Everything you need to know about the lawsuit bill

Lamar has you covered.

That is a comprehensive article by Lamar. It doesn't miss a beat. But perhaps its most crucial observation comes here.

Oil and gas industry attorneys weren’t merely “involved;” they wrote the bill. According to those who were there, lobbyists and lawyers for BP seemed to play an outsized role.

Earlier tonight, John Barry, the former chairman of the SLFPA-E and the internationally acclaimed author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, told me, “A lot of people mentioned to me how omnipresent BP lobbyists were, more than the other major oil companies were (though all of them showed plenty of interest), so much more that it got a lot of people wondering, ‘What’s in the bill for them?’ It certainly got us wondering.”

I also spoke with State Representative John Bel Edwards, who echoed Mr. Barry’s concerns. Oil and gas lobbyists already knew Representative Edwards was opposed to the legislation, he said. They didn’t even waste their time trying to convince him otherwise. But lobbyists, particularly lobbyists associated with BP, spent a lot of time with some of his colleagues.

When the Attorney General expressed his doubts about the bill earlier this week, the reaction of Jindal's legislative allies who pushed it through appeared to indicate that they had only a vague conception what was in the bill in the first place. Robert Adley and Bret Allain's comments basically boil down to, "Well why didn't you tell us any of this stuff before?" Now we know why that is.  Most of our legislators don't seem to really know or care what they're doing beyond just following orders.

Collision course

The St. Charles streetcar rail tie replacement project has made it into the Garden District.  As far as I know, this is the final stretch of the line where work remains to be done. Back in December, we were told the whole project would wrap up by the end of April so about a month and a half behind that schedule seems right.

Over the past week or so, work crews have divided into two teams moving toward one another one coming from different directions. A person can stand in the intersection at Fourth Street and see one team making its way uptown from Jackson Avenue.



And then turn and see the other coming down from Louisiana.



From the looks of things, they'll be putting in a golden spike somewhere between there and Second Street.  Maybe someone will give a speech.

If duck boats could fly

You know, we might could torture an innovative transit option out of this if there were two Vanilla Sky Cafes. Put one on the East Bank and one at Algiers Point.  People could ride the balloon across for the price of a latte and a panini or whatever.  Seems like this thing just goes straight up and down, though.

NEW ORLEANS, LA (WVUE) -Olexandr Zonotopov is a developer, originally from Ukraine, but has been in New Orleans for the past five years. He wants to create something different along the riverfront. He calls it a family attraction and he believes it will boost tourism.

"Basically what it is, is a helium balloon and tied to a pier. It's basically supposed to take people on board and bring them up to 500 feet and provide visitors a view of New Orleans," says Zonotopov.

The proposed project includes a pier on the Mississippi River with an air helium balloon that would be anchored to the platform.

"You'd be able to buy the ticket to use the ride and we'll have a few tables where you'll be able to enjoy a beverage and a cold snack," says Zonotopov.

It would be called, ‘Vanilla Sky Café' and would be located just in front of Jackson Square in the Mississippi River.

Can they carry cars? 

Actually it's fine

So it turns out the city ran a budget surplus for 2013.

At this morning’s City Council Budget Committee meeting, Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin announced some good news about the City’s budget. According to the City’s Revenue Estimating Conference, the City raised $19 million more in revenue last year than budgeted. This increase was mostly due an almost 10% increase in sales tax revenue in 2013 from 2012. With the better than expected collections, the City ended 2013 with an $8.6 million budget surplus, the first of the Landrieu administration.

While these numbers are not audited, Kopplin says that he has spoken to the auditor and is confident in the figures. Kopplin said that the better than expected sale tax revenues in 2013, could have ripple effects for this year’s budget as this will likely result in an increase in revenue projections for 2014. Kopplin was not prepared to revise the 2014 revenue projection, and said that the Revenue Estimating Conference would consider that at its next meeting in August.

Of course the consent decrees and the firefighters' pension could still bring about the FISCAL DOOMSDAY the mayor keeps talking about.  On the other hand, maybe they won't.  

Kind of big, if true

This is an article from this morning's Advocate looking at a program passed by the legislature that would allow the city to sell lots in the lower ninth ward it has acquired (presumably through Road Home) for $100 per lot under certain conditions. 

Under the program, advanced by Bishop, homeowners living next to each piece of property would get the first opportunity to purchase. After that, priority would be given to people who have lived in the area for at least 18 months, veterans, teachers, first responders and former neighborhood residents.

All buyers would have to redevelop the lots and live there for a minimum of five years after construction is complete.

Like the proposed New Orleans Police and Fire property tax millage increase, this program requires an amendment to the state constitution which is why you'll likely see it on your ballot this November. 

That's all very interesting, of course, but it isn't why I'm posting about it here.  What really caught my attention was this paragraph which explains why so many of these lots are empty in the first place.

In 2005, Katrina’s floodwaters sent a barge over a wall on the Industrial Canal near the St. Claude Avenue bridge. The wall collapsed, causing water to sweep aside homes and other buildings.

Those are two sentences describing two different events. 1) A barge went over the wall. 2) The wall collapsed.  Placing those sentences next to one another in that order gives the casual reader a sense of causality. One reads this and is likely to think, "Oh a barge knocked the wall over."  If true, this would be kind of a big deal.  

But no one has been able to determine that the barge caused the flooding.  In fact, this was the subject of a high-profile court case wherein a federal judge explicitly ruled that the floodwall collapse was caused by the water and not the barge.

In concluding his 42-page opinion, Duval wrote: "The horror and tragedy of the flooding that occurred in the Lower 9th Ward is one that must not be taken lightly. The testimony of those caught in the maelstrom is heartbreaking and defies belief that such a catastrophe could occur.

"However, where as here there is overwhelming evidence that the (barge) did not cause in any manner cataclysmic flooding of the Lower 9th Ward," wrote Duval, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

So do we need to re-open this case or just maybe de-muddle that article?

The tourism arts

Kind of a strange association here but OK.

Meanwhile, a measure to raise the occupancy tax rate on hotel rooms by 1.75 percent was pulled from the House floor before it was considered. Its doom had been all but been ensured by the vehement opposition of a coalition of tourism industry leaders, including Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau President Stephen Perry.

“I think the industry as a whole is very pleased that there was no change in the hotel tax,” Perry said. “It means that we have a competitive price structure, and it means that we have marketing funds sufficient to drive some real economic growth.”

The industry’s leaders are typically allies of the mayor, but in opposing the hotel tax increase they argued that it would make New Orleans among the priciest travel destinations for tourists.

“I think that was a surprise, when you consider the fact that Mayor Landrieu was formerly the lieutenant governor and is definitely involved in the arts,” political analyst Silas Lee said. “You just don’t have permanent friends and permanent enemies in politics.”

It's true the Lt. Governor's office has been in charge of something we call the "Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism"  but it doesn't follow that being "involved in the arts" is the same thing as supporting every whim of the hospitality industry.  Maybe Silas is confused by the "Vibrancy" movement.  Who wouldn't be, really?

Also the Advocate article notes that Mitch's sanitation rangers idea "to allow public workers other than NOPD quality-of-life officers to issue summonses for sanitation and nuisance violations" passed so expect a city employee to show up and write you a ticket if your lawn isn't just so next year.

