all expected to "succeed" according to some ill-conceived definition of "success" or whatever.
  
  And then it was back to school where we were subjected to soul-crushing regimentation, absurd discipline, and the unspoken truth that "success" was really just a matter of keeping one's head down, causing no trouble, and muddling through.
  
  The day-to-day grind was fine, though. It was a fair approximation of real life and one could find ways to cope with that if one was creative or thick-skinned enough. But the assemblies and the celebrity speeches, those were the difficult times. Those were the times when the transparent falseness of the whole arrangement was most in evidence. If I were still in school and had to sit through the President's delivery of one of these Big Lies, I would never forgive the fucker. So it's a bit of a surprise to me to see his political opponents so up in arms over him being given an opportunity to lose a generation this way.
  
  
• The city's plan for redeveloping the Municipal Auditorium is...

  The administration's request for proposals, or RFP, says it wants proposals "for an alternate adaptive use of this historic structure" and its operation "as a long-term economic commercial business enterprise."
  
  The document says the city is interested in turning the still mold-infested building into "a world-class state-of-the-art multi use sound and video production facility for . . . the creative media industry and other traditional uses while creating an incubator for the next generation digital media entrepreneurs."
  
  It says the redevelopment plan "should incorporate a vibrant mix of uses that are sensitive to and fully integrated into the surrounding historic Armstrong Park and Treme community." The plan must also respect the building's architecture and "historical significance."

  Beyond, "well at least we aren't knocking it down" what the hell does this even mean? Does "incubator for the next generation digital media entrepreneurs" mean we're building a warehouse where we can lock these people away? Because, yeah that would actually be pretty awesome.

Institutionalizing the recovery

Whatever the mission might have been, it seems to have been accomplished

In the latest reshuffling of his administration's often-reorganized bureaucracy, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that the 2-year-old Office of Recovery and Development Administration, the far-reaching agency formerly headed by Ed Blakely, is being dissolved. Nagin said the realignment is aimed at furthering the city's transition from recovery planning to implementation.

No time like the last 6-8 months of an administration to start implementing stuff. Seems like somebody was saying something about this recently... just before he became a celebrity.

I bring JC (Johnson Controls) up now, because I want to remind folks that the biggest shennanigans in an Executive public official's reign usually occur in the last leg of his/her tenure. We are approaching that last leg with Senor Nagin. I think we may be on the verge of another Johnson Controls scenario...Nagin's version that is.

Back to Nagin

"We have overcome many bureaucratic challenges over the last several years that have allowed us to change our focus from planning to programming dollars 'in the ground' to institutionalize this recovery, " Nagin said this week. "This is what the Project Delivery Unit has been created to do: implement!

For now we will resist the temptation to ruminate upon the possible meanings of the fun phrase "institutionalize this recovery". Suffice to say, it's one of the best things to come out of the mouth of a local public person since Bob Cerasoli told us he was going to sophisticate up the corruption.

The upside of this is... we hope... that "implementation" means some of the money about to be thrown around will end up in some places where it can do some good. And, I mean, the law of averages says some of it has to, right? The article lists a few projects that may soon get underway including parks and playgrounds and "$3.9 million for the Fire Department" although it doesn't say specifically what that money does.

On the other hand, it also mentions that more properties have been cleared for FEMA funded demolition. It's maddening that the city continues to classify demolition funds as "recovery dollars". And since a separate news item informs us that Kenya Smith has returned from his quixotic mission to defeat "citizen complacency" and taken some sort of position of importance in the Implementation Institution, we aren't quite as confident as we should be.

