A judge has blocked a last-ditch attempt to stop the removal of the
P.G.T. Beauregard monument. A member of the Monumental Task Committee
submitted what he called new evidence showing the city of New Orleans
doesn't own the statue at the entrance of City Park, but Orleans Civil
Court Judge Kern Reese said Wednesday (May 10) he could find no basis
for granting a preliminary injunction to block Mayor Mitch Landrieu's plans.
It was the latest round of legal wrangling between the city and the
Monumental Task Committee in from of state and federal judges. With
Wednesday's decision confirming the city owns the Beauregard monument,
the Landrieu administration remains undefeated in court against
challenges to keep it from removing four Confederate monuments.
Undefeated, unlike certain Confederate military figures we could mention...
And yet, the Lost Cause continues.
Marksbury, who sought the injunction, said he would review with Jones
whether the group should take his case to the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeal. But Marksbury acknowledged that the committee is running out of
time because a arguments at the appellate level would take time, and
Landrieu's efforts to remove the monuments could occur before then.
These "philanthropists" sure do have a lot of money to piss away on lawyers. There must not be much need in New Orleans for good charity work or anything lately.
The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has erected new barricades —
reminiscent of the ones put up on Lee Circle this weekend — on the
neutral ground across Canal Street from the Jefferson Davis statue.
Temporary "No Parking" signs also have gone up on Canal Street and
Jefferson Davis Parkway near the statue, in effect through May 12.
The FBI is fucking evil.
To the extent that its investigation into ties between Trump’s
presidential campaign and the Russian government actually existed and
may eventually have uncovered something that could be pinned to the
president himself, yes, sure, okay, that probably is the reason Comey
got shitcanned last night. It would also be a complete anomaly in the
history of an organization that only ever has taken a break from
bootlicking and propping up entrenched power in the moments when J.
Edgar Hoover felt obliged to blackmail somebody. If Trump decommissioned
the entire bureau tomorrow it would be the first good thing he ever did
in his entire goddamn life. He probably won’t. It’s too useful to him.
Being useful to the powerful is what it’s for.
Anyway, we're all looking forward to hearing what John Kennedy has to say at the confirmation hearings for whoever Trump nominates for the job next. Ideally, Clay Higgins. Or maybe one of those Duck Dynasty guys.
Some observers who were seeing Kennedy in action for the first time
even questioned whether the senator is very bright. He is, of course, as
those who've watched him for a long time know. They also know that he
has a history of cranking up the outrage and incredulity for maximum
effect, a habit that served him just fine in Louisiana.
Clearly the effect was lost on much of his new, broader audience.
Look, we get it. John Kennedy's act is all smarm. We know it's fake. We know it's condescending. We know he's basically Ted Cruz with a banjo slung around his neck. We also know the reason the "broader audience" reads it as stupid is because he is actually very bad at this. "Weed killer," "To a bear we all taste like chicken," That whole "Love is the answer"/"Handgun" thing. These aren't wise country colloquialisms. They are bizarre head-scratchers. Kennedy's faux-folksy manner is so tone deaf, so inauthentic, that Occam's razor leads those getting their first glance to conclude that nobody would be doing this on purpose. Well, he is. And we know. Sooner or later the press in Washington will figure it out too. That is, if Kennedy ever becomes a consequential enough figure for them to even pay much attention to.
In the meantime, maybe the Louisiana press shouldn't validate his behavior as "a habit that served him just fine" here. Kennedy served as Treasurer for a decade but rarely faced much opposition. He got himself elected Senator with a lot of help from David Vitter's money, stump speeches by a newly elected President and Vice President, and a near complete lack of interest from the DNC and State Democratic Party in supporting his opponent. Those circumstances served him well. Let's not do ourselves, or the voters of the state the insult of asserting that Kennedy's stupid clown act has as much to do with his rise as all that.
The deal also gives the IDB final say over any plan Landrieu’s office draws up, pursuant to state law, but Landrieu is seeking to change that law in the coming months.
A bill that cleared a House committee last week would give the City Council final say-so over contracts the IDB approves, which could include leases, sales or other deals. If that bill becomes law before the city is able to find a developer for the site, it could apply to a Six Flags deal.
The goal is to transfer the final decision making responsibility over to the city. This agreement is just a midway point toward that.
Regardless of who is making the choice, the prospects for the property are still grim. The same pool of questionably qualified bidders has been rejected three times by DIN. It's hard to imagine what the mayor's office can bring to the process that would be any different besides maybe lowered standards. Also there's the incentive of a deadline that comes with the end of Landrieu's term and his desire to turn the city's 300th birthday into his own showcase of personal achievements. Seems like sober conditions under which to reach a wise decision.
Senior White House and Justice Department officials had been working on
building a case against Mr. Comey since at least last week, according to
administration officials. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been
charged with coming up with reasons to fire him, the officials said.
All the decent folk are shocked shocked. But this is how things always work. For whatever reason, most people are a-ok with day to day corruption and abuse of power so long as the practitioners are subtle in their manners.
“Corruption in other cities is so sophisticated (because of their rules)
you wouldn’t find briberies. It’s very unusual you’d find someone
passing money in an office somewhere.”
The New New Orleans does much better corruption now. But don't think for a minute that that means less corruption. It's just that as long the graft isn't so stupidly blatant that it embarrasses the comfortable classes, then nobody has to worry their pretty little head about it.
Well the country went and elected Ray Nagin President last year. And now we're having a daily panic over the very basic fact that America has not actually, "Always Been Great." The danger here isn't so much that we "normalize" the uncouth behavior of the Ogre President. It's more that our capacity for collective self-delusion once again outstrips the opportunity he presents for honest discussion of how fucked up things really are and have been.
A Louisiana House committee killed a package of legislation Tuesday (May 9) to shift more of the state's income tax burden from individuals to businesses. The proposal, pushed by Gov. John Bel Edwards, also would have saved 90 percent of income tax filers money, according to supporters.
A similar reworking of Louisiana's income tax structure has been
recommended several times by economists and other tax analysts who have
studied the state's tax system. In concept, the failed legislative
package resembled some of the things recommended by the state task force
that studied the tax system earlier this year and in 2016, although it
is not the same as what was proposed.
This would have represented a tax cut for 90 percent of Louisiana residents. It would also have raised about 21 million dollars and, well, you know how much the State House of Representatives loves good ideas like that.
Setting the state apart from many of its Southern peers, the Louisiana
state House rejected a proposed law that would have banned Sanctuary
Cities and allowed the state Attorney General's office to withhold state
funds to local departments found to be in violation.
So there's a setback for Future Governor Landry. The only thing that saved us here was the 2/3 majority vote threshold for bills that would raise fees in any way. Also, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Valerie Hodges is quite the peach.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration officially took over future
decisions about the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East
under an agreement approved Tuesday (May 9) by the economic development
board that owns the shuttered 220-acre property.
The New Orleans Industrial Development Board voted unanimously to
reject three pending offers to buy the property and instead enter a
cooperative endeavor agreement with the Landrieu administration for one
year. The Landrieu administration will handle marketing the property and
evaluating any proposals, in hopes of finally getting the long-blighted
property revived.