This will be a different sort of ticket from the ones we already empower various busybodies to write.

New Orleans historical society is fining us $500 a day for our fence sign  #WTF this city isn't small biz friendly at all!
— ChefॐRob (@NOLAsmokehouse) June 3, 2014

Which is a weird thing for them to be mad about since, you know, the Mayor is definitely involved in the arts."

@skooks the condemned sign that is in question Food behind :) Come see us http://t.co/eTrenqjJmI pic.twitter.com/1xi27LDRAm
— ChefॐRob (@NOLAsmokehouse) June 4, 2014

Return of Rodney

The man who basically gave the world Vance McAllister is leaving the job he gave up the congressional seat to take.

There has been speculation that Alexander was considering stepping back into his congressional seat after McAllister became mired in a sex scandal and looked unlikely to seek reelection. But a few Republican insiders said Alexander doesn't intend to run for elected office again. He is leaving the Veterans Affairs post to take a job in the private sector.

Hmm... sounds to me like he's running again but we'll see. 

Any given Tuesday in the Louisiana wetlands

Don't mind us. We're just burning off another 2,000 gallons of oil we spilled. 

More than 2,000 gallons of oil spilled in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge last week, and crews are set to burn the oil off the marshy area Tuesday. The oil, which was discovered during an overflight on May 28, leaked from a pipeline buried below the marsh. The line is located about 10 miles southeast of Venice, and belongs to Houston-based Texas Petroleum Investment Company, according to a statement issued by the feds.

 As long as nobody sues anyone I'm sure it'll be fine.

Half-baked

Looks like they couldn't figure out how to make that special riverfront taxing district happen yesterday.

It was never actually part of a bill. Instead, legislators hoped to add it to another bill that never advanced. In the final days, they tried to work it into another bill to create a regional business park in New Orleans.

“We talked about our concerns and how to address our concerns,” state Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, said, referring to the six legislators who were on a conference committee that aimed to hammer out the specifics and bring it to a full vote. “But you can’t create any authority with the ability to tax without public vetting. You can’t just create it in conference.”

Tourism industry officials initially pushed the plan as an alternative to Landrieu’s proposal to authorize a local vote to raise hotel taxes in New Orleans. After tourism officials stopped that bill – it couldn’t get a vote on the House floor — the riverfront taxing district lost its key sponsors.

In effect, Morrell said, tourism officials “threw a half-baked idea at us and disappeared.”

Sounds about right.  Although the idea of getting the city a greater share of hotel/motel tax revenue seems like a good one. Maybe let's explore that again sometime.

Anyway now comes the process of figuring out just what did pass in the last moments of the session.  Here's an early assessment of how Mayor Landrieu's agenda fared. 

Should be an interesting day

The 2014 session of the Louisiana Legislature ends today at 6 pm with the traditional chicken boxing exhibition outside on the capitol grounds (weather permitting).   Free wine ice cream will be distributed.

I guess there's also some minor housekeeping to attend.

What remains for Monday is a pile of bills awaiting approval of final compromises, called conference reports. A majority of each chamber must agree to the exact wording before legislation can clear final passage.

The Senate needs to sign off on a bill that would forbid the use of welfare cards at bars and tattoo parlors. The House needs to vote on the final wording of legislation on whether lawmakers should confirm the hiring and pay of the state’s higher education commissioner.

Also awaiting conference report votes are bills that would study consolidating the New Orleans Traffic and Municipal courts, stiffen penalties for beating up referees at children’s sporting events and change the state’s plumbing standards to the International Plumbing Code.

State Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, is one of the legislators trying to work out last-minute wording on a bill. He is still trying to get issues resolved regarding legislation on life support for pregnant women.

Oh and they still need to pass the capital outlay budget which presently appears to be out of balance by as much as $400 million. 

But the most interesting development, reported by The Lens yesterday afternoon concerns the little-mentioned riverfront taxing district to nowhere which hasn't come up in conversation for nearly a month since it was introduced. The district would grant the city all of the sales and hotel/motel tax revenue from hotel and retail projects within its boundaries... should such hotels ever exist.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu and legislative allies are making a last-minute effort to let the city keep all taxes on property at or near the New Orleans riverfront that hasn’t yet been developed.

Legislators said the proposal would include the deserted World Trade Center and under-developed property such as the parking lot next to the Piazza d’ Italia, which could accommodate a hotel.

Creating the taxing authority is so controversial that it has gotten no public hearing by lawmakers. 

Nonetheless, legislators are trying to attach the proposal to another bill and pass it before adjournment at 6 p.m. Monday.

“A lot of people, unfortunately, haven’t been apprised of the details, which could be problematic,” state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, said in an interview Sunday.

The Lens first reported on the mayor’s plans five weeks ago, but it has gotten practically no attention since, and it was never heard in a legislative committee, typically the first step for legislation.

At that time it was introduced, there were a number of fuzzy details in the so-called "placeholder bill" which no one seemed to be in a hurry to clarify. The bill appears to give governing authority over the new district to the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District which seems like a conflict of interest.  It also is not clear whether the boundaries of the district are limited or whether it can be expanded and how.

In some regards, it's not the worst idea ever conceived.  The city is starved for revenue. And the mayor tried and failed to get the legislature to agree to raise taxes on cigarettes and on hotel rooms on our behalf this session.  Anyway, I guess we'll know by the end of the day if this is even happening.  The Advocate doesn't even mention it.

He must finally be vested in the pundit pension plan

Bobby Jindal has written enough op-eds by now. It's about time he started adhering to the customary standards and practices.  This is a pretty good step in that direction.

WASHINGTON -- Gov. Bobby Jindal didn't disclose in his newspaper column this week supporting for-profit colleges in their fight with the Obama administration that his brother, attorney Nikesh Jindal, represented the schools' association in an earlier legal fight with the administration.

Might as well make the money now

If we were to play devil's advocate for a minute with regard to gentrification, it's worth pointing out that the State of Louisiana isn't very well invested in the city even being here for much longer.

The Louisiana Legislature finally approved a bill Friday morning saying it opposes and wants to kill the levee board lawsuit seeking recompense from 97 oil and gas companies for environmental damage to the wetlands.

The state Senate voted 25 to 11 to concur with House amendments. Senate Bill 469 now goes to Gov. Bobby Jindal for his signature.

The legislation would reach back and change the conditions under which the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, called SLFPA-E, could sue.

So long as the coast is falling into the sea anyway, our legislators figure they might as well allow the extractive industries who dominate the state's economy pull all the money they can out of it in the meantime, right?

I suppose we could say the same for the high priced playground for tourists and adventurers we're building in New Orleans.  It'll all be gone in less than a century anyway.  Might as well let the dominant players make their money now.  What are the rest of us even doing here?

Let go or be dragged

Earlier this week, the mayor likened the post-Katrina changes in New Orleans's housing market to a laboratory experiment. WWL asked how that's going

The most recent report on apartment occupancy in the New Orleans area indicates landlords have no reason to lower rents.

Local real estate consultant, Wade Ragas, expects occupancy rates will remain high in the region for, at least, the near future.