Politics with a Punch

A cadre of us unsavory folk managed to sneak into last night's Ringside Politics with a Punch at the Cricket Club just so that we could say we were once in the same room as Harry Shearer. Here are some quick notes from the proceedings:

• As the master of ceremonies, Jeff Crouere has an affable enough personality and a decent sense of who might be entertaining on the stage with him. Unfortunately he dedicates too much time to the most bland and overwrought topics. Plus his jokes aren't very funny. The important thing to remember about Crouere, though, is that he's not so much a poor political pundit as he is an untalented professional entertainer. Sure he's an untalented professional entertainer in the field of conservative political punditry but one imagines that this is less a result of conviction than it is the fact that conservative political punditry is a convenient route through which an untalented professional entertainer can make a living as an affable but boring scenester. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Crouere has managed to mediocre himself into this gig through geekery and persistence and the result is at least mildly entertaining enough to justify the fifteen dollar door fee. The five dollar Heinekens on the other hand... not so much.



• At the beginning of the program, Crouere's writhe lithe (see comments) shadowy sidekick Stephen Sabludowsky took a moment to both lament and rejoice in "The Internet" and its less than clear relation to the size of the crowd. The crowd was large. It wasn't clear whether Stephen was pleased or annoyed with this. He then warned the audience not to "record" any of the "copyrighted material" to be presented or "speak during the show." Crouere's trite unfunny monologue made Sabludowsky's first command painless to comply with... but the second downright impossible.



• An ill-conceived attempt to comply with the "no talking" directive led to some surreptitious note-passing with the kids seated at the next table. Only bad things come of such behavior. Just trust me.



• The Heinekens at the Cricket Club are five bucks. Did I mention that already? I had to limit myself to three.



• Kenya Smith, candidate for U.S. congress in District 2, was a panelist. One of Crouere's topics was the continuing and well-known legal troubles of the incumbent Congressman from that district. The Dollar Bill follies are a well-used but still solid comedy gold mine... not to mention a grand opening for any of the Congressman's candidates to extol his or her contrasting ethical purity. Smith was perfectly set-up to either let fly a scathing one-liner about his opponent or talk himself up a bit (or if he's got any real talent combine those two actions somehow). But when called upon Kenya said.... nothing memorable. I'm not sure he even completed a sentence. He did tug at his ear quite a bit as though someone might be about to feed him a line. But mostly he just sat there like a wet bottle rocket. Still this wasn't even Smith's biggest gaffe of the night. More on that in a bit.



• Harry Shearer is a very funny and talented person who should be encouraged to participate in as many panel discussion-public affairs-media type events which take place in New Orleans as he can possibly be brow-beaten into.



• LA State Representative John Labruzzo just wants us to DRILL and DRILL NOW. He even volunteered his "own backyard" as a possible location for this VERY NECESSARY IMMEDIATE DRILLING. I am looking into having a team of roughnecks dispatched to the Labruzzo residence this afternoon.



• Midway through the discussion, Varg looked over at me and asked, "Hey are we gonna get to say anything here?" "Man I hope so," I replied. We each spent the next forty five minutes anticipating an audience comment segment. Of course when the time did come, the two of us looked at each other and realized that neither of us had actually thought of anything to say. Typical. It was for the best anyway since anything we could have said would have been upstaged by the bizarre ramblings of a strange Zsa Zsa/Charro hybrid lady who had become unfortunately and temporarily detached from the bar.



• At the conclusion of the event, each panelist was given and opportunity to rail against his or her personal "Outrage of the Month". Kenya Smith, candidate for U.S. Congress in the second district, announced that he was most outraged by "citizen complacency". Needless to say, this floored several of the "complacent" citizens in attendance. Some of us were so concerned, in fact, that we pulled Kenya aside afterwards and suggested to him that when trying to curry favor with the electorate, it's generally not a good idea for a candidate to express his "outrage" at their "complacent" behavior. Kenya then proceeded to talk back at us for an uncomfortably long period of time without addressing... or even acknowledging the sage advice we had just offered him. Oh well, we tried.

Not a bad evening overall. I might even make Politics with a Punch an irregular habit in the future provided I start saving up now to cover the drink tab.

Update: Check out Varg's description of the event. Here's his take on Sabludowski:

I can only say he has the good looks of a homeless Harry Dean Stanton and the shining charisma of a heavily medicated Joe McCarthy.