I say, sort of, because as we read further we see that the IDB is still responsible for security and maintenance and, apparently, will have the final say on whatever the mayor decides. At one point in this process, IDB termed a round of bids from potential developers an "insult to the people of New Orleans" Supposedly whatever they've agreed to gives the mayor a heavier thumb on the scale there. Maybe he'll be more forgiving. We know Mayor Scurlock will, anyway.
Fred Heebe runs and owns all of it. Ray Nagin gets a day out of jail to go testify and all but, you can kind of see where things are headed.
In a sense, the bare-knuckled lawsuit brought by trash conglomerate
Waste Management represents the closest thing to a public airing of the
corruption claims against Heebe and Jim Ward, his father-in-law, that
New Orleanians are ever likely to see.
That’s
because the criminal case the federal government was building against
the two men cratered amid evidence, unearthed by Heebe’s legal team, of
major misconduct by top officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
And the case is resurfacing at precisely the same moment that the
leader of Heebe’s legal team, defense lawyer Kyle Schonekas, is expected
to be nominated by President Donald Trump to run the office whose
leadership he toppled five years ago.
In another odd convergence,
the jurist presiding over Waste Management’s civil racketeering case,
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt, is the same judge that eagerly
embraced the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct that Heebe brought
forth in 2012, and embarked on his own crusade to measure its extent.
By
the time the case gets to the courtroom, in late August, it's possible
that Engelhardt, the chief judge in the district court, will have moved
on as well: He is said to be a leading contender for an open seat on the
New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeal. Such a nomination
would also come from Trump, with input from Louisiana's senators.
Yeah so congrats to everybody on their promotions.
This book review was brought to my attention by the latest Chapo. In short, it's about work and how we should fuckabuncha work. That's been a running theme here for several years now. We do so many horrible things to ourselves and to others under the misguided premise that there is virtue in competitive self-abuse. In other words, unbridled capitalism is a race to the bottom that is isolates us and causes the lives we live to become ever less healthy and ever less free.
Anderson’s most provocative argument is that large companies, the institutions that employ most workers, amount to a de facto form of government, exerting massive and intrusive power in our daily lives. Unlike the state, these private governments are able to wield power with little oversight, because the executives and boards of directors that rule them are accountable to no one but themselves. Although they exercise their power to varying degrees and through both direct and “soft” means, employers can dictate how we dress and style our hair, when we eat, when (and if) we may use the toilet, with whom we may partner and under what arrangements. Employers may subject our bodies to drug tests; monitor our speech both on and off the job; require us to answer questionnaires about our exercise habits, off-hours alcohol consumption, and childbearing intentions; and rifle through our belongings. If the state held such sweeping powers, Anderson argues, we would probably not consider ourselves free men and women.
What I'd like to emphasize here is that the problem is we do this to ourselves. We spend so much time internalizing the competitive values of capitialism that individual achievement becomes its own moral validation for all manner of atrocities against our neighbors and against ourselves.
Louisiana is eyeing an effort that would require able-bodied adults to get a job if they want to receive Medicaid benefits — mimicking efforts in other states that have been bolstered by ballooning Medicaid rolls and encouragement from the Trump administration.
Until we stop buying into the con that tells us we don't deserve even the basic necessities unless we breathlessly and pointelessly fight one another for our individual shares, there's never going to be any progress.
James Gill thinks it's very important that we acknowledge a man who was summarily executed by police was not "a respected man." He's careful to write, "This does not make his death any less regrettable, or vindicate the officers responsible for it." And that is the truth of the matter. But if we agree on that, what is Gill's point, exactly?
The bank's abrupt end marked a stark reversal of once-promising fortunes.
When First NBC was founded in 2006, it drew a who's who of backers, including Peyton and Eli Manning, the New Orleans-born star NFL quarterbacks, and set a Louisiana record for capital raised by a start-up bank.
First NBC was the creation of Ashton Ryan Jr., who chose a name that recalled First National Bank of Commerce, a prominent New Orleans bank that was acquired by Bank One in 1998.
As the new bank grew, so too did Ryan's celebrity, earning him status as the city's best-known banker, even though his bank was far from the biggest. He earned roughly $1.6 million in total compensation in 2015.
Over the years, he's been a regular presence within many of the city's civic groups, including the boards of Greater New Orleans Inc., the University of New Orleans Foundation and Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans.
The details are a little sparse here but, from the looks of things, FNBC specialized in financing post Katrina development projects via federal tax credits in a way that allowed them to play a little too much with money that was not yet actually money. To a certain extent, we could say this is pretty much what banks do. But there are rules and bounds to how much risk is prudent.
One especially imprudent behavior shows up here.
First NBC had made large loans to a small number of borrowers — much riskier than making a large number of small loans, because the failure of just a few big loans can be devastating. The bank's 10 biggest loans averaged about $76 million, according to its 2015 financial filings, high for a bank of its size.
Long story short, this looks like a scheme to skim short term profit off of federal recovery funds and distribute large chunks of it to our friends in the circuit of civic swells. I would love to see who those 10 biggest loans went to. That information is probably available. Maybe the Advocate should have printed it.
Three days after prosecutors gave Mitchell the subpoena, police showed up at his workplace, handcuffed him and drove him to Central Lockup. Mitchell was booked as a material witness, with his bail set at $50,000.
"I don't know if it's right to say this, but I'll forgive those guys (Gray and Bernard) before I forgive the DA. That's how bad that was," said Mitchell, 41.
"I've been shot and almost died, and I really got to go through all this with y'all?" he said. "Any means necessary, they'll do it. By any means, and it don't matter what the effect of that is."
Mitchell's jail stay was short. His friend Chris Smith, who works with mental health court clients, said he pleaded with Criminal District Court Judge Laurie White, who had signed the warrant. She freed Mitchell the next day on his own recognizance.
But Mitchell remains bitter. He lost his job shortly after his arrest. And while the hotel's owner told The Advocate that Mitchell was canned for other reasons, Mitchell places the blame squarely on the DA's Office.
I guess they didn't want to testify on the record. Some are still afforded that luxury.
Not really sure how this one woman's actions are any different than say, the entirety of the Ben Carson for President campaign, anyway.
A Kenner woman who served as the treasurer for The Greater New Orleans Tea Party was arrested on felony theft charges, accused of stealing $52,436 from the group.
Brandy Kay Cole, 43, of 4200 Chateau Blvd., Kenner, was booked
Tuesday (May 2) with theft valued over $25,000 and bank fraud, according
to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.
And now she is arrested and he is Secretary of HUD. Hardly seems fair.
The man behind an inflatable jump house empire, skywriting over Jazz
Fest and attempts to revive the Six Flags site has thrown his top hat
into the ring for the New Orleans mayor's race. Frank Scurlock announced
his bid Friday (May 5), which he dubbed "Cinco De Scurlock" on a
calendar posted to his website.