"Because we have gone through a number of years, trying to replace the damaged housing stock," Ragas says. "The market here has grown in population, particularly in Orleans Parish, and the result is that all the better quality apartments are pretty much full or they're at 94, 95 percent occupancy."

And, as occupancy rates go up, rental rates follow.

"I don't think we've seen a top in either," says Ragas. "There's not that many new units coming into the market. There's some growth of new units in and around the CBD, but they're very expensive units and they're in high-rise type properties, mostly."

Building nice things for rich people to live in does not relieve the pressure on housing costs for the rest of us.

The real estate website Zillow says the percentage of income spent by New Orleanians on housing was a steady 13 percent during the 1980s and 1990s. That number shot up to 35 percent in the past few years.

It's weird that people who understand what trickle-down economics is don't get that focusing on the needs of the wealthy doesn't magically bestow benefits on the population at large.  All we're doing in New Orleans is building nice things for rich people. The rest of us are being displaced or, as the Mayor enthusiastically put it yesterday, experimented upon.

"New Orleans has become the nation's laboratory for innovation and change," Landrieu said. "The work you see going on especially in housing, from homelessness to low-income housing to the private sector creating public-private partnerships with us, is doing spectacular stuff. You see what it means when I said we did not rebuild New Orleans back the way she was, we built New Orleans back the way she always was supposed to be."

Last month during the height of a controversy over the proposed conversion of the former Holy Cross High School into a luxury condo tower, the PR consultant running a phony campaign in favor of the condos put this more bluntly.

Velocity also created the Revive Lower 9 website and Facebook page. The site notes the connection to Perez. The Facebook group says Revive Lower 9 is “is a group made up of New Orleanians with big plans to bring jobs, community outreach and opportunity to the Historic Lower Ninth Ward.”

The Facebook page has posts about the revitalization of New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, as well as calls to support the Holy Cross project. One post Monday:

In just 3 days, this city has a choice to make.

Will you stand in the way of progress, or embrace the development and growth New Orleans has been waiting for?

This is our chance. Together, we WILL ‪#‎reviveLower9‬ !

Another post Monday didn’t go over as well with a few people:

New Orleans named America’s Top New Brainpower City by Forbes. …

This city is taking off – if you can’t keep up, let go or be dragged.

If you've grown up in New Orleans, you tend to have a bad attitude about being told to "let go."  At least that's what any number of songs, T-Shirts, and marketing campaigns would have you believe.   So it follows that a lot of us will just have to brace for being dragged.  One way we are told we can manage this is by, literally, doubling up in our homes. Or.. "sharing" them.. as the term of art goes.

While San Francisco has recently cracked down on some particularly high-volume Airbnb renter-hosts, Chiu and other “sharing” advocates are trying to pass legislation to make the practice legal. In its defense, Airbnb says San Francisco residents need their service so they can afford to pay their rent — ignoring that San Francisco housing costs have been pushed so high in part because of the influx of exceptionally well-paid tech employees who work at places like Airbnb, currently valued at $10 billion.

Across the U.S., high costs of living are driving more of the employed toward “side hustles,” i.e. unprotected freelance work, the kind fostered by the sharing economy. Where workers don’t have the start-up investments necessary to participate — the cars, homes, kitchens to rent — then they can just rent those too. Lyft’s new luxury service is aimed at encouraging non-car owners to drive for the company, giving them a lease option on impractical “custom” “premium” Ford Explorers.

The sharing economy’s success is inextricably tied to the economic recession, making new American poverty palatable. It’s disaster capitalism. “Sharing” companies are not embarrassed by this — it appears to be a point of pride.

If you're a heretofore urban dwelling person of modest means, the message is plain.  Unless you're willing to make some pretty uncomfortable sacrifices, you're just not good enough to be where you are anymore. Let go or be dragged.

Of course the idea of Airbnb as a bootstrapping machine for the downtrodden is mostly bullcrap. While surely some Airbnb hosts are using the service in order to keep from having to "let go" this can't be anyone's permanent solution to escalating housing costs.  It may work as a temporary stopgap for the young and childless but families aren't likely to jump at the "opportunity" to share their homes with strangers just in order to pay bills.

Instead they're likely to ship on out to suburbia sooner or later.  If they're lucky maybe they can commute back to their now gentrified neighborhoods.  It remains to be seen how New Orleans might handle the inevitable strain on transportation.  In San Francisco, line cooks are getting Uber gift cards. So that's nice.

Meanwhile, the real potential of Airbnb is as a means of profiting from residential real estate without having to sell or rent to long term residents. As New Orleans becomes even more dominated by tourism this is an attractive prospect to investors. 

Yesterday the City Planning Commission met to discuss possible revisions to the city's short-term rental enforcement measures.  The Airbnb issue is starting to generate more attention locally as this recent WWLTV report attests.   Thursda's meeting, though, was attended by a "handful" of Airbnb proponents including former City Attorney Bob Ellis (Yes, that Bob Ellis) so you know they're clearly just average folks looking to scrape by.

In any case, NOLA.com cheeringly, as always, saw fit to call them a "movement." Like their counterparts in San Francisco, this "movement" is interested in legalizing and regulating the short term rental market.

The short-term rental supporters, which included some lawyers, identified themselves as members of a new group called the Alliance for Neighborhood Prosperity.

One of them, Bob Ellis, told the Planning Commission that the group was created specifically to come up with a plan to legalize short-term rentals, which have multiplied in recent years thanks to websites like Airbnb.

Ellis said that the group was working on an economic impact study focused on the effects of informal rentals on the economy and an ordinance that would legalize, tax and regulate them.

As of now, the city's plan is to tax the hell out of residential properties whether they are short-term rentals or not.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s proposal to nearly double property taxes for police and fire protection got the approval of the state Legislature on Thursday, putting the question before voters statewide and in New Orleans in the coming months. The portion of property taxes that go to police and fire protection could rise from about 10.5 mills to 20 mills. That would cost the owner of a $150,000 house about $143 more a year.

Before that would happen, voters statewide and in Orleans Parish would have to approve the increase in November. Then New Orleans voters would have to approve it again in an election set by the City Council.

The reason the tax increase has to go through so many hoops is because it requires a constitutional amendment.  It's also apparently not subject to the homestead exemption which means property owners will pay this tax regardless of whether they're occupying the property or renting it out.. perhaps via Airbnb.

So obviously they'd want to at least have the option to do that. Otherwise they'd be faced with a choice between cashing out of a superheated housing market now or staying in and paying double their property tax millage. You know, "let go or be dragged."

Count the days to French Quarter Gun Fail Day 1

This certainly can't end any way but well.

They call themselves the French Quarter Minutemen and are made up of all volunteers who possess concealed handgun permits.

The founder told WDSU they are not vigilantes, but additional eyes and ears in an area of the city very sacred to them.

"We all share a common love for the French Quarter and we want its beautiful history to be preserved," said Aaron Jordan.

Jordan said what inspired him to form the group was the severe beating of jazz musician Doug Potter, who was attacked after a gig in the Quarter right outside the 8th District Police Station.

"That would lead me to believe more citizen involvement can only help," Jordan said.

Laboratory

The city took over control of HANO today.

