All that lovely money makes us bad and rare

I would have preferred we just ignored anything coming out of the Pelican Institute since we'd pretty much pegged them as a dishonest right-wing propaganda house some time ago when we read about their ties to the krewe of clowns James "Lil' Liddy" O'Keefe assembled to execute his botched break in to Senator Landrieu's office last year.

But as the New York Times Magazine reminds us, no degree of dishonest punkery goes unrewarded these days... well at least none that emanates from the right anyway. So I guess it shouldn't surprise us very much to see Tulane graduate and Pelican Institute founder Kevin Kane published in The Lens espousing some bone-headed tripe about getting gubmint out of arts funding.

Luckily we have Lamar White around to slap that shit right back down.

Kane’s misunderstanding of the interplay between public and private investments is never more obvious than when he posits the Frenchmen Street club scene as a pure case of cultural capitalism.

In fact, the Backbeat Foundation and the Let’s Be Totally Clear campaign for smoke-free bars and nightspots have utilized funding from the New Orleans Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to foster innovative arts and music programming and community based events and projects in and around Frenchmen, Kane’s showcase of purely “private-sector innovation.”

Is this complex weave of public and private funding streams having the desired impact? As Sarah Palin might put it: You betcha. In New Orleans, according to a report issued by Mayor Landrieu’s office, the cultural economy accounts for 28,000 jobs, over $1.1 billion in wages, and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional economic impact. Festivals, which are heavily subsidized by the city, attract over 3.2 million tourists annually.

Of course, most Louisianans don’t talk about our “cultural economy;” we talk about our culture. Culture imbues and defines Louisiana identity. “There are many reasons why Louisiana has ‘generations-old traditions like jazz, second lines, Mardi Gras Indians, zydeco and parade floats,” Kane writes. “Our state’s unique history, geography and demographic diversity have all had a hand.” And government support for arts and culture? Kane wants to rule that out — no matter that it is a long and well-established part of our “history.”

Note also that, in 2011, the City of New Orleans spent about $3 million on Mardi Gras related expenses including police, sanitation, EMS and various other serivces that make this "generations-old tradition" possible. The Times-Picayune seemed to think that was quite a bargain, in fact.

Lil' Liddy and the Liddettes

Adrastos unveils an inspired moniker here if I do say so myself. Meanwhile an anonymous commenter in an AZ thread points us to Huff-Po where we learn a few short facts about Lil' Liddy's partners.

Robert Flanagan, 24, was released earlier Tuesday. His father, Bill, is the acting U.S. Attorney based in Shreveport. He was first assistant under Republican President George W. Bush appointee Donald Washington before Washington stepped down this month. President Barack Obama recently nominated Stephanie A. Finley for the post. His father's office declined to comment.

All four suspects were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Flanagan is the only suspect from Louisiana. (Joseph) Basel is from Minnesota; O'Keefe, New Jersey; and (Steven) Dai, the D.C.-Virginia area.

Flanagan recently criticized Landrieu for her vote on the Senate health care bill after securing a Medicaid provision estimated in value at up to $365 million for Louisiana. Conservatives accused her of selling her vote but she insisted no "special deals" were made.

"Do not be fooled into believing Landrieu is helping the state of Louisiana," Flanagan wrote in a Nov. 25 post on the Web site for the Pelican Institute, a Louisiana think tank that promotes the free market and limited government. "If the proposed healthcare legislation were to be signed into law, the $300 million allocated to Louisiana will pale in comparison to the long-term debt Louisiana citizens will ultimately shoulder."

Side note: In December, the Pelican Institute hosted a mayoral forum where the main topic of discussion was the office of Inspector General and the desirability of rooting out suspicious political types in Orleans Parish. I wonder if Flanagan was there that day. IG Paul Quatrevaux was there. He was actually sort of the guest of honor.

Dai, who authorities said was arrested outside the building, is a former assistant director of a program at Trinity Washington University that taught students about careers in intelligence, university president Patricia McGuire said.

The program was part of a national effort following the Sept. 11 attacks to interest students at liberal arts colleges in careers as spies. McGuire said Dai was an administrator and that the program did not teach spy craft. He was also active in the conservative newspaper and other organizations at George Washington University.

O'Keefe and Basel were also active in conservative publications at their respective colleges, Rutgers University and the University of Minnesota-Morris. They gave a joint interview Jan. 14 to CampusReform.org, a Web site that supports college conservatives on student publications.

The AZ commenter who shared this article asks the first obvious question about the Liddettes,

If someone can figure out how these four guys from four different states came to be working on this "project" together...... hmmmmm, how do they all know each other?

Obvious question but compelling because if there's a "how they all know each other" there's also a "why they all know each other" Oyster is on to much the same thing here.

it's difficult for me to believe a couple things about this deal:

1) that you would coordinate with a team of people on an operation like this, and absolutely no one else would know about it

2) that you would take the risk of trying to bug a Senator's office in a Federal Building, just to do a random "fishing expedition" for politically useful material. Surely, this pimp and his buddies had some theory about what they hoped to find.

What were they doing? Also how did they get in position to do it in the first place? The Hale Boggs Federal Building has a fairly serious security operation. I guess it's possible for Lil Liddy and the Liddettes to get by them without proper credentials but I'd like to know more about how that happened.

In the comments over at YRHT, Clay asks why the Liddettes were taken to St. Bernard Parish lockup instead of OPP. Clay guesses that US Attorney Jim Letten "felt sorry for the poor little white boys and didn't want them to experience the hellhole that OPP is." That would be mighty white of ole Jim to do that for the boys wouldn't it?

Finally, and sort of along the same lines, there's this. Watch the way WWL has Lucy Bustamante introduce the story as,

"A U.S. Senator, accusations of potential phone tapping in her office, and four young men with no prior criminal records at the center of it all."

A Senator, accusations, and four young men "with no prior criminal record" just laying there with no verbs as though they just fell in together in Lucy's lap. What a farcical little situation we have here. Isn't it all so cute. Your heart sorta goes out to those four young men with no prior criminal record. I hope wiser persons come to extricate them from "the center of it all" before dinner. Earlier this evening in the Tweeter Tube I watched The Gambit ask WWLTV about the curious description. No answer. At least Bigad Shaban managed to have an "interesting night" We were relieved to learn that he finally located his car.

Meanwhile NOLA.com senses that, even though it really is just background material here, its readers are sure to be interested in watching Lil' Liddy do his pimp thing in the ACORN offices one more time so they make sure to include the video in their story. At least it reminds us that this isn't the first time Lil' Liddy has somehow found himself "at the center of it all."

Update: Regarding the Liddettes' visit to St. Bernard Parish lockup see YRHT:

About the transfer to St. Bernard, I'm informed by a very knowledgable source that the St. Bernard sheriff "has a contract to take federal prisoners, as well as prisoners from other parishes". (Orleans had one too at one time, but probably not currently.

Also more on the Pelican Institute from CenLamar where we find this characterization of the PI from the Louisiana Progress Initiative

The Pelican Institute claims to be focused on Louisiana public policy, but regularly brings in activists and scholars from outside the state. Almost all of their Louisiana policy work is conducted by conservative writers on the east coast.

It's sort of like the James Perry campaign of the Right.

TPM is all over this story and has more on the Pelican Institute, the Liddettes, and the network of conservative campus media projects that connect them here and here.