Wait. We're pretty sure Scurlock already announced his candidacy back in March. It was in the papers and everything. Maybe it doesn't count if not enough people notice the first time. Or maybe Scurlock is just used to repeating big announcements that don't go anywhere. His several failed bids at the Six Flags property may indicate that.
There was also this announcement of more announcements via skywriting, which also didn't happen.
It's Scurlock who has paid for a pilot to write inspirational messages in the sky during Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras
in recent years. He planned for skywriting to take place in three
cities Wednesday afternoon until severe weather forced its cancellation.
While previous displays have been mostly neutral politically, an
announcement previewing the skywriting Wednesday linked them to the
removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans.
The plan was to fill the sky with hashtag quality slogans meant to "draw attention to the plight of the monuments and calm tensions among residents," which seem like contradictory purposes but whatever. He's apparently engaged in a very tasteful pub crawl of Mexican restaurants tonight. If you see him out be sure and ask him if he's coming to the march on Sunday.
Landrieu, 54, said he felt vindicated by the decision, after
contending for more than 18 months that his OPSO commission was
authentic. One of his defense attorneys, Justin Zitler, said, "I am
pleased that the district attorney properly exercised his prosecutorial
discretion in dropping the false impersonation charge. I am saddened
only that it took 18 months to do so."
Spokesmen for Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro and
for Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman provided no explanation for the
lengthy delay in verifying the legitimacy of Landrieu's reservist
commission. Zitler said a letter from Gusman confirming that his
client's credential was authentic had been given to prosecutors and the
court in June 2016.
"Kenneth Landrieu had a valid reserve deputy credential from 2007
post-Katrina through the end of the year 2015," Gusman wrote in the
letter.
The remaining charge is an aggravated assault which happened when Cousin Ken brandished a gun and threatened to arrest a fellow motorist one evening. Of course none of this would have happened if the victim had respected the authority of Ken's badge in the first place. We still don't know exactly what that authority actually is but at least now we know it's real.
We really need to make time to get back to the things that matter around here like football. I've been wanting to at least say a few things about the Saints' draft day for a week now but bad things keep happening. Here's a story about Buddy D in the meantime.
Eventually, they passed it. The US House just voted to (theoretically, if this ever becomes law) yank health care benefits away from something like 20-30 million Americans. People are going to either die outright or be cast into greater and greater depths of misery as a result of this. The Republicans are celebrating with Bud Light and very bad football metaphors.
Democrats, meanwhile, are also celebrating. They think they've been handed a gift for the 2018 midterms. They also thought this about the 2016 Presidential election. Unless they come up with a coherent, appealing health care policy to sell to voters, they won't be able take much advantage of this. In fact, if it doesn't pass the Senate, we can throw this House vote on the pile of fifty something other times Republicans symbolically voted to repeal Obamacare over the past several years. They havent' yet paid much of a price for any of that.
Speaking of the Senate, now we can begin the long national exercise of confidently declaring the repeal will never get out of there. Until it does. And the, I guess, everybody will celebrate again.
This monuments controversy sure has been divisive. It's good to see that the powerful wealthy men on both sides of the argument can maintain their friendship.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu apologized Wednesday to one of his longtime
supporters, businessman Frank Stewart, seeking to de-escalate a spat
between the two over Stewart’s opposition to the mayor’s plan to take
down four Confederate-era monuments.
Stewart purchased a two-page advertisement Wednesday in The New Orleans Advocate titled “Dear Mitch — Shame on You.”
Mitch can't say this explicitly but there's probably a lot more
pro-Confederate sentiment out in the business community than anyone
wants to admit. Because he often counts a lot of these people among his own donors and allies, it's no wonder this has been so exasperating for him.
There's a faint echo here of Ray Nagin's post-Katrina political crisis. Not to get too far into it but here's a quick summary. Nagin was elected in 2002 with the backing of the city's upper and business class whites. I don't know if Stewart was among the Nagin coalition but people like him were. There was a mayoral election during the immediate aftermath of the flood. At this time, restless plutocrats abandoned Nagin and sought to install one of their own in an effort to rebuild the city, "demographically, geographically and politically.”
They couldn't settle on a single favorite candidate, though. Twenty something people ran in the primary. Rob Couhig, Peggy Wilson, Ron Forman and a few others all competed for the white money vote but couldn't quite corner it. So the 2006 runoff came down to the centrist neoliberal Mitch and the ideologically similar Nagin who had cynically shifted to a superficial sort of racial politics. The big public break for Nagin was the famous "Chocolate City" speech. Even though his former backers were already intent on leaving him, the effect, Nagin publicly declaring his independence, granted him a perceived initiative that carried him to reelection.
Mitch made a similar break when he threw his weight behind the monuments movement although he probably didn't do it on purpose. Most likely, Landrieu seized an opportunity bolster his already rising national profile without fully considering, or perhaps while simply dismissing, the local political consequences. It's still probably a good decision for Mitch politically. It's definitely the right decision for the city. But it also seems like Landrieu was genuinely surprised at his friends' hurt feelings. Landrieu says he has a "a strong and principled disagreement” with his friend. But he's probably just miffed that the guy has an opinion at all. This is what happens when cynical politicians fail to fully appreciate that
other people actually care about the effect of their policy choices.
It also points out something to watch for in the coming municipal elections. The neoliberal model tells us it's possible to win and hold office in this city branding oneself as a "strong and principled" progressive and still maintain alliances and friendships among the old white money crowd. But as a more authentic, confrontational politics emerges that engages more people on issues they actually care about, the neoliberal model becomes less and less coherent. If New Orleans is going to build a new politics in 2017, we might be able to gauge its progress through the continued hurt feelings of elites.
No matter how many times the Republicans fail to pass an ACA repeal, they are going to have to keep trying, or look like they are trying, at least until the midterms. There's a good chance, though, that eventually they might actually get it done even if they do it by accident.
Maybe this attempt fizzles too. But if it does, then they'll try again sooner than later. It's possible that they'll keep tripping over their own feet for the rest of the term. But one thing I wouldn't count on as a backstop is the continued resilience of so-called "moderate Republicans." Eventually the big tax cut for rich people that the repeal will inevitably represent, will be too good to pass up.
Having failed to block the project in Louisiana courts, Stuart “Neil”
Fisher has now scrapped what had been his backup plan to get the case
revived in Florida.
Fisher's company, Two Canal Street Investors
Inc., filed for bankruptcy in a Florida court last month, hoping to use
that forum to file a new complaint against City Hall in New Orleans. But
Two Canal has now asked the Florida court to dismiss the case.
And Fisher’s attorney, David Lloyd Merrill, has left the case,
apparently unconvinced that the arcane legal maneuver had a chance of
actually salvaging Two Canal’s lawsuit, once the Louisiana Supreme Court
refused to take up the case. In a court motion in Florida he cited
“irreconcilable differences.”
Fisher, reached by phone Tuesday, said he asked Merrill to step down.
"I’m
not used to having people tell me that I can’t do things. I need people
to say, 'I can do it,' and see what happens," he said.