"New Orleans has become the nation's laboratory for innovation and change," Landrieu said. "The work you see going on especially in housing, from homelessness to low-income housing to the private sector creating public-private partnerships with us, is doing spectacular stuff. You see what it means when I said we did not rebuild New Orleans back the way she was, we built New Orleans back the way she always was supposed to be."

We could have been talking today about the rising cost of living and the attendant pressures on working class residents of New Orleans's ever diminishing stock of public housing. Instead we're talking about experimenting on people and drawing allusions to an imaginary ladder out of homelessness.

"Where there’s no dredging, there’s hardly any land loss. It’s an inescapable conclusion."

The political battle over the SLFPAE's lawsuit was featured on PBS last night. Here's the segment.

Club members passing each other money

BP lost another round in appeals court today.

NEW ORLEANS – The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denied BP’s motion to keep a stay in place to block thousands of business claims payments while the oil giant appeals its settlement to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But that does not mean the payments can start flowing again. The appeals court usually takes seven days to issue a mandate lifting the stay, and that seven days typically starts with the court's last ruling on the matter.

The ruling Tuesday was not unexpected. The same appeals court had just shot down BP’s effort to reinterpret its multi-billion-dollar claims settlement with private businesses. BP had argued that more than 1,000 undeserving  businesses had been paid by the settlement’s court-appointed claims administrator.

There's a SCOTUS appeal pending, of course. And that leads us to perhaps the most perfect passage in this whole ongoing saga. 

BP has a potentially powerful ally in that effort. The Supreme Court justice assigned to the 5th Circuit is Antonin Scalia. He has granted such special injunctions in the past, in one case acting on his own to delay a settlement payment for eight months, even though the Supreme Court ended up not agreeing to hear the case.

Also, Scalia’s son, Eugene, is a partner at Gibson Dunn, the law firm representing BP in its appeal.

 Because of course all of the players here are inappropriately interrelated in all sorts of ways.

Keep that in mind as you pick through the latest AZ post featuring interview segments with ousted DHECC  attorney Lionel Sutton.

Better build some more luxury housing

We've got all sorts of neat stuff we need to pay for.

With the exception of City Park, which falls under the auspices of the state of Louisiana, New Orleans foots the bill for these green spaces out of its general fund (though the city uses $1 million in federal Community Development Block Funds for recreation expenses.) Crescent Park and the greenway alone will add roughly $1 million more to a maintenance budget that tops $7 million. Parks and Parkways, which keeps up road medians, some parks and other public spaces, now swallows up $3.3 million per year. The New Orleans Recreation Department Commission is up to $3.1 million, and operating and maintenance for Crescent Park is $659,000. The greenway is still under construction, but the city estimates it will add $300,000 to the yearly maintenance tab. There have been discussions about putting a parks millage on the ballot, but nothing official has yet been announced.

As we've seen time and again, the city's official policy response to rising infrastructure costs continues to be a campaign to attract wealthier residents who can pay higher rents and property taxes. In order to keep them, though, we may have to build even more parks.

Recently, the Downtown Development District (DDD), the fastest growing census tract in town, created an advisory board to find a way to bring more parks to downtown New Orleans. Developers creating luxury and warehouse apartments in the district told the board that the professionals they rent to rank greenspace near the top of their required amenities. Sarah Olivier from the Trust for Public Land’s New Orleans office, who served on the advisory board, says that the DDD’s research showed that the district’s new residents like urban areas but they are also looking for ways to escape. “They want parks,” Olivier says.  

It's either a virtuous or a vicious circle depending on whether you're a wealthy newcomer (or "snowbird" if you like) who can afford to play the parks and condos game or if you're among the rest of us who'll be moved out of the way in order to make room for it to proceed.

The new City Hall or the old one?

Seems like the proposed new City Hall would make a more appropriate setting for this.

More than 200 people are expected to gather in front of City Hall at Duncan Plaza Thursday (May 29) to demand that Louisiana expand its Medicaid program.

The rally, scheduled for 5 p.m., is being organized by the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, which is holding its annual conference in New Orleans this week.

But I guess this is the best you can hope for from a rally organized by people in town for a conference.  Everyone at City Hall who has gone on the record seems to agree with their position anyway. 

"The gravity of discontent pulls to the right"

Pretty good TV segment with Chris Hayes and Thomas Frank.

Thomas Frank appeared on Chris Hayes' show Friday night to discuss Kansas after Hayes' in-depth look at what has been going on there, from the failure to expand Medicaid to nullification of all gun regulations.

"The gravity of discontent pulls to the right," Frank said. He also said it was "a failure of Democrats to win places like Kansas."

It's hard to imagine Democrats winning big in a state like Kansas where so much of the political lubrication comes from Koch Industries and their converts. Still Frank has dished up some real food for thought for Democratic voters and the Democratic party as a whole.

When Chris Hayes suggested that Democrats are trying to win by running on a "lets get back to the center" strategy, Frank shot back with a stinging indictment. "The people who are saying that are very well-intentioned, but you can't have a center if you don't have a left!" He went on to explain.

For Democrats the strategy right now seems to be not to rock any boats, keep the bankers happy, and appear to be the relatively sane party  until "demographics" make them the permanent majority or whatever.

This is a dubious strategy. For one thing, it didn't work that way last time. 

Now that was a demographic time bomb that encompassed the most radical left-wing young generation in history. And guess what happened?  A powerful conservative movement happened that culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan just 14 years later. Perhaps it’s not genetics that is determining their behavior but rather their own experience.

This is not to say that millennials will not be much more liberal than their baby boomer forebears turned out to be, but it would likely have been predicted by many after 1964 that the Republicans had better figure out how to cater to “the youth” or they were doomed. But they didn’t. They catered to fear and resentment and anger and loss and they built their movement around it.

I wouldn't bank on fear and resentment going out of style any time soon. 
 

We must have skipped a season

I didn't see a single buckmoth caterpillar anywhere this year. And now we've already moved on into termite season.

Formosan termites are swarming throughout the New Orleans area on Thursday night (May 22), as a combination of meteorological conditions provided just the right conditions for the winged, reproductive version of the insect to leave their nests.

Hundreds of termites were flittering around light poles in the French Quarter, and were reported flying at Zephyrs Field where an AAA baseball game was underway.

Time.. flies.. as it were. Only a few more weeks until roach season. 

Justice system works fine for elites

This probably serves to further illustrate the previous post. Here we see Renee Gill Pratt is deciding to employ the very popular Chewbacca Perricone defense.

Former New Orleans City Councilwoman Renee Gill Pratt asked Thursday for a new trial in her federal corruption case, arguing that former prosecutor Sal Perricone "was inciting the prejudice" against her with anonymous comments posted on NOLA.com.

In a motion filed by her attorney, Michael Fawer, she seeks an evidentiary hearing to explore how Perricone's conduct and his comments about Gill Pratt's case tainted her indictments and trial. The motion also said the government leaked information to the press about related cases involving members of the family of ex-Congressman William Jefferson.

Basically we're at a point where any politician who has ever been the subject of an unflattering opinion expressed online is automatically immune from prosecution. That's just how democracy works now.

It's all about them

Dambala has been writing about the BP claims process forever now. In the introductory text to this interview with attorney Lionel Sutton, he describes one crucial lesson he's learned that many others seem to have missed.

The problem is, this story isn't a dichotomy. There is a third party, the most important party, the people of the Gulf Coast who have been devastated by the BP oil spill and will continue to suffer for decades. The reality is both BP and the "good ol' boys" running the show aren't nearly as divided with each other as the two entities are against the people to whom they are supposed be providing relief. That complexity seems to be too difficult for MSM outlets like 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The LA Times, WWL-TV and a host of others to wrap their heads around.

BP vs. the claims attorneys seems like an obvious way to frame this story. So it isn't surprising to see most reporters set out to tell it that way. On the other hand, maybe the assumption that this process will result in justice for the actual victims of the disaster which set in motion is a little naive.  

Matt Taibbi's new book is called, The Divide. It's about the emergence of a bifurcated system of American justice where the poor are held starkly accountable for most meager offenses and the wealthy are treated more softly and in many cases are even above the law. This is from a recent interview with Taibbi in Salon.

Morally, it doesn’t work anymore. You just cannot have a society where people instinctively know that certain people are above the law, because it will create total disrespect for authority among everybody else. And that’s completely corrosive. You need to have people believing in the system to some degree — even if it’s just an illusion, you need to have them believing. And that was … another thing I was trying to get to in this book, the difference between what happened in the Bush years, with the scandals with Adelphi and Enron and Tyco, and what happened now, [when] they just stopped seeing the necessity of keeping up appearances. They didn’t even make a few symbolic prosecutions, and so it leaves the entire public with this glaring statistic that there were no prosecutions and there was massive crime. How does that make anybody else feel? How does it make you feel when you pay a speeding ticket, you can’t write that off, but HSBC can write off its $1.9 billion fine for drug trafficking? People start to think about these things, and they start losing their faith in the system and it doesn’t work anymore.

Is this process a farce entirely?  Well, no, it's more complicated than that.  But should someone be asking whether its more about protecting BP and enriching the attorneys who play ball with BP than it is about remunerating victims and exacting justice?  Yeah someone should be asking that.  Probably more than just one person, though. 

Good shot

"Poll show Mitch Landrieu has good shot at becoming LA gov."

A Southern Media and Opinion Research poll on the 2015 governor's race shows Landrieu, a Democrat, tied with Republican Senator David Vitter in a hypothetical primary. Both get 29 percent in the survey, well ahead of any other potential candidates.

"Good shot" Sure, that is unless the two frontrunners make the runoff together (crazy thought, I know) in which case, according to the same poll,

The same poll shows Vitter leading Landrieu 53 percent to 42 percent in a runoff.

Similarly, we might have read this March poll showing Edwin Edwards leading the pack among Sixth Congressional District hopefuls and concluded he also has a "good shot" at winning.

Edwards even does better than Mitch in hypothetical runoffs vs his Republican opponents.

In two runoff scenarios, Claitor and Graves both beat Edwards by an identical margin of 52-47 percent.

So, for some reason, these results mean that Mitch has a "good shot" while we're still wondering, "Should we take Edwin Edwards seriously?"  Why is that?

If you didn't want to flood you wouldn't have so many dang levees

Here is the majority consensus among the Louisiana Legislature.

If oil and gas production is going to cost us  the entire southeast portion of the state it's pretty much worth it. Also if we really cared about flood protection, then we probably shouldn't have built all that flood protection.

“This bill is a 110 percent get out of jail free card,” said Gladstone N. Jones, a New Orleans lawyer representing SLFPA-E, said of the bill’s impact on the oil and gas industry’s failure to cleanup after itself.

Dove questioned Jones on why SLFPA-E sued only the oil companies and not the lumber interests, federal government and others who might have contributed to coastal erosion.

“It’s a good question,” Dove said.

“Not really,” Jones replied.

Oil and gas industry activity is responsible for 36.7 percent of the coastal loss, according to studies, Jones said.

Dove responded: “Did the oil companies build the levees on the Mississippi River?”

Much of the coastal damage also was caused by levees channeling the soil carried in the Mississippi River off the continental shelf rather than replenishing the wetlands.

So long. Thanks for all the oil. 

There have been a lot of terrible people being terrible in the legislature this session

Hard to say any individual has been more terrible than Katrina Jackson.

Jackson, a Democrat from Monroe, described the measure as “one of the pieces of legislation that will be most impactful to this state regarding the pro-life movement.”

Abortion-rights groups say doctors who provide the procedure have difficulty getting hospital privileges, not because of their credentials, but because hospitals are leery of the attention those privileges could draw.

Proponents say the measure will ensure women have access to proper care if they have complications from an abortion, describing possible medical problems like hemorrhages, cervical injuries and infections.

Opponents say the restrictions are medically unnecessary and designed to limit abortion access. They say the legislation will shut down all abortion clinics south of Shreveport, creating the need for a five-hour drive each way for women who live in the southeastern end of the state.

Meanwhile, the legislature managed to pull off one last abortion for the road.

A Louisiana House committee Wednesday voted to specifically kill the lawsuit filed by a New Orleans-area levee board.

The House Committee on Natural Resources amended Senate Bill 469 to say that the Louisiana Legislature wants this measure to apply retroactively and that lawmakers oppose the lawsuits filed last year by Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority — East against 97 oil and gas companies claiming environmental damage to the marshes.

So how soon do we get to start Airbnbing our beachfront propety?

A hundred years sounds like a long time but fifty is beginning to hit the range of a decent long term investment.

"Got that sinking feeling?”

A set of slides from a recent presentation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration makes clear that the familiar figure of speech isn’t just a state of mind for residents of coastal Louisiana.

A set of slides from a recent presentation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration makes clear that the familiar figure of speech isn’t just a state of mind for residents of coastal Louisiana.

It’s a reality – and one that poses serious challenges to the region’s future.

Produced by LSU researchers, the slides project Louisiana’s growing vulnerability to storm surge through the end of the century, as we get hit with a double-whammy: rising Gulf waters and the continued subsidence of a mud-starved coastal plain.

The projections show that by 2050, the combined forces could raise Gulf surges as much as four meters (13.1 feet) above current land elevations in the metro area. By the end of the century the entire coastal zone — all the way to the northern shorelines of Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas — would be vulnerable.

 

A house is not a motel

Short term rental enforcement is hard work, apparently.  Also there's a lot of it to do.

Websites like airbnb.com and vrbo.com show that there are hundreds of illegal short term rentals on the market in New Orleans.

The phenomenon is destroying neighbors quality of life and changing the fabric of neighborhoods that are primarily residential, said Caron.

“I would say probably one in every eight to 10 houses now is an illegal short term rental or bed and breakfasts,” said Ken Caron, of his Marigny neighborhood.

The problem, though, is building a case against violators given the structure of the regulations.

Currently, the city says it would have to prove that a landlord didn't just advertise the property, but sucessfully rented it out short term over the course of at least a year "non-residents," a term that is not clearly defined.

Based on my own observation I can point to a couple of buildings in my neighborhood that have been "successfully rented out short term over the course of at least a year" but I'm not in the business of turning people in to the cops.. or to their mortgage company.. or to whomever might have some authority.. it's not clear that anybody has much.

In any case my working theory is that the city isn't interested in stopping any of this activity.  From their point of view these are non-blighted properties which they can tax (at a much higher rate soon if things go their way in the legislature) and not have to share the revenue with the several state tourism entities who get most of the hotel/motel tax. 