Fast forward to sometime in 2020. Headline: "Stuart Fisher Escorted From Four Seasons Lobby Carrying Sack Full Of Informational Pamphlets" I'm here for that. Can't wait.
Think back with us for a moment. Back to the olden days of, oh say two years ago. All the talk of the town at that time was about Confederate monuments. Remember that? Maybe you can. I know it seems so silly now. Anyway, at the time, some of our friends in the pro-monument camp included among their complaints to us a concern that removing the statues would not only erase history but also cause undue injury to our vital tourism industry. Remember that? Really, it was a thing. Here, for example, were speakers addressing the City Council at a 2015 public meeting on behalf of the Monumental Task Committee. They had heard from our friend Billy Nungesser about this very issue.
Billy Nungesser called Monumental Task Committee. Said he wanted an
economic impact study on the decrease in tourism that could result after
monument removal
Of course that didn't go anywhere because, well, Billy Nungesser. But the argument was carried elsewhere by callers to radio programs, writers of letters to the editor, commenters upon websites, and like feeders back to the various media. Won't somebody think of the tour guides? Whatever would anyone come to see in New Orleans anymore after General Lee was removed from his pedestal?
Here was an interesting fact provided by a pair of UNO professors who wrote in one day. At one time, the monuments really were touted as tourist draws. At the time they were installed.
Ironically, they also reflected great concern for how New Orleans was
perceived by the rest of the nation. Civic leaders at the turn of the
century saw Confederate reunions as opportunities to boost the city’s
burgeoning tourist industry. They actively recruited Confederate
veterans organizations and sponsored cemetery tours and parades down
Canal Street with brass bands. Such reunions were part of the city’s
reinvention as the brightest gem in a fictional “Old South” and rivaled
Mardi Gras in the numbers of visitors drawn to the city.
Back when the Ex-Confederate market was hot, the city's civic leaders and business community were themselves pretty hot for a piece of it. Nowadays, their feelings are slightly more mixed. It's true that many "civic leaders" remain firmly pro-monument. We were recently just treated to yet another round of clever opining from them via their Carnival processions.
Knights of Chaos float 2017
And, of course, the philanthropists who run the Monumental Task Committee are already on record. But it's a mistake to think that this is a full representation of the sentiments of the business community in our dynamic New New Orleans of the 21st Century. Before you judge them all as unreconstructed confederates, consider also that some of them are quietly non-committal.
Plenty of people showed up to voice support for the move at several public hearings, including the City Council hearing that culminated in a 6-1 vote in favor. But Landrieu noted that business and civic leaders have been awfully quiet.
Some surely oppose the move, but it's hard to believe they all do. People who work in tourism and other outward-facing fields are a pragmatic bunch. They have to get how the monuments' presence undermines New Orleans' image as a tolerant, modern city that celebrates its diversity.
That's not just a theory. Quite a few local business leaders actively fought state legislation targeting gay and lesbian people in recent years, and were rewarded with the relocated NBA All-Star game after North Carolina passed discriminatory laws. Don't any of them see the same arguments applying here? Landrieu insists they do, but have told him they are reluctant to get involved, even though their words could help defuse some of the ugliness of the situation.
Landrieu's also right to call out some of the people who insist the works should stay on display but have done nothing to make that happen.
Okay well point taken about the "pragmatic bunch" working to snag an NBA All Star Game last year. But the silence on the monument question suggests that these tourism magnates may not, in fact, "celebrate diversity" all that seriously. It's fine as long as they're reaping the monetary benefits of wokeness. But what happens when The Market is less clear in its moral guidance?
A Times-Picayune story published this week tells about a striking discrepancy in fees charged to large tourist-facing parading organizations vs those charged to more traditional neighborhood second-lining groups.
(Tamara) Jackson is the president of the Social Aid and Pleasure Club Task
Force, which represents 27 of the city's 39 clubs. She said the city
gives financial breaks to some parades, such as Mardi Gras krewes
and celebrity memorial events like those held after the deaths of
singer Prince and actress Carrie Fisher. Meanwhile, traditional
second-lines that are part of the cultural backbone for many
African-Americans in New Orleans are burdened with much larger fees that
threaten to tax them out of existence, Jackson said.
She laid out three examples from the 2016 parading season.
One was the Bowie second-line. It was expected to attract nearly
1,250 people to the narrow streets of the Vieux Carre, but instead drew
close to 5,000. The city charged organizers $650 for a police
escort. Less than a month later, the Krewe of Bacchus rolled down St.
Charles Avenue, drawing hundreds of thousands of people - and paid only
$1,000 for a permit and nothing for police.
But when Jackson's group, the VIP Ladies Social Aid and Pleasure
Club, marched through Central City joined by nearly 500 people along the
route three weeks after Mardi Gras, their bill from the city for their
police escort was $3,225.
The parade fees are too damn high. That is they are high for the less white, less privileged, locally focused organizations. Let's see what business leader Clark Brennan thinks about this.
Clark Brennan, captain of the Krewe of Bacchus, said his and other
Carnival organizations have gifted police with gear to help during Mardi
Gras, and that the parades help attract millions of dollars in tourism
revenue for the city during Carnival season. That economic impact, he
said, justifies the low fees for even the largest super-krewes.
"That's why the laws are the way they are, because Mardi Gras as a
whole is bringing millions to billions of dollars to the city of New
Orleans. So, just like when the Super Bowl comes to New Orleans, there's
tax incentives. So yes, the city says, 'We'll give you free police,'"
Brennan said.
"The thing I go back on is, what is Mardi Gras doing for the entire
city of New Orleans compared to Joe Blow's social aid and pleasure club
just talking about their neighborhood? I don't know the economic engine,
and I don't think there is one."
Boy howdy do we love to celebrate our city's "diversity" and the immeasurable contributions of its "culture bearers" when we're selling the scene to visitors. But when we're actually distributing the benefits of our heavily commodified folkways, the cultural economy exhibits a peculiar sort of hierarchy.
Throughout the process, details about various contractors involved
— or believed to be involved — in the removal process have been spread
on social media, sometimes including home addresses and other personal
information. That has caused problems getting the equipment and
contractors needed for the job, Landrieu said.
“There’s 100 cranes
in the city right now. Did you know we’re having a hard time getting a
crane right now? Do you know why?” Landrieu asked. “Because people have
been calling these folks saying, ‘If you do that, we won’t give you any
more business.’ "
The first designated contractor on the job quit
early on after receiving death threats. The owner’s Lamborghini later
was torched in his company’s parking lot.
We're all still mourning that Lambroghini, of course. (Some of us were never convinced that incident actually had anything to do with the monuments but we'll leave that be for now.) But are the 100 Cranes really being stayed by the threat of a sustained pro-Confederate boycott? Mitch can't say this explicitly but there's probably a lot more pro-Confederate sentiment out in the business community than anyone wants to admit. Because he often counts a lot of these people among his own donors and allies, it's no wonder this has been so exasperating for him.
To be fair, we're all pretty tired of it by this point and it's time for this process to come to a close. Everything the mayor said to WWLTV about it in this story is correct.
The public voiced their opinion through the commissions that voted on this, through the city council which had two hearings on this as I believe. The matter's been vetted through both state courts and federal courts. So this is about as constitutional a process as you can get.
Mitch went on to remind us that, "the Civil War is over," although with the exception of maybe President Trump, most of us probably had a firm grip on that already. The more pertinent point, though, is that the monuments dispute is over. We won. There's nothing left to do but Take 'em Down. Another way to say that is it's now all over but the shouting, of which there is plenty.
The city of New Orleans
surrendered early during the actual Civil War, after the Confederates
left it poorly defended. This time, though, reinforcements from far
afield have arrived to hoist the battle flag.
“I will chain myself to that son of a bitch before I let them tear it
down,” Wilford Seymour said Thursday, waving a hand toward a statue of
General PGT Beauregard mounted in a bronze saddle. “By God I will ride
that horse myself.”
Seymour had driven overnight from Arkansas, as soon as he got word
that the city of New Orleans was pulling down some of its Confederate
monuments.
The visitors are, for the most part, burn outs and drifters give or take a few Lost Cause LARPers with extra vacation time. They're here to spend a week or so sleeping under the stars with Davis and Beauregard, wave a few flags at Jazzfesters, maybe grill some hot dogs. They aren't much to look at. And word on the social media has it they aren't the most pleasant customers. But once the carnie circuit heats up again back in Dirt Heap, ArklahoTex or wherever, they'll hop the next boxcar out of town and we can get on with this business. In the meantime it's probably a good idea just to ignore them.
The "monument defenders" who have been camped out at the Jefferson Davis
statue on Canal Street in Mid-City were met by dozens of
counterprotesters late Monday night, who staged a theatrical arrival, Les Miserables-style, on the back of a truck waving RESIST flags. On the side of the truck was a sign reading "FUCK OFF NAZI SCUM."
The counterprotesters arrived with grilling equipment and a music
system, ready to throw an impromptu barbecue and karaoke dance party on
Jefferson Davis Parkway, but were deterred by about 30 New Orleans
Police Department officers who put the kibosh on the barbecue. As the
monument defenders gaped, the counterprotesters managed to perform one
song, "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails ("Head like a hole/Black as
your soul/I'd rather die/Than give you control") before the spectacle
turned tense, with open-carry monument defenders facing off against the
counterprotesters, who shouted their local bona fides as they climbed
the Jefferson Davis statue.
I'm not exactly a get-these-hippies-off-my-lawn type. In fact I'm generally a proponent of chaotic disruption in political dialogue. Even the most incoherent demonstration can be useful at times. In this case, though, it's difficult to understand what purpose is being served. Other than spectacle, that is. Hippies vs Hobos on Monday Night Monumentball. Of course we went to check that out. There's a bar right there on the corner.
The crowd was estimated at about 200. If I had to guess, I'd say it broke down to about 10 to 15 Confederate squatters vs maybe 50 to 70 antifa protesters. The rest were either reporters or just gawkers like us standing around drinking beer. What we saw there was everything Gambit describes above followed by a series of scrimmages where the opponents shoved their way across one another's lines in attempts to steal flags from the other side. At the conclusion of each play, the captured prizes were then set on fire.
This went on for a few hours until one too many bottles tossed prompted NOPD to put an end to things. The police put everyone into timeout on the other side of the street while they encircled the monument with barricades. For a while we thought they might be preparing the space for an actual demolition crew but that never materialized.
After that, it just got kind of boring. Some of us had another drink or two. But when the police captain on hand "swore to God" to reporters that nothing else interesting was going to happen, we took them at their word and went home to bed.
That's all well and good for entertainment. But it's still not serving any purpose besides reminding us it's well past time for this to end. The semi-homeless carnies camping out under the statues aren't delaying their removal. As we saw Monday night, police can easily shoo them away at any time. The antifa protesters aren't doing anything to expedite the process. From the looks of things, they mostly just enjoy kicking hobos. It's a strange way to behave, though, when your side has already won. As Mitch explained, a deliberate democratic and legal process has run its course and been decided in our favor. The moment doesn't call for further upheaval. It should be a time for celebration.
In fact, as we pointed out the other day, it's actually the mayor who has been behaving as though the anti-monument side lacks legitimacy. The secretive late night roll out of the long delayed demolition of the Liberty Monument sent the wrong message. Further delay now only serves to embolden the Lost Causers. I would say something like, "If you want to protest something, protest that," but the Take Em Down people have actually been already doing this. A rally in Jackson Square back in September was intended to jar the process out of a perceived inertia. There is another event planned at Lee Circle this coming Sunday aimed toward a similar purpose. Organizers are billing it as the Toppling Party the city has refused to grant us.
While white supremacists gather from many states around confederate monuments in OUR CITY,
the mayor nor council has still not publicly called for its own
ceremony to honor the historic occasion of 4 monuments to slavery coming
down. Even the conservative governor of S.C. had a public ceremony to
remove the confederate flag. Cowering in darkness offers no safety or
protection, it is shameful and being questioned by world wide media.
What does this say to Black youth? What does this teach white youth?
All
eyes are on New Orleans. It is fitting that during Jazz Fest Week the
people have our voices heard. Not just on the monuments, but for racial
equality and economic justice for those who built New Orleans, whose
heritage is leveraged for profit and who are being displaced.
In
the name of the good people of New Orleans, in honor of our civil rights
veterans who fought for decades for their removal, in appreciation of
the Black community, elders and youth Take Em Down NOLA is issuing this
call for everyone to come out!
The mayor would do well for himself to come out and give this event some support. Somebody in Mitch's circle got some 2020 Presidential buzz about him planted in the New York Times this week. Some have suggested, it's been a goal of his all along to co-opt the Take Em Down movement's accomplishments to further embellish his own national profile. I think there's some truth to that but his conspicuously silent allies in the business community have made that awkward for him. The Greater New Orleans Foundation's new building is right there on Lee Circle, by the way. If any of the business leaders are in the office on Sunday, maybe that would be a good time for some of them to finally weigh in. What a relief that might be for everyone.
To fund TOPS and other priorities, it would carve out $235 million from the Louisiana Department of Health budget, and legislators added extra restrictions on what the department can cut. Cuts to the state's public-private safety net hospital contracts would have to be distributed equally, for example.
Most of the money in the state Health Department comes with a corresponding federal match, so LDH Secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee said the real impact to the agency's budget would be closer to $750 million.
Are they that stupid? Not really. More likely, House Republicans know this isn't their problem. "Our budget fixed TOPS. And hey we never told the Governor to cut health care by almost 3 times the amount we took out. No idea how that happened."
This isn't a responsible state budget. It's a political sabotage act.
Louisiana expects to receive $1.6 billion from the federal government to help homeowners recover from the March and August floods of 2016. The Appropriations Committee voted to divert $190 million of this to a flood prevention project.
That could cause problems for the entire recovery package. It would require Louisiana to resubmit its flood recovery plan to the federal government, which might not approve it.
"What's taking the Governor so long to get us our recovery money from the Fed's? We can't abide this kind of incompetence."
What an interesting story angle. Usually we're told that clusters of people who don't actually live here are more important than we are. Wonder what changed.
The Justice Department has decided not to bring charges against the
officers involved in the death of Alton Sterling, whose videotaped
shooting by police in Baton Rouge last summer prompted unrest across the
city, and is planning to reveal in the next 24 hours that it has closed
the probe, according to four people familiar with the matter.
As
of Tuesday afternoon, the Sterling family had yet to be informed by the
Justice Department of the decision, and it is unclear how and when the
department will announce its findings.
“We have not heard nor
received an update and are unaware of any charges that may or may not be
filed,“ said Ryan Julison, a spokesman for the Sterling family’s
attorneys. “We have not received word, nor has the family been given any
notice of upcoming updates regarding this case.”
Once upon a time, striking workers fought through a bloody police riot and were subjected to an unjust show trial so you can have an 8 hour work day. This means that now you have more time to devote to that Uber side hustle in order to make your rent. So, yay for that. Celebrate loyally.
Edwards has been vocal in where he thinks the breakdown is happening when trying to address the state's chronic budget issues: House Republican leaders, particularly Barras, House Appropriations Chairman Cameron Henry and House GOP Caucus Chairman Lance Harris.
But Cross said that message might not be very effective in a state that tends to vote overwhelmingly for Republicans.
"I don't think that's a narrative that at the end of the day is going to re-elect him, and I don't think that's a narrative that is going to address Louisiana's budget problems," Cross said. "Regardless of where truth may lay in there."
Cross said consistently pointing to the House Republicans can come across as "defeatist."
"It's fine if you've got voting majorities or if you have an electorate that looks like it could kick all the Republicans out of office in the next election," he said. "There's no indication that's likely to happen."
Maybe this doesn't sound fair. But the Republicans were always going to be the "No" caucus throughout this administration. That is their policy strategy and their political strategy. They have little interest in seeing the budget stabilized and zero interest in helping the governor succeed. Everybody knows this. It's John Bel's job to beat them or at least corner them into delivering something besides one disaster after another. Voters are going to hold him accountable "regardless of where the truth may lay" about who acted in good faith. Standing around being sad about that isn't going to get him re-elected.
Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, the reigning Stupidest Corrupt Person In Louisiana, is in trouble again. This time there's no Iraqi Oil Minister, no eBay scheme, nothing about monuments. Swamp Molly isn't even mentioned. No, this is actually the worst news for Billy in that it's one big petty graft dump.
The FBI, which investigated Nungesser during his first term as parish
president, has shown new interest in a series of contracts and public
works projects carried out during his tenure, according to two sources
familiar with the matter.
Separately, the cash-strapped parish
government has filed a flurry of lawsuits seeking to recoup hundreds of
thousands of dollars it says were lost to a "pattern of fraud" and
Nungesser's "thirst for absolute power" during his eight years in
office, which ended in 2014.
There's Parish resources directed into building a marina he owns. There's little favors done for friends and family. It's usually the little stupid stuff like this that they actually get you on. Ray Nagin is in jail for granite countertops, basically.
Of all the things that one could say about Orleans and Jefferson Parish District Attorneys and their fake subpoena tactics this week, City Councilwoman Susan Guidry got to the point most directly.
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office acknowledged Thursday
that it, too, has sent fake subpoenas to reluctant witnesses to get
them to talk to prosecutors. The practice will stop immediately, the
office said in a written statement.
Criticism of the practice in New Orleans mounted Thursday. Two City
Council members said the fake subpoenas, as well as other aggressive
tactics by the DA’s office, probably have eroded the public’s faith in
the criminal justice system.
“No wonder people in our community don’t trust our criminal justice system,” Councilwoman Susan Guidry said at a meeting.
And earlier this month, the watchdog group Court Watch NOLA found several cases in which the DA’s office obtained arrest warrants for victims of crimes because they did not cooperate with prosecutors.
New Orleans City Councilman and defense attorney Jason Williams said
the use of fake witness subpoenas fits into a pattern of overzealous
prosecution.
“I can only imagine how dangerous this could potentially be,” he said. “If older assistant district attorneys are encouraging younger, less experienced [assistant district attorneys] to do this, it creates a culture.”
That "culture" of prosecutorial licentiousness runs deep in Louisiana. And it is enabled by a political culture too often content to look the other way. The DAs and Sheriffs are powerful people. They're currently in Baton Rouge lobbying against a set of modest, humane, and broadly supported sentencing and parole reforms meant to reduce the state's obscenely bloated prison population. They haven't succeeded quite yet but give it time. DAs and Sheriffs are dangerous people.
Popular support for the lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach to
sentencing has begun to lose ground nationally among both conservatives
and liberals. Even Louisiana, appalled by both the inequity (close to
80 percent of the people we incarcerate are African American) and
ineffectiveness of mass incarceration — not to mention spiraling costs —
has begun to inch toward reform. But the problem is compounded by hardened district attorneys who
seek maximum punishments and by parish sheriffs who lobby to keep their
jails full because their budgets depend on the income from the state
for each jailed person.
"It's no wonder people in our community don't trust our criminal justice system." The power to protect and serve the public is habitually abused to terrorize the defenseless while the power to prosecute or just as importantly not to prosecute is abused in ways that protect the establishment. Next week sometime we're expecting an announcement that there will be no civil rights prosecutions in the murder of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police. But officials are being extra careful about how and when they make that announcement because they are worried about the tension that arises in a community when nobody trusts the criminal justice system.
The proposed reforms in the legislature are a nice start should they pass. And, despite its problems and imperfections, the NOPD consent decree has probably been of at least some help. But if we're serious about addressing this head on, we should recognize that the abuses which lead to a lack of trust in the criminal justice system are bound to repeat as long as the classes who benefit from it maintain political power. Which means, once again, in order to fix the policies, we have to first go out and do the politics.
Today there is an election for Civil District Court. That may seem disconnected from the criminal justice stuff above but it really isn't. Politics is always about more than just the one office at stake in any election. Instead it is about building and testing the strength of coalitions. Every election is an opportunity to see which side can maintain power and influence. This race in particular is a fairly strong litmus test in that regard. It's a citywide race coming just a few months ahead of a major municipal election. And it could provide an early read on some of the dynamics that will be in play then.
Saturday's runoff for a seat on the Orleans Parish Civil District
Court bench will be decided along racial lines, if last month's primary
results offer a clue.
The battle is sketched in black and white as
attorneys Rachael Johnson, 40, and Suzanne "Suzy" Montero, 53, make
their final push for votes, with a slender turnout expected for the only
contest on the Orleans Parish ballot.
Montero, who is white, won
nearly 88 percent of the white vote and just 2 percent of the black vote
on her way to claiming a spot in the runoff, according to an analysis
by University of New Orleans political science professor Ed Chervenak.
Johnson,
who is black, came in 600 votes behind Montero while taking 80 percent
of the black vote and 7 percent of the white vote.
Montero won 45
percent of the overall vote, to 43 percent for Johnson. Attorney Marie
Williams, who is black, trailed with 11 percent, mostly from heavily
black precincts.
"When you have a biracial election, a very
low-stimulus election where we don't have a lot of information about the
candidates and their qualifications, people tend to fall back on
shortcuts like race," Chervenak said.
Now, Chervenak is not being entirely honest here. He might mean to say the average voter may not have followed the news very closely. But anyone who has will have all of the information we (his word) have about the candidates, which is plenty. Here is a the usually excellent Antigravity election guide to this race. There's a few more points one could add. And I'm disappointed that they end on a no recommendation. But besides that it's a quite good sampling of the information we all have. But let's take at face value that we do have a low profile but citywide election between a "Who is White" and a "Who is Black." That should tell aspiring mayoral candidates a little bit about the relative strengths of each block.
That isn't all we'll be watching, of course. Beyond just race, we're looking at how the influence of specific interests and individuals can be brought to bear in 2017. For example the Johnson campaign is being handled by powerhouse politico Karen Carvin while Montero's is supported by PR work from Cheron Brylski. Both of those names will be all over the fall elections. Montero seems to have had a bit more money to play with. She's certainly had more ads flying around TV and social media sites. But where this really gets interesting is where the endorsements start to line up. Here is a quick list of people whose names have appeared on Montero's fliers and ads over the past few weeks.
Charles Foti
Jackie Clarkson
Peggy Wilson
Harry Connick Sr.
Suzanne Haik-Terrell
And, of course, these two beloved friends of the people.
What we have here is a fine sampling of the small section of our community who actually likes the criminal justice system just fine the way it is. Before you go vote today you may wish to think about whether you care
to see such people emboldened by the results of a citywide contest. Today's election doesn't directly have a lot to do with that issue. In a vacuum it's about which one of these equally qualified individuals could be a Civil Court judge. They both could. That's why Antigravity doesn't endorse either. But politics doesn't happen in a vacuum and a single office alone isn't really the point. It never is.
As George W. Bush once famously complained during a debate, being President is actually hard work. Trump thought it would be easier.
He misses driving, feels as if he is in a cocoon, and is surprised how hard his new job is.
President
Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with
a wistful look at his life before the White House.
"I
loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump told Reuters
in an interview. "This is more work than in my previous life. I thought
it would be easier."
He's also right, of course. This is a terrible job that only a complete narcissistic psychopath could even want. So he's mostly qualified. But the best fit is usually with the Type A overachieving nerd kind of narcissistic psychopath. Trump is more the entitled lazy douchebag kind.
We are begrudgingly grateful to Mitch Landrieu for not getting in the way of a decades long people's campaign to take down the city's Jim Crow era Confederate monuments. It's good that it's finally happening. What we would very much appreciate now, though, would be for him to shut up and stop making it all about him.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu mounted a passionate defense of his approach to
removing the city’s monument to the Battle of Liberty Place during an
interview Thursday, insisting that credible threats of violence ruled
out holding any kind of ceremony or doing it in the daytime.
The problem, and this is the problem with all political big wigs, is Mitch is starting to act as though he has ownership over the issue just because he happened to be the mayor when it came to a head. I hope he doesn't go too far with that, though because his idea for what to do with Le Circle in the future is terrible.
He also offered an idea of his own vision for the sites.
He
said the circle around the Lee column could be turned into a fountain
with statues representing various aspects of New Orleans’ people and
culture and renamed Tricentennial Circle in honor of the city’s 300th
birthday next year.
For the record, I called that two years ago. The dude is pretty predictable.
If we are going to do this, though, it's important that we, unlike the
Saints fans in the picture above, take it seriously. Mitch already
makes me nervous when he throws his Tricentennial fetish in there. If we
take Lee down and replace him with some sort of generic piece of modern
art and christen some boring "Tricentennial Circle" that will almost
make the thing not worth doing.
It's not enough to just take down the Confederate monument and sanitize the space with post-modern nonsense. We need to imbue it with an appropriate positive historical and cultural significance in equal measure to the negative image we are supplanting. My first thought is to name it for Homer Plessy, though maybe you guys can come up with someone as deserving.
Just don't leave it up to Mitch Landrieu and his band of bland "New New Orleanians." They'll either do something inappropriately benign or name it for some pastor they're all indebted to politically.
We have to come up with something better than this. Otherwise, Mitch is going to ruin the whole exercise.
For 30 years, Louisiana had enough money in its various accounts to
shift around dollars temporarily and cover the bills without resorting
to a short-term loan. But the money available to do that was spent when
Gov. Bobby Jindal was in office, as he and lawmakers tried to avoid new
taxes and spending cuts.
Doesn't look like anyone has a plan to find any more money any time soon. Certainly the Republicans in the House are happy to sit back and force the Governor to keep cutting stuff every year until that inevitably causes him to lose the next election.
New Orleans Police, firefighters and EMS paramedics are trying to rescue a naked man who climbed 140 feet up an Entergy pole in New Orleans East.
A little after 9:30 a.m., 911 dispatchers received a call reporting that a man had climbed the tower, which is near the 4500 block of Jourdan road, near Downman road.
That might be a little far out from one of our "iconic" neighborhoods where you are probably renting a formerly affordable appartment. But maybe you can convince an Uber driver to take you there. You did want to see how the locals live, after all.
How much would you pay to know your overrated pasta is safe?
It's super fun to troll our favorite over-priced magnet for the pretentious "authenticity tourists" currently pouring into the Airbnbs near you. But I gotta say, this time we're not going about it in the best way.
Even for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Louisiana food service inspections come cheap.
The state Health Department charges $25 -- in total -- to inspect the
dozens of food and drink vendors during the seven-day event. To put
that in perspective, there was enough food and drink prepared at the
2016 Jazz Fest to serve the 425,000 people who attended it -- even with major acts on one Saturday afternoon canceling their performances.
State law sets the $25 maximum. But now Secretary Rebekah Gee wants to raise it.
Rep. Jimmy Harris, D-New Orleans, has filed a bill to let the Health
Department charge $37.50 -- per vendor -- at Jazz Fest and other events.
Jazz Fest has about 80 food booths, so the agency's compensation could
rise to about $3,000, under Harris' House Bill 520.
Like I said, I'm no fan of doing special favors for Jazzfest. But this is bad. Safety inspections are a service provided by the Health Department which is a public agency operating for the public benefit. It's fine to charge a fee in order to cover some of the costs of providing this service. Such fees should be minimal, though. And we shouldn't expect them to cover all of the cost. Usage fees like this run contrary to the notion that public agencies should operate for a collective purpose rather than on a pay-to-play basis.
Here is where you really get a sense things are going the wrong direction.
Gee, who works for Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, said bumping up the price of health inspections would help her $12 billion agency operate more like a business -- as Republican legislators have repeatedly suggested.
Um, no. That's not cool at all. Government agencies, particularly those government agencies charged with vital functions such as ensuring public health and food safety.. should not seek to "operate more like a business." One gets the impression that Gee is just throwing lawmakers' own rhetoric back in their faces with this. But, then, that's how bad policy becomes standard.
They've always had all the time in the world to keep trying. And they do have to keep trying. Sooner or later they're going to pass it even if they do that on accident. They're getting closer.
Two deep-pocketed
conservative groups announced their support Wednesday for an amendment
to the American Health Care Act, signaling a change that could sway
conservative congressional votes.
Freedom Works and Club for Growth, who bothopposed
Republicans’ first effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, announced
Wednesday that they would support the bill if it included an amendment
penned by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) of the conservative Freedom Caucus
and Rep. Tom MacArthur of the more moderate Tuesday Group.
As of late Tuesday, the plan did not include Mr. Trump’s promised $1 trillion infrastructure program, two of the people said, and it jettisoned a House Republican proposal to impose a substantial tax on imports, known as a border adjustment tax, which would have raised billions of dollars to help offset the cost of the cuts.
I often wonder if our friends in the performative liberal #Resistance would be better served to emphasize the ways in which the Trump Presidency is actually pretty normal. Which is to say it's everything you would expect from a normal Republican administration. Which, again, is to say it's a horror show.
In fact the pretense that it isn't a normal horror show actually normalizes the horror that much more. When Democrats pretend that supply side "voodoo economics" hasn't been alive and well throughout their own reign of business tax credits, welfare-to-work incentives and "public-private partnerships" they only obscure the nature of the abuses they've enabled. When they rally to the defense of still more Wall Street cronyism they cause one to wonder just what it is they're even fighting Trump for in the first place. You even hear more than a few pining for the good ol' Bush years these days.
But there's very little the current Republican administration is actually delivering that distinguishes it at all from the previous one. Trump's travel ban has been struck down repeatedly by the courts. His border wall isn't going to be funded by Congress. The only thing he's really come through on as far as his right wing base is concerned is the Gorsuch appointment. (And even that is as much Mitch McConnell's win as it is Trump's.)
Where the rubber meets the road, though, this is really just Bush all over again. There is an aggressive, reckless foreign policy. There are federal regulatory agencies captured by Big Oil and international finance. And, of course, there are big tax breaks for rich people.
Republicans are likely to embrace the plan’s centerpiece, substantial
tax reductions for businesses large and small, even as they push back
against the jettisoning of their border adjustment tax. The 15 percent
rate would apply both to corporations, which now pay 35 percent, and to a
broad range of firms known as pass-through entities — including hedge
funds, real estate concerns like Mr. Trump’s and large partnerships —
that currently pay taxes at individual rates, which top off at 39.6
percent. That hews closely to the proposal Mr. Trump championed during
his campaign.
And, yeah, that's pretty darn infuriating. You can tell because it's helping the DNC sell #ResistTM T-Shirts and stickers by the truckload. But if they were actually interested in maybe making it stop, they might try being more honest about how deeply ingrained and insidious the regime really is and has been.
Whether releasing wax moths on the world’s surplus plastic really is a
sensible approach to the problem is not yet clear. For one thing, it has
yet to be established whether the caterpillars gain nutritional value
from the plastics they eat, as well as being able to digest them. If
they do not, their lives as garbage-disposal operatives are likely to be
short—and, even if they do, they will undoubtedly need other nutrients
to thrive and grow. Another question is the composition of their faeces.
If the droppings produced by eating plastic turn out to be toxic, then
there will be little point in pursuing the matter.
Either they're making the problem worse that way or the plastic eating moths will get out of control and become the formosan termites that destroy modern civilization. Obviously we should hope for the latter scenario.
For his part, Gov. John Bel Edwards, who is championing a slate of
criminal justice reform bills this session, said he has is not wading
into the death penalty debate.
Last week, in an interview with reporters, he said he would watch the debate unfold but was not going to take a position.
Nobody gets any cred for just voting No as a reflex. They might actually have to think about it. Which, you know, on the other hand, maybe that's not such a great idea.
The committee voted after people representing large oil companies, large chemical companies, a local pizza chain, Rouses Supermarket and pulp and paper manufacturers testified against House Bill 628. Two dozen others indicated their opposition without testifying.
Oh well. On to the next comic failure. Or over the edge, which is always a possibilty.
The committee’s vote will force Edwards and legislators to find another way to raise enough revenue – and propose enough cuts in government spending – to head off the looming fiscal cliff when $1.3 billion in temporary taxes will fall off next year.
Regarding the Pontalba apartments, I, like my recent predecessors,
have used the apartment for public uses associated with the mission of
the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism. This includes
hosting legislators, visiting guests of the state, other state
officials, and any museum-related purpose requested by the state museum
board. Chester stayed rent free for several weeks while looking for a
permanent residence. On my watch, I have ensured that the residential
and commercial spaces were leased in accordance with state law. As an
elected official, I am ultimately responsible to the public, and to
ensure the apartment was being used for appropriate purposes, made some
internal management changes regarding the apartment.
The most
often cited and inaccurate accusation is that I was going to sell museum
art and artifacts on eBay. Legally, I can’t and I wouldn’t. Any sale,
transfer, or deaccession of art or artifacts in the museum collection
must be approved by the board per its bylaws and in state law.
Okay but that is NOT what he told us last week when we called him. (about 10 or 15 minutes into the first segment)
Also Billy doesn't have anything to say in his column about the monuments solution we offered him. He sounded pretty enthusiastic on the phone.
A state representative is proposing to redirect about $16 million a
year in taxes from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to an
independent board that would spend the money on fixing streets in New
Orleans.
The proposal, by state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, would
take the revenue from two existing taxes away from the center. The
taxes, a 1 percent tax on hotel rooms and a quarter-cent sales tax on
food and drinks sold citywide, were put in place by the Legislature in
2002 to fund an expansion of the Convention Center that has not taken
place.
“I understand that tourism is one of the backbones of our
economy, but our city can’t crumble around our tourism district,” said
Hilferty, a Republican whose district includes Lakeview and parts of
Metairie.
Yeah get 'em! We've been clamoring about this for years. This is revenue raised off the backs of restaurant, hotel, and casino workers, musicians, cab divers, everyone who makes the "tourism economy" go. That includes pretty much all of us who make this place our home. Even if you aren't a celebrity chef or a busker with heart of gold or whatever, you probably take in your share of parades or Saints games or you know that one way to cook that one thing your grandma made. It takes a whole city to "bear a culture." We're all New Orleans. Some people are in the business of selling a version of our life to tourists. We deserve to share in the benefits of that. Some stupid board of political insiders shouldn't get to decide.... oh wait a minute...
The money would be overseen by a nine-member board including
representatives from each City Council district, to be be appointed by
the state lawmakers from those districts, plus representatives of the
city’s Department of Public Works, the Sewerage & Water Board, the
Regional Planning Commission and Louisiana Associated General
Contractors.
Oh dear... always a catch. Have to say, though, if we're choosing between rackets, this might be the slightly better one.