This vision for New Orleans is ultimately an expensive resort based on around  tourism serving more tourism. Whether or not that's very appealing to us doesn't matter. Fiscal and economic viability from the point of view of the elites is what matters. To the city, it doesn't matter if every house is really a motel.. or if anyone really lives in your neighborhood anymore.

Could you make it anywhere?

This graph put together by NPR  based on a recently released government data set purports to show median incomes of American cities adjusted for the relative cost of living there within certain strictures of subjectivity. For example,

What is interesting about this data set is that it accounts for the things that people actually buy in each city. For example, while owning a car may be way more expensive in New York City than it is in Kansas, car ownership is relatively rare in New York City, so it's not going to figure as prominently in a New Yorker's cost of living.

Anyway, the idea is to arrive at some comparable measure of affordability across various metro areas.  One interesting comparison involves New Orleans which adjusts a median income of $29,489 to a "feels like"  rating of $28,939.   New York City adjusts a median income of $37,064 down to $28,799.

In other words, if you're making the median income in either city, you're doing basically just as well.  The reason we keep hearing about how much more "affordable" New Orleans is compared to other places, though, is because the people telling you that are almost always pulling down an income significantly higher than the median. They can afford it. So something must be wrong with you, right?

Political hits

At the beginning of the legislative session we were told that the only reason Mitch Landrieu's tax increase proposals stalled last year was because of political disgruntlement within the New Orleans delegation. J.P. Morrell, in fact, called it a "political murder victim."

Last year, the mayor’s legislative package included the property tax hike as well as a bid to reduce the number of juvenile judges in New Orleans. Landrieu — like others — thought the judicial downsizing bill would pass. Plans moved forward on a new courthouse that would accommodate only four courtrooms, not enough room for the existing six-judge setup.

The judge bill failed, however, and the property tax hike met a similar fate, dying in the Senate.

State Sen. J.P. Morrell, who supports the tax increase, blames the failure on political spite. “There was a hit out on Mitch Landrieu bills, and unfortunately, that bill got caught in the crossfire,” Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Monday.

But, we were also told that the mayor's sweeping reelection victory had put all of this to bed and so there should be no problem with any of this stuff this time around.  So the question is, what's the excuse this time? Two of Landrieu's proposed tax increases have failed and a third (admittedly the big property tax millage) is still in play but barely.

Maybe these New Orleans lawmakers don't have the stroke to call out political "hits" on people the way they thought they did.

Pimp my not-pothole

Sure, Gambit, go ahead and run your "pimp my pothole" contest after ours is filled in.

Yes, that description dares to ask, "Where is New Orleans most iconic pothole?" I don't... I can't...

Look, never mind that right now. I'm not entirely sure our sinkhole is even disqualified.  Sure, it's been filled, technically speaking. But it hasn't exactly been fixed.  It's just a big break in the street filled in with dirt and bricks.

Oh and also some potting soil.  We put that there in order to plant sunflowers.  They're doing pretty well so far.











Still a ways to go, obviously. With any luck they'll begin to flower just as the city arrives to repair the curb and pave them over.

Fingers crossed

Maybe they won't make us do it this time.

ATLANTA — The last time New Orleans captured a Super Bowl, the final two obstacles were Minnesota and Indianapolis.

That’s the case again Tuesday. But instead of having to defeat the Vikings and Colts, respectively, this time it’s a battle with the cities they call home for the right to host Super Bowl LII in 2018.

I cannot fathom why anyone would actively root for the NFL to bring its big bloated corporate shit show here.  It's basically a living exhibition of everything that's wrong with "the business side of sports" and therefore America paraded before everyone's eyes.  Oh and your team probably isn't even playing in it.

We're not yet in quite the bad shape that other cities hosting major sports events against a backdrop of  gross inequalities are but it's the direction we appear to be headed.

Shit my Jackie says (bonus edition)

Even from beyond retirement, Jackie informs us that NOPD closes at 1:00 am.

The new ordinance leaves the rescheduling of rained-out parades to the mayor. There previously had been a schedule dictating when each parade would run if it had to be rescheduled because of bad weather.

“This is because we ended up with five parades one night until 1 o’clock in the morning, at which time there is no safety and no security,” Clarkson said. “We have to start getting a little more serious about this.”

"No safety and security," none at all in the morning hours... unless the police/fire property tax millage passes, of course in which case help is certainly on the way.

Anyway, besides helping Jackie Clarkson and Latoya Cantrell get to bed on time, the new ordinances  also limits the number of parades to 30. There are currently 34 but the number is expected to reduce by attrition. In order to facilitate this, it creates something called a "Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council." 

The ordinance also establishes the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council, made up of representatives from each Carnival organization that paraded the previous year, as a committee that reports directly to the mayor. The body, among other things, will consider applications from prospective Carnival krewes and make recommendations to the mayor about whether a permit should be granted.

In other words, any upstart newcomer to the parading schedule must meet the approval of the already existing community of parading clubs. Thus the trend away from 19th Century style elitism and toward a more open and democratized Carnival is, at least in some small way, reversed.  Very retro.

Leger's razor

Not sure why he feels like we need to go all the way up to Grover Norquist to find someone to blame.

State Rep. Walt Leger III, D-New Orleans, blames Grover Norquist. Norquist leads Americans for Tax Reform, a politically powerful organization that opposes tax increases. Gov. Bobby Jindal is a disciple. New Orleans, on the other hand, is a Democratic stronghold.

“They’re taxes. We live in a state where many members of this Legislature have signed pledges not to raise taxes, ever,” Leger said.

But the very same article points out that other cities in the state have gotten local tax increases through the legislature this session. Why not just blame Steve Perry? He's right there.

Stephen Perry, CEO of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Landrieu must have turned a blind eye to the shark fins in the water, particularly when it came to the hotel tax.

The night before the deadline to file bills, Landrieu summoned Perry, Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman and Mercedes-Benz Superdome boss Doug Thornton to his office. The mayor laid out his legislative agenda, revealing that — among other things — he wanted to bring in $18 million by increasing tourists’ hotel room taxes.

For two hours, the meeting unfolded before ending with niceties. Perry offered to help on everything but the hotel tax, then waited to see if the mayor would take his advice.

Just living life from Superbowl to Superbowl

Why do anything just for its own sake?

Big stakes are involved. The new airport terminal is part of a second-term push by Mayor Mitch Landrieu to revamp the city’s aging infrastructure, all with an eye toward showing off New Orleans for a potential 2018 Super Bowl during the city’s tricentennial.

When the mayor finally convinces everyone to move City Hall over to Charity Hospital, he should look into installing a permanent SuperBowl Preparation Task Force Bunker. Perhaps the new "Chief Resilience Officer" can have a desk there. 

Admittedly, it's hard work competing for these events.  You have to go in front of the NFL owners and put on a skit for them like on Glee but with really fancy payola.

The formal wooing commenced last week when every NFL owner received a personalized handcrafted cypress box. A list of the 10 previous Super Bowl hosted by the city is emblazoned on the inside cover. On the other side, an iPad jam packed with all of the ins and outs of New Orleans' bid (more than 200 pages in a paper copy) along with personalized messages for each owner.

Familiar New Orleans voices are heard throughout the tablet, with the likes of Archie Manning and Harry Connick Jr. being just two of the city's personalities joining in the pitch.

So far, the presentation has been well received among the league's owners.

"The Saints are a great barometer of how the rest of the league feels about our presentation so far, and everyone we've shown it to is like 'Wow!' It's a very creative and very unique presentation," Cicero said.

Neither Cicero nor Joffray wanted to tip their hand by revealing more details of the bid. Joffray simply described them as a "game changer."

It's important they don't "tip their hand" about those "game changers."  Your competetion is always on the lookout for weak spots.  Here is a report on the paranoia in the Indianapolis camp. 

Keeping secrets

Melangton doesn’t expect to use many of the tactics from the city’s previous bid process.

“Everyone realizes we have to raise the bar and to do that we have to have some out-of-the-box thinking,” she stressed.

Don’t expect Melangton to tip her hand on how the bid will be delivered or what’s in it.

“We won’t divulge any of that until after it’s delivered,” Melangton said.

In fact, some of the plan could be altered at the last minute.

“We’re constantly measuring what everyone else is doing,” she said.

In Minneapolis they've even got "secret weapons" 

Off the top, Davis said he wouldn't reveal "themes or secret weapons" in the bid or the details.  The panel is concerned about the other two cities monitoring the news and gaining an edge.

He asked reporters in the room to "be a visceral competitor for this city."

At the center of the bid, he noted, is the "iconic" new stadium set to open in 2016. He and the others talked about the cutting-edge facility. Davis dismissed the stadium opponents with, "We're going to build a new stadium; get over it."

They even busted out an "iconic" structure for the purpose.  And those "visceral competitors" in the local press can't hurt. I'm not entirely sure what that means but it sounds serious.

 Not sure how we're gonna match that.  Maybe if we built an extra airport.  

Expiration date

One thing that's come out of this is we can now assume the shelf life of your typical "good government reform" effort is about 8 years.

The political independence of these two regional flood protection authorities relies hugely on their status as political subdivisions. They are units of local (not state) government. They serve our metropolitan area flood protection needs and are no longer controlled by the governor, as metro-area levee boards were pre-Katrina.

These repeated legislative assaults on the political independence of the flood protection authorities would move them away from the protections of local government, weakening them by treating them as state agencies subject to the governor’s control.

That’s not what Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans fought for in 2006. That’s not what Louisiana voters approved when they passed the 2006 constitutional amendment.

But that is what SB 553 is now trying to accomplish, by chipping away at the authorities’ powers and treating them differently from other levee districts and political subdivisions in Louisiana.

Political scientists will thank us for this measurement tool.  We should give them a name for this unit that honors its discoverer.  We could call it a Jindal but that's already the amount of time a sitting governor spends out of state campaigning for President.  "Adley" has a nice ring to it, though.  One Adley = about 8 years.

Dust to dust

It is widely hoped that the state of Louisiana's part of the federal litigation against BP for damages issuing from the Macondo spill will accrue to the state's coastal fund where it is badly needed in order to prop up coastal restoration projects.

So here's how the Governor wants to pay for  the litigation.

Dupuis said the Jindal administration has identified available money to pay the costs, which don’t include general state tax dollars.

Among the possible funding sources he listed: the state’s coastal fund, Gulf oil spill penalty money already flowing to Louisiana, and a set-aside fund that includes fees, taxes, penalties and other money paid by the oil industry to cope with spills.

Jindal and his allies are fond of criticizing public interest lawsuits against oil companies as nothing more than a boon for trial lawyers. Seems like they're doing everything they can to make sure this is true.  

Well that was wrong

This is a great conversation about Net Neutrality from a recent Bill Moyers show featuring David Carr and Susan Crawford.



Toward the end of the segment, Crawford says something very optimistic.

BILL MOYERS: The FCC is voting on May 15th to move forward with the proposal or not. That's less than two weeks away. What do you think people can do to be heard at that May 15th meeting?

SUSAN CRAWFORD: The uproar in the country is already causing the FCC to walk back from Wheeler's initial statement that he was never going to move towards treating these guys like a utility. That's already happening. Keeping that pressure up is only going to help because then they have to keep all these options on the table and act like a regulator. So writing into the FCC, writing to your congressman, keeping in touch with your senator. That really is making a difference. The White House is responding.

Yeah well that didn't happen. 

You can write and yell at these people all you want but they aren't going to listen to you. 

How hard did they try?

This is an op-ed by David Garcia whose development firm was a partner in the Gatehouse project to renovate the WTC building. Garcia is obviously miffed at the city for ditching Gatehouse's proposal after having initially approved it via the RFP process so take that into consideration.

Still it's worth noting, he basically accuses the city of employing shakedown tactics and negotiating in bad faith before abandoning the project altogether. 

But when we jumped over the city's bar, the city moved the bar inexplicably higher. The city's final lease proposal required more than $100 million in present value, with more than $1.5 billion in projected lease payments during the 99-year term. Based on our team's experience with similar large, mixed-use developments and other 99-year leases across the country, we considered this lease demand to be unreasonable and un-financeable - killing the feasibility of our WTC project.

The city did not seem interested in discussing these realities. Our team was allowed to have only three brief meetings with city staff during our eight-month negotiation period - and we were never allowed to speak with the mayor, City Council, or any city economic development leaders to potentially assist. We were unsuccessful in our repeated attempts to increase communication, or broaden our discussions to include other third-party experts the city may trust. Negotiations imply two sides engaging fully, and that simply was not the case here.

And, hey, maybe the Gatehouse plan was bad from the get-go.  But it was the one the city picked, for whatever reason. 

Fuck it

Welp, it's been fun

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If they knew

Elizabeth Warren's source might actually be overestimating us here.

On Wednesday night in DC, at Public Citizen’s annual gala, Warren spoke about the trade deals in some of her most direct remarks to date on the issue—and revealed some inside details about the debate in Congress.

“From what I hear, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the deal in the upcoming trade talks. So the question is, Why are the trade talks secret? You’ll love this answer. Boy, the things you learn on Capitol Hill,” Warren said. “I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me ‘They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.’”

I wouldn't go that far.  What that person really means is they'd have to spend some money on an ad campaign.  And right now all that money is tied up in fake Obamacare horror stories.

I'd say wait until after the midterms but then it's time to start getting the Benghazi movie ready for 2016.  So, ok, yeah, maybe just keep it hush hush for now.

Property over people

Hurricane season is only weeks away now.  The Lens has provided us with a refresher course about what our brand new better than ever flood protection system actually does.

“It’s as if your poorly built, three-story house collapsed, so the contractor said, ‘Ok, I’ll replace it with a well-made, two-story house,’” said Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy.

“The corps has rebuilt a system to a lower standard of protection than its poorly built system that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina,” Davis said.

Is the storm protection system around New Orleans better than the old one? “Absolutely,” Davis said. “Is it what we were supposed to have? No.”

That shift has had two important effects, Davis and others say:

It lowered the design height of walls defending a city located on a sinking delta during an age of rising sea levels.

And it changed the purpose of the system from protecting lives to protecting property – a lesser challenge for designers.

“That’s what Congress did” in directing the corps to build to a lesser standard, Davis said, “and that’s not what the law says they must do. People should be asking the city, the state, and their representatives in Congress how this happened. Someone should be telling that story.”

These adjusted design purposes were a specific focus of a presentation by Tim Ruppert at Rising Tide 5 called "When can we get some dam safety in New Orleans?"  I tried to dig up the video yesterday to no avail.  Luckily, Tim drew up some notes and links to supplementary materials you can still access here.

Meanwhile The Lens is hosting a web chat today with Davis and with Ken Holder of the U.S. Army Corps which should be starting just as soon as I finish typing this.  Click here to watch.

Serpas Signal

Busy week for the chief.  He's having to beat back yet another round of allegations that his department manipulates statistics in order to downplay serious crimes.

Responding to an inspector general’s audit that uncovered dozens of misclassified rapes, New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas acknowledged Wednesday there is room for improvement in the department’s crime reporting, even as he disputed the audit and insisted no one under his watch has attempted to “game the stats.”

Only one thing that can take our minds off of this unpleasantness and that's padding the stats on less serious violations.

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint, in Orleans Parish, on Thursday May 15, 2014, beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at approximately 5:00 A.M.  Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license, etc.

Drive carefully. 

Bobby Jindal's perpetual media tour to nowhere

You never know where Bobby and/or his byline is going to show up next.

Jindal stopped at Liberty University over the weekend in order to tell the young freethinkers there about the First Amendment and what it means to them.

Jindal felt right at home. A Hindu-turned-”evangelical Catholic,” he knew how to package his First Amendment defense for maximum appeal to clean-cut Christian conformists. Anti-gay bigotry was recharacterized as an expression of traditional Christian views. Discriminating against homosexuals by denying them jobs or goods and services — that’s simply practicing one’s religion.

As the demons in this travesty of New Testament theology, Jindal ominously evoked a vast liberal elite, intolerant of religious-based speech that also happens to be anti-gay. You see it’s the free speech crowd — not the censors at a place like Liberty U — who are the small-minded one in Jindal’s world. The “politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” he opines in a press release from the governor’s office. (Your tax dollars at work!) It’s a switcheroo tactic he used to defend anti-gay comments by Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, much like the “liberals are the real racists” meme that the right has been peddling so hard recently. Bigotry seems more justified if you see yourself in the oppressed group.

Last weekend, the St. Louis Rams made history by selecting 2013 SEC Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam in the seventh round of the NFL Draft. Sam becomes the first openly gay football player to be drafted in the NFL.  At first glance, this may seem to you like progress. But apply a little Jindal logic and you'll see the "real bigots" are Christian athletes who, of course, will never recover. They'll always have Twitter, though.

"@livinglegend_44: Y'all praise Michael Sam for being gay but y'all mocked Tim Tebow for being a Christian. Smh #Society"valid point
— Scott Shanle (@scottshanle) May 12, 2014

That's former Saints linebacker Scott Shanle expressing solidarity with Florida State linebacker Demarcus Walker who clearly knows what's what. 

You see, Tim Tebow was going to be the Jackie Robinson of Christian athletes. Unfortunately, thanks to the unrelenting scorn of the godless hordes who comprise American football fandom, he was never given the chance break down the barriers to Christian participation in professional sports and showcase his remarkable talents.  Because of this tragedy we may never see an openly devout professional athlete in our lifetimes.

And now that one openly gay player has been picked in the final round of one draft, Christians everywhere are under assault.  The "double standard" at work is intolerable. Or at least that's the gist of the article Saints tight end (no snickering, please) Benjamin Watson links to here.

This is my homophobic rant against Michael Sam | Page 2 of 2 | The Matt Walsh Blog http://t.co/VqkGEjKWoC via @po_st
— Benjamin Watson (@BenjaminSWatson) May 13, 2014

Saints linebacker Curtis Lofton added his voice by manually retweeting Watson's tweet.

RT @BenjaminSWatson This is my homophobic rant against Michael Sam | Page 2 of 2 | The Matt Walsh Blog http://t.co/UOY3lveT2t via @po_st
— Curtis Lofton (@CurtisLofton50) May 13, 2014

If you look through that thread, you'll notice that Lofton was applauded for having "the courage to express your opinion" via this retweet of someone else's approval of another person's opinion.

In any case, as you can see, Jindal's lecture on the "real victims" of religious discrimination does not fall on deaf ears... for better or for worse.

Oh and one more post-script.  John Barry has been in the news a lot this year as Bobby Jindal's primary foil regarding the oil and gas industry's culpability for destroying Louisiana's coastal wetlands.  It's worth pointing out, also, that Barry's most recent book is an examination of the historical roots of American religious freedom.  As fond as Jindal is of this topic, perhaps we should see about getting him a copy.

Banana Republic

Basically we're just moving approximately 100 jobs about 80 miles to the west so that Bobby Jindal can hand out another multimillion dollar corporate incentive package.

The article goes on to quote a private business owner that employs 10 people that will be impacted as well so the math indicates Mississippi has lost around $1.3MM in annual rental payments plus somewhere between 100 and 110 jobs. To get that, Louisiana’s taxpayers are now giving Chiquita around $1.3MM in annual tax subsidies to nab those 110 jobs. Leaving aside the imaginary line that is the state line, this deal takes money out of the local economy on two levels.

Seems legit. 

Welp, it's been fun

Internet is dead. What are we gonna do now? If we can afford it I guess we'll stream a limited selection of movies.

The worst person

State Rep. Katrina Jackson

An anti-abortion bill that could potentially result in the closure of many of the state's abortion clinics passed the La. Senate Wednesday. Rep. Katrina Jackson’s (D-Monroe) HB 388, the “Unsafe Abortion Act,” passed the Senate 34-3.

Please see Lamar here and here. 

Obviously the thing to do now is build two new airports

I see no other way to resolve this.

The selection process to choose a firm to oversee construction of the city's new airport terminal ended in a tie today, and it's not yet clear how the tie will be broken. 

The city's proposal Review Committee was tasked with selecting between two joint ventures hoping to manage the $546 million construction project to build the new North Terminal.

Just build another one. Say you need it to handle the increased banana volume or something.  Put it on the Jazzland site and solve two problems at once.  

Movie time

Thirty years ago this week the World's Fair opened in New Orleans. The Fair was never a financial success but it left several lasting marks on the city and its riverfront. It's also a persistent source of nostalgia for the olds around here.

So gather 'round all you old folks and watch four (four!) freaking hours of fair coverage from 1984 Channel 6.

These are the good times

Did you know?

Will this be the year the USA's luck runs out?

With the Atlantic hurricane season starting June 1, the nation is enjoying two record streaks for a lack of hurricanes: It's been nine years since the last hit from a "major" hurricane and also nine years since a hurricane of any sort hit Florida, traditionally the most hurricane-prone state in the nation.

Both streaks began on Oct. 24, 2005, when Category 3 Hurricane Wilma slammed into southwest Florida with 120-mph winds.

A "major" hurricane is a Category 3, 4, or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale of Hurricane Intensity; the minimum wind speed for a major hurricane is 111 mph.

"This is the longest period on record with no major hurricane landfalls since 1878, when reliable landfall records began," says Colorado State University meteorologist and hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach.