Public space, private space

Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner had a novel solution last week for constituents upset over his vote to allow Internet Service Providers to scan, record, and sell information about all of their online activities.

In the video, first made public by the liberal super PAC American Bridge, Sensenbrenner responds to a woman asking about Congress’s decision to roll back Obama-era internet privacy laws.

“Well, you know, nobody has got to use the internet,” Sensenbrenner told the woman.

It's hard to imagine anyone would find this credible in 2017.  Of course people have got to use the internet. At least anyone who wants to live anything resembling what we would consider a normal modern life has to use it. We use the internet to do our work. We use it to apply for work. Even the most menial jobs hire via online application. We use it to apply for loans. We use it to apply for benefits. We use it to apply to school. We use it to do our taxes. We use it to talk to our friends, family, and neighbors. We use it to read the news.  We use it to watch TV. The internet is in our TVs It's in our phones. It's in our cars, our speakers, our air conditioners and microwaves (sort of, maybe).

Look, this is stupid. It's a self-evident fact that the internet is a necessity, not a luxury for anyone expecting to engage in even the most modest of lifestyles. Unless you are a retired Jedi living off the grid in a cave, you're gonna have to use it for stuff.

The implication thrown around by people like Sensenbrenner or by Jason Chaffetz who wants you to choose between your iPhone and health insurance, is that not everyone deserves even the most modest of modern lifestyles and that it's fine if our public policy actively excludes people from that.
Sensenbrenner's iteration is a direct denial of the notion that the internet should be regulated as a public utility. Republicans especially, are heavy into denying that even public utilities should be regulated as public utilities these day. The disastrous results there should be a clear enough warning against further privatizing the public commons on the internet.

Under the regulatory regime signed into law this month, ISPs, the police, advertisers, and anybody who can pay for it, get to know everything about what you do on the internet... which is to say, they can know pretty much everything you are up to ever. Even day to day activity as passive as reading and searching, is fodder for commercial exploitation or state inquiry. Meanwhile, it isn't quite the same the other way around.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The White House announced Friday that it would cut off public access to visitor logs revealing who is entering the White House complex and which officials they are meeting, breaking with the Obama administration’s practice and returning a cloak of secrecy over the basic day-to-day workings of the government.

So even as the private lives of individuals are exposed to a wider scope of surveillance and commercial exploitation, the public records of the public's business conducted in the public's spaces becomes even more opaque. This is what happens when we abandon the idea of public goods and services. Everything that can be appropriated by the rich and powerful will be.

I thought about all of this again when I saw this weekend that the AZ story about Tom Benson's theft of La Salle Street had been picked up by WWLTV. Remarkably, a security guard tried to run the TV station's photographers out of the space as they tried to shoot some footage there.

Meanwhile, public access to the street has been blocked at times, usually for private or special events run by the LSED’s property management contractor, SMG. That has added to confusion about whether the 1400 block of LaSalle remains a city street. When WWL-TV set up a camera this week on what used to be the LaSalle Street roadway, a security guard from the Zelia-owned Benson Tower office building told the photographer he couldn’t shoot video there.

“Actually, all this is private property. It’s not a street,” the guard said, his voice captured on video.

Even if any of the pretense were true, if the street was clearly Benson's private property, that's some high level arrogance. The open air environs of perhaps the city's most iconic building are gonna draw photographers. Here are runners lining up for Saturday's Crescent City Classic just aiming their little camera phones any old direction. Hopefully they didn't accidentally land on anything classified.




By the way, I finished in 48:31. That's my best time in over a decade. Maybe not entirely relevant information, but it was bound to come out sooner or later given the realities of today's internet. Race organizers fit each runner's number with an RFID tag and post the results on their website even thought Jim Sensenbrenner keeps telling them they don't have to.

Just give us our money

This month's Antigravity features a look at how little of the bounty produced by the city's "economic engine" actually gets allocated to benefit the city’s residents. As others have been pointing out for years, most of the tax revenue generated through the the hotel/motel tax only goes right back into tourism related infrastructure and marketing. And, of course,  the industry itself is more accurately described as an inequality where a small circle of politically powerful owners and speculators squeeze profits out of low wage, non union workers.

Oddly, the AG article skims these issues and focuses too much on lauding  the conservative "reform" non-profit Bureau of Governmental Research and its crusade against any and all dedicated tax allocations. BGR's proposal to just blow everything up and start all over is problematic from a policy standpoint It's a sloppy, almost Trump-like move to flip the table and declare a big do over. Also, from a political standpoint, many of these dedicated millages are the on the books through direct ballot referendum. To simply invalidate all of them at once would be as undemocratic as it is unwise.

There are better ways to identify and address specific ills in the tax structure.  In this case, our objective should be to pry our public money out of the hands of the oligarchs who run the tourism racket. Let's focus on that for now.

Getting close to the end of an era

Stuart Fisher is almost out of options.

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Thursday declined to take up a lawsuit against the city of New Orleans over the former World Trade Center building, a legal challenge that has held up redevelopment plans for more than a year.

A company called Two Canal Street Investors Inc., one of the losing bidders for the redevelopment project, argues that the city's process for selecting a contractor ran afoul of state law.

He's still got one more trick shot to try in bankruptcy court but...  well, it was a helluva run, wasn't it?

Leon's hard line

Leon Cannizzaro just wants to protect you from the "flock" of dangerous weed smokers. But unfortunately a "stupid" law won't let him do that.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro called a city ordinance that lowered penalties for pot possession “stupid” during a talk at a meeting of the Rotary Club of New Orleans on Wednesday.

Speaking in response to a Rotarian’s question, Cannizzaro suggested that both marijuana users and dealers will flock to the city in response to the ordinance, which made first-offense marijuana possession punishable by a $40 fine.

“Stupid legislation, that’s all I can say about that. If you wanted to change the law, go to Baton Rouge and make it uniform throughout the state of Louisiana. Don’t have a special provision which decriminalizes or lessens the penalty for marijuana, a crime, in the city of New Orleans,” Cannizzaro said.

He does know that some of our legislators have been trying to push statewide decriminalization for years now and making only headway, right?  He has to know that. He should know since the Louisiana District Attorneys Association played a role in undermining the last serious attempt in 2015.  The DAs are loathe to give up any coercive tool they can use to beat pleas and testimony out of people as Cannizzaro himself demonstrated just this week.

New Orleans victims advocates are against the use of material witness warrants to force victims of domestic abuse and sex crimes to testify in court.

However, Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro says in some rare cases, it's necessary to put a victim or witness in jail to get a dangerous criminal or sex offender off the streets.

"If I have to put a victim of a crime in jail, for eight days, in order to...keep the rapist off of the street, for a period of years and to prevent him from raping or harming someone else, I'm going to do that," Cannizzaro said.

Tuesday, the judicial watchdog group "Courtwatch NOLA" released a report, taking issue with the use of material witness warrants.

"What kind of picture this paints for folks coming victims that are scared and want to come forward, to call police and talk to law enforcement if they know they are going to be incarcerated," Courtwatch NOLA Executive Director Simone Levine said. "We think this is a real disincentive."

This year the DAs are standing in the way of more substantial criminal justice reform for similarly bullheaded reasons.

Louisiana sends more nonviolent people to prison, per-capita, than any of its neighbor states. And this difference is not driven by crime. Louisiana has a similar crime rate to South Carolina and Florida, for example, but sends nonviolent offenders to prison at twice the rate of South Carolina and three times the rate of Florida.

When they hear this fact, the district attorneys balk. They say that many of those people have pled down from violent charges; they say that others have committed additional crimes in the past and therefore should be considered dangerous. They make these excuses and claims without data in an attempt to distract from the task force's comprehensive and data-driven assessment of our state's criminal justice system.

Leon and pals want to be able to arrest you for holding weed, throw you in jail if you are afraid to testify, and  keep  you in jail for a long time for the crimes you might have committed other than those you have actually been convicted of.  All of this flies in the face of public sentiment, by the way, which appears to be lining up in favor of reform.

Large majorities favor three criminal justice reform proposals included in the 2017 Louisiana Survey: Shorter sentences for people convicted of non-violent crimes (75 percent); more alternatives to prison – such as drug treatment or rehabilitation programs – for people convicted of non-violent offenses (86 percent); and abandoning mandatory minimum sentences in favor of more flexibility for judges to determine sentences (72 percent).

Maybe the sentiment of the "large majorities" will prevail in the legislature despite the hard line taken by Cannizzaro and the DAs. But you never know with those guys. They are pretty famous for passing "stupid legislation" in their own right.

#MNOFA?

So Scurlock is gonna run one of those campaigns, I guess...

Scurlock could best be called “The Fun Man.” A 54 year-old Republican, Scurlock coined the phrase “Make America Fun Again,” and selected “Make New Orleans Fun Again” as his campaign theme. Scurlock currently earns a damn good living building floating water parks around the globe. Several weeks ago Spurlock completed a marathon 10-day, 10-city tour to meet with government officials interested in bringing his style of economic development to their regions. Scurlock boasts that he will open 40 water parks “somewhere in the world” during the next 60 days. He would also like to redevelop the Lincoln Beach site in eastern New Orleans.

The guy sure does have a lot of projects on his plate.  Also he apparently owns five cell phones for reasons of some sort. Apparently he has also already been running TV ads though I haven't spotted them yet. Also, much like the other potential novelty candidate Sidney Torres, Scurlock's political career has a brush-with-crime origin story. 

Scurlock says he was carjacked at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon in 2010. After sitting for two hours in the district station to give a statement, “I came to realize that it was worthless to make a police report,” said Scurlock. He plans to change political party affiliation in the near future.

That's funny. The old saw conservatives like to throw around used to say most Democrats are Republicans who haven't been mugged yet. But in heavily Democratic Orleans Parish, Scurlock is going the other direction with that.

Also of note in that Columbus column, Jason Williams confirms he is out of the mayor's race. No surprise there. A bit more of a surprise is that Desiree Charbonnet is leaning towards in. I don't know if we're allowed to have a Charbonnet and a Bagneris in the same race. Somebody should check the city charter. Also LaToysais being squeezed a bit... at least according to Columbus she is. 

Cantrell is passionate and a tireless worker. Not having run city-wide previously, Cantrell had to step out early to build name recognition. Rumors abound that Cantrell’s fundraising is moving slowly, and she is not expected to report more than $300,000 in the next filing, only a fraction of what is needed for a successful mayor’s race. Critics also say that Cantrell has on several occasions flip-flopped on issues and retreated from promises when pressure was applied, making it difficult for those affected to always rely on her. 

It's true that she does try to finesse a lot of things. One could call that "flip-flopping" although one could also observe that all politicians do it. 

If you can complain about the cameras but keep the money...

Troy Carter wants clearer signage and he wants it now. 

Taking aim at New Orleans' traffic cameras, a bill has been filed in the legislative session that would require "clearly visible" signs to be placed near speed cameras to alert drivers of their presence.

Filed by Sen. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, the bill calls for signs to be placed within 500 feet of any fixed or mobile speed camera. Anyone ticketed for speeding by a camera without a sign nearby would be off the hook, according to the bill.

For a state legislator who is entertaining the notion of running for mayor it's hard to know just how to handle the traffic camera problem.  On the one hand the cameras are very unpopular. Nobody likes getting a ticket from a robot. Since they first showed up on our streets, questions have been raised about their accuracy, their constitutionality, and even their efficacy in promoting public safety which is supposed to be, you know, the point of them in the first place. 

On the other hand, everybody knows their primary purpose is to generate revenue. The city is counting on collections near $24 million in its adopted 2017 budget. The fact that people know this only leads to more suspicion, though. It's especially grating to know that private contractors like Redflex and American Traffic Solutions are getting rich off of the scheme. Or that cities have been caught engaging in such trickery as shortening yellows in order to juice the rate of violations.

So you can see why Carter would want to make sure his constituents feel he's protecting them from unclear or misleading signs. If we're going to come after your money, the least we can do is not be quite so sneaky about it.  Of course, there is always the option of doing away with the cameras entirely. There is a bill in the legislature this session that could do exactly that, in fact. But, if you are Troy Carter, and you are thinking about maybe being mayor soon, are you probably aren't going to be keen on creating a $24 million hole in your own budget right now.  Better to focus on the signage thing first. At least that's the safe way to go about it.

The problem

The legislature is back in session. You may already be aware of this having felt the customary disturbance in the force. This is going to be a fun one. The governor is trying to raise the minimum wage, guarantee equal pay for women, reduce the prison population and reform our backwards and broken tax system. Meanwhile, the Republicans who run the House zoo are going to fling poo at him. We'll see how much of that sticks.

Much more on all of this later.. and probably on the fake radio show if we get one in this week. But for now I'd like to at least highlight this Louisiana Budget Project study of the overall effect of the governor's plan. The headline grabbing aspect, we suppose, is this since the Advocate leads with it.

A tax package proposed by Gov. John Bel Edwards would raise taxes on the wealthy while giving 95 percent of Louisiana families a tax cut, according to a study released Wednesday.

The largest effective tax cut under the governor’s plan would go to the middle 20 percent of taxpayers – households that earn between $36,000 and $56,000 per year – while only families earning at least $203,000 per year would pay more, according to the Louisiana Budget Project, a left-of-center, Baton Rouge-based nonprofit.

We're a long way from seeing any of this put into action, of course. Ways and Means only just started furrowing brows at things. God speed to them, though. As Tyler Bridges notes in his article, they do have quite a problem to deal with.

Louisiana’s tax system currently is regressive, meaning that the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthy, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based group that works with the Louisiana Budget Project. Families that earned $17,000 or less in 2015 paid 10 percent of their income, the group found, while families that earned at least $470,000 paid only 4.2 percent.

What the hotel/motel taxes pay for

It's neat how there's $65 million available to do "moving walkways" and "sleek overhangs" on a refurbished Convention Center Blvd Linear Park but nobody can figure out a way to keep RTA passengers waiting on the ferry from getting rained on.

RTA happens to be one of the few city agencies* that actually benefits from the hotel/motel tax, by the way.  It just happens that the Convention Center gets more.   In any case, both entities are heavily focused on serving the tourism industry even though saying so will make Nadine Ramsey mad at you.


*RTA is sort of a city agency, anyway. It's management is contracted out to global monster Transdev in one of our city's more notorious public-private ventures.

Witness intimidation

Look, just hope nothing  bad ever happens to you in this city. Even the DA isn't really on your side if it does.

In one 2016 case, a female rape victim was jailed for more than a week after the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office issued a material witness warrant for her arrest. She was incarcerated at the same facility -- the Orleans Justice Center -- where her accused rapist was also being held, said Simone Levine, the executive director Court Watch NOLA.

In another case, an attorney for an attempted murder victim told a watchdog group his client was too scared to speak with the watchdog group or media about being jailed for refusing to testify or failing to show up in court.

The two cases mentioned above were among at least six in 2016 in which victims of crimes were incarcerated on material witness warrants for refusing to testify against an offender or failing to appear in court, Court Watch NOLA reported in an annual report issued Tuesday (April 11).

 

Nungesser's gut

Is this literally a thing he said or is Grace paraprhasing? Either way, bravo.

This is a guy who boasted during his first, failed run for the job that he'd think outside the box and follow his gut. I'm not sure his gut's doing him much good these days.

The nothing matters administration

When everybody is finished with the United Airlines outrage, we're about to be on to a cycle of reaction to this nugget from Sean Spicer.

(CNN)White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in an effort to shame Russia's alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his use of chemical weapons, said Tuesday Adolf Hitler "didn't even sink to using chemical weapons" during World War II.

While Hitler did not use chemical weapons on the battlefield, Hitler and the Nazis used gas chambers to exterminate Jews, disabled people and others.

 

Spicer, asked for a clarification by a reporter about the comments that Hitler did not use chemical weapons, said: "I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing."

Expect many words to be written and hours of cable news talk to be filled. But all that's happening here is the Trump Administration, like every administration before it is invoking the permanent US foreign policy doctrine of whoever we are trying to bomb or invade this week is, by definition, "worse than Hitler." They're just phrasing it in a stupid and unsophisticated way.. which is how they do everything they do. The fact that they put so little thought into stuff like this is precisely what their supporters like about them. But, essentially, it's just a continuance of longstanding policy. 

Lucky number 11

Larry Holder looks at what the Saints draft position might portend.  It doesn't look good.

Your days leading up to the draft may be ruined when I reveal the Saints' history of selecting a player at No. 11. Think about chugging a gallon of milk that's baked in the sun for about a month.

That might help your gag reflex when I serve you this dish.

The Saints have made a draft selection with the No. 11 overall pick three times in franchise history. Wait, are you queasy? Oh, no! You see what's about to hit you.

With the 11^th pick in the 1996 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints select Alex Molden, cornerback, Oregon.

With the 11^th pick in the 1987 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints select Shawn Knight, defensive end, BYU.

With the 11^th pick in the 1979 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints select Russell Erxleben, punter/kicker, Texas.

Those guys aren't just busts who faded out of the league, they are spectacular flame-out busts who helped define the worst of what an NFL bust can be. All at number 11.  Maybe the Saints really should trade it away to New England. 

Direct action Billy

So the city is having trouble finding a contractor. And there are a couple of (very long shot) bills in the legislature aimed at stopping their removal. But even with all that the time may come very soon   for Billy Nungesser to throw his (not unsubstantial) body in the path of the machine.  

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser is worried that three bills aimed at keeping New Orleans' Confederate monuments in place could die a quick death once the Louisiana Legislature opens on Monday (April 10), he told WVUE Fox 8. So Nungesser says he's asking President Donald Trump for some help outside the Capitol, and is also consulting with lawyers from the Louisiana Attorney General's office, the TV station reported.

"Some of the lawyers for the state are looking at it to see if the lieutenant governor's office has any grounds. I know a lot of people are hanging their hat on the legislation in Baton Rouge," Nungesser told Fox 8. "My concerns are the committees that those bills are being put in are not favorable committees for those bills to get out of committee and we need to be honest about that."

Well, okay, but while the "lawyers are looking at it," somebody is gonna have to stall for time. Expect Billy at Lee Circle any minute to climb up and chain himself to the monument just like one of those #WildIsFree protesters.  Or maybe Billy can't quite manage that. In which case we have a showdown to look forward to.

The bulldozers and cranes have arrived. Lt. Gov Billy Nungesser stands between them and the monuments. The moment is tense, almost exactly like Tank Man at Tienanmen Square. Billy nervously wipes the sweat from his brow.. and the rest of his face from which he is basically always sweating... and produces a single can of Pepsi. The contractors turn and go home. The Confederacy is saved.

Probably next month sometime. Watch for that.

Update: Whoa! Hey! Now I think we know why Billy is hiding behind the ol Generals. 

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been using a Lower Pontalba Building apartment and space in other state museum buildings in the French Quarter for his personal benefit and has engaged in a pattern of political interference with the agency's operations, the Louisiana State Museum's interim director said Monday while resigning in protest.

Nungesser’s interference includes attempting to override museum officials and board members who objected to plans to loan U.S. Sen. John Kennedy artworks for his office in Washington, D.C., and threatening to sell museum works of art on eBay to raise funds, said Tim Chester, a museum consultant who took the interim position in October.

“I have never encountered anything like this in the 40 years I’ve worked in the field, ever,” Chester said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange crap come down in museums, but this one takes the cake.”

We didn't get a chance to talk about that thing where Kennedy wanted to take state owned artworks to Washington with him.  It's pretty funny given his previously expressed feelings about public art. But that's not the important matter at hand right now. What is is the "strange crap" that seems to follow Billy Nungesser wherever we find him. Billy is probably the stupidest corrupt person in the entire state of Louisiana.. and, yeah, that is certainly saying something.

But let's do a quick review here. The charges levied by Chester aren't actually all new. We hadn't seen the stuff about the Pontalba apartments and the disputes over use of museum facilities.  But we had previously noticed the threat to sell parts of the collection on ebay. 

Prior to that, there was the time Nungesser's communications director resigned saying his office "was not a comfortable environment." That was probably related to the bizarre event where Nungesser fell for a phishing scam involving the Iraqi oil minister and a shipyard and a guy selling medical equipment by mail order or something... anyway. It was some "pretty strange crap."

And that's only what's happened since he's been in the Lt. Governor's office. Before then, there was lots of worse stuff. Consider Billy's cynical efforts to "save" Plaquemines Parish by.. selling it off to oil and chemical companies.  (See also here) There's also, of course, the matter of Nungesser's name showing up on the clients' list at the Canal Street brothel that David Vitter once helped to make famous. The "strange crap" associated with those stories eventually put Vitter's career to an end.  Nungesser's is still alive, though. Life is funny that way.

How many Truths

A week or so ago, when LaToya Cantrell (kinda sorta quietly) announced her candidacy for mayor, she did so by putting up some clumsy language on her website about the "two truths" of New Orleans.

But New Orleans is also a city of two truths. The first truth is that of a rapidly growing city where the average income is rising and new businesses are flourishing. New construction is filling the CBD and many of our public schools, recreation centers and libraries have been beautifully rebuilt. This is a truth LaToya has nurtured and helped advance in Broadmoor and across New Orleans as a City Councilwoman.

But there’s another truth. It’s the one LaToya encountered on her college bus rides from Uptown to Xavier. This truth is about crime and illegal guns, pockets of blight, flooded streets that are covered in potholes. It’s a place where many opportunities are out of reach for too many people who do not earn enough to support their families despite all their hard work.

The mind goes immediately to a series of worn out images. "Two Americas" "A Tale Of Two Cities" It's all very hackish and about what we have come to expect down here in the minor leagues of political rhetoric. At the same time, it's not entirely without meaning.  For example, one of those "Two Truths" is described in a recent United Way report by which we learn over half of New Orleans households are either at the poverty level or barely struggling to get by.

The report notes that more Louisiana homes were struggling to stay afloat in 2014, even as the regional economy appeared to chug along -- the state's population is increasing, there are more jobs and wages are inching upward.

Why is that? The report points to a rising cost of living throughout the state. Low-wage jobs also continue to dominate the Louisiana economy. About 68 percent of all jobs in the state paid less than $20 an hour, and two-thirds of those jobs offered wages below $15 an hour.

So here are your "two truths." The economy "chugs along" but the benefits do not accrue to most of the people doing the chugging. Wages are low. Cost of living is high. Specifically the cost of housing is ridiculously out of step with what most residents can afford to pay. It's not something LaToya mentions in her Tale Of Two Truths. Possibly, in part, because she voted to allow this.

The city of New Orleans has issued the first licenses for people to rent their homes on short-term rental services since the practice became legal on Saturday.

As of Wednesday morning, the city had approved 340 properties. It has issued licenses to about 150 of them; the others are awaiting payment of fees ranging from $50 to $500.

Overall, about 1,300 applications have been filed. That’s nearly twice as many as our count on Friday afternoon.

Last fall, an Airbnb tracking service estimated there were 4,500 Airbnb listings citywide.

We're probably on the high side of 4,500, frankly, but it's going to be hard to get an accurate count.  The numbers the city is compiling now can only count the property owners who actually apply for permits in the first place.  The essential ethic of "disruption" being what it is, there are bound to be a significant chunk who won't bother. One particularly stinging aspect of the current tally we should point out though is this.

Owners of multiple units.

While arguments for legalizing short-term rentals tend to focus on people renting out a portion of their home to tourists to make ends meet or fund needed renovations, opponents pointed to cases where operators with multiple listings as an indication that many were running full-scale businesses

Dozens of people have applied for multiple licenses.

As of this writing the leading applicant, with 23, is an agent for a national vacation rental company called "Stay Alfred." As of last July, Stay Alfred was already estimated to be operating at least 40 STRs in New Orleans.  In December, LaToya and her colleagues could have done something about this but refused to act. 

Councilman Jared Brossett tried unsuccessfully to change the legislation by requiring short-term rental hosts to hold a homestead tax exemption, which can only legally be held by someone who owns the home. It also would have limited short-term rentals to two per block, which has been favored by historic preservationists. That attempt failed, 5-2, with Brossett and Councilwoman Guidry voting in favor of the ordinance.

The Advocate counts "dozens" of multiple license applicants currently. It has been estimated that 66 percent of all STRs in the city are operated by owners of multiple properties and 76 percent of all STRs are "whole homes or apartments."  That data is two years old and matters likely have not improved since then.

It's possible to tell a story of "Two Truths" in New Orleans. But it's probably better to tell the one truth about a power elite of real estate and tourism interests hoarding more and more wealth at the expense of exploited and defenseless workers, renters, and what's left of lower and middle class homeowners. LaToya doesn't want to talk about it that way, though. Better for her that the Two Truths are mysteriously unrelated. That way we can congratulate our friends and donors at the top while appearing concerned for their victims at the bottom.

It's also important that we don't get too specific about what we're going to do about it. Notice the language on Cantrell's site decries the ills of crime but not poverty, blight but not homelessness, and potholes because... well.. those darned potholes, amiright?  Even the words LaToya uses to evoke the hardships of the poorer classes are carefully minced neoliberal morsels about "opportunity" and "earn" and "hard work."

We've already seen how her policy preferences match this language. LaToya has spoken about the proposed rental registry law in terms its benefits for neighboring homeowners regardless of the effect on renters. She has promoted an "inclusionary zoning" density bonus as a sop to luxury developers under the pretense of adding affordable housing. And she has been quite clear in her promotion of surveillance equipment and expansive police powers because, "my constituents are saying that crime is their number one issue."

All of which leads us to wonder who LaToya believes her "constituents" actually are. And which "Truth" of New Orleans are they living these days? 

Never made right

One aspect of Katrina that doesn't get talked about quite enough is the way middle and working class people were actually penalized for holding wealth without debt. 

Since many of the homes in the community were handed down through the generations, it was often hard to establish clear title -- important to obtaining rebuilding money in the mostly low-to-moderate-income neighborhood. Those who could prove ownership were likely to receive insufficient money to rebuild under a government program; greater sums were given to the owners of homes with higher market values.

It just didn't compute that people with moderate incomes living off the grid of servitude to some bank could possibly be restored to such a state. This is still a problem. 

But selling the Make It Right house has been a challenge because of a sort of catch-22. Chambers said the house is for sale for $164,000, but because of a 15-year pact with Make It Right, the house must be sold to someone with a relatively low income.

The buyer's income must not exceed 120 percent of the average median income in New Orleans, she said. For an individual, that's around $50,400, she said. The trouble is, most people who earn that amount can't qualify for a loan. So, she said, the house sits.

The Make It Right house in that article is listed in foreclosure, by the way. It's only one house but I think the circumstances there indicate just how far out of sight the notion that people living on moderate incomes are entitled to a bit of "The American Dream" really is anymore.

Instead, we're meant to be beholden in one manner or another to a bank, a landlord, or.. I guess one of these people. 

The developers were able to purchase the land at a discount in return for building housing for low-to-moderate-income residents. Most are still in various stages of organizing financing or preparing to build.

The AP story doesn't detail this very well but there's more in the local press. NORA "sold these properties to five developers (Habitat, Perez, The St. Bernard Project, Neville, and Jourdan Valley.)  Each has a distinct plan for its parcel.  Some of that is explained here. You can see, for example, that Habitat and St. Bernard are doing very different things.

Jamie Neville of Neville Development declined an interview request. Perez and Harmony did not respond.

Habitat has identified 50 lots where it wants to build a mix of doubles and single-family homes. The NORA program will allow the nonprofit to expand what executive director Jim Pate refers to as incubator housing.

These units will be dedicated to renters who have $2,000 or more in debt. After they erase that debt, they will have a chance to become property owners. In the few spots where Habitat has designated incubator housing, the experiment has been successful, Pate said.

Most of the new homes planned for the Lower 9th Ward will be occupied by owners who put in Habitat's standard "sweat equity" to subsidize their purchase.

The St. Bernard Project plans to build 36 doubles, and all 72 units will be rentals, CEO and co-founder Zack Rosenburg said, explaining he intends to seek Low Income Housing Tax Credits to finance the development.

His objective is boost the limited inventory for affordable new rental property and at the same time bring enough residents to the Lower 9th Ward to attract supporting development, he said.

Meanwhile, the Jourdan Valley development looks like some sort of hippie commune for the sharing economy age. 

Allen said anyone living in the neighborhood who doesn’t want to be part of the communal aspect of Jourdan Valley doesn’t have to be. For those who do, landscaping and design will be used to add a sense of connectedness between their homes, which provide the privacy people need, and the common areas that provide the community many naturally crave.

The houses will be sold at market rate, with the 26 new units offering between 700 and 1,200 square feet.

Allen said cohousing can be an affordable option because homes don’t need to have extra bedrooms, laundry facilities or office space because of what is provided in the community building.

While the communal aspect of a cohousing development may be radically different from a traditional neighborhood, legally speaking, it functions much like a condominium or homeowners association, and there really aren’t any significant zoning hurdles to the project, Allen said.

Jourdan Valley won’t have any kind of selection process for the people who want to live there, she said.

She said the point is that it’s a cross-section of the community — people of all ages, races and creeds, in various stages of their lives, with children and without.

All that matters is that they buy into its philosophy.

Oh dear.  I read a lot of complaints about NORA sitting on properties as part of some nefarious scheme to prop up the housing market. But if they're willing to unload land on this crap, they'll sell to anybody.  Imagine how many bouncy castle communities Frank Scurlock could have built on Jazzland by now if NORA had purview over that.

All that aside, the big picture in the Lower 9  is this.  A lower middle class neighborhood of struggling but mostly stable homeowners was eradicated by a man made disaster.  The displaced homeowners were never made right. Their land now belongs to developers willing to provide some "affordable housing" provided the residents conform to various stipulations of "sweat equity," or "communal philosophy" or... "please sign here so that we can get our tax credits thank you very much."

And maybe it's better than fallow lots and an underhoused population.. if you believe that really is the only other alternative. But the important thing is, as always, that there's money to be made.  As James Gray said in February,

New Orleans City Councilman James Gray said the projects are a “great deal” for the area and would be a key element of its continuing redevelopment, alongside commercial projects such as CVS and Family Dollar stores and the reopening of government facilities such as the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission’s Sanchez Center.

“I’ve been saying to people, you need to go ahead and invest your money in the Lower 9 if you want to make some money,” Gray said.

City Council Senioritis

The councilpersons are always cranky when they get this close to the end of the their terms.

Uproar over a public letter. A derisive rehashing of one City Council member’s allegedly callous attitude toward constituents. Charges that the same member allowed a corporation to influence some of the rules for advisers to the public agency that acts as its watchdog.

All of it characterized the explosive finale to Thursday's City Council meeting, which quashed any hope that the council’s two at-large members, Stacy Head and Jason Williams, might repair their fractured relationship.

Actually this time it's even weirder since we're having an election this fall but not turning over the offices until next spring.  You can see how stressful and confusing that might be for everybody. Anyway, they are snippy. 

But Thursday’s fight was particularly bitter, driven by Head’s recent comments to news outlets about her colleagues’ actions in recent weeks.

Her letter to the Uptown Messenger described “a vested interest by some to quietly move” the cost of consulting contracts out of the public’s view, so that “politicians and their donors get rich.”

She also railed against the council’s December decision to award new contracts to the three longtime consultants and said Williams, as chairman of the Utility Committee, “refused to review” offers from other firms.

In conversations with two newspaper reporters this week, she called Williams' and other members’ push to have the consultants weigh in on the guidelines that would help govern their actions akin to “the fox drafting the security plan for the henhouse.”

Of course that depends on who is considered the fox and who are the hens in this situation.  Head's concern is primarily with how the consultants are chosen and paid.  It's a legitimate complaint but she's mostly making it only because these contracts are in somebody else's patronage downline.

Meanwhile, there are folks who might consider the fox in this henhouse to be Entergy.. since that is, after all, the utility we're supposed to be regulating here. But Head appears to be working with them, actually.  

Williams called Head’s characterization problematic, considering that she claimed to have talked to Entergy about those same rules. When Head insisted that statement was a mistake made by Cheron Brylski, her political consultant, Williams pounced.

Oh dear, we've thrown poor Cheron Brylski under the bus again. You might remember her from such political moments as "Mayor Landrieu: Productive Asshole"  "The Leslie Jacobs Explosion" and, of course, this thing Williams mentions. 

“The same Cheron Brylski that was involved in council issues very recently, that became very racially charged? Is that your statement?” he asked, referring to an email Brylski sent in 2015 to two French Quarter neighborhood groups. That email, which was accidentally sent to local media, suggested that the mostly white groups should find black people to speak on their behalf and that the council was racially divided.

Of course, Brylski is always "involved in council issues." She's a political consultant. Jason knows who she is so, you know, the shocked shocked act is a bit much.  Besides, Stacy provided enough fodder for these broadsides on her own as Williams does go on to demonstrate. 

“I really thought that you evolved past blowing kisses at disenfranchised poor people,” Williams continued, referencing a kiss Head blew from the council dais a decade ago to people angered by the council’s vote to tear down several of the city’s public housing complexes.

Anyway, as fun as all of this is, it's also a little bit sad. Basically you've got councilmembers fighting over whether each is owned by Entergy or by the lawyers ostensibly in charge of regulating Entergy. It seems like, since both are true, it should be easy to find common ground here and everybody can go back to running his or her own racket.

Why do Americans hate media elites?

Can't imagine why that would be.  Probably because they see too much "Fake News" that should be censored or something.  Or maybe it's something else....

.@FareedZakaria on Syria strikes: "I think Donald Trump became President of the United States" last night https://t.co/dLipRu6SZu

— New Day (@NewDay) April 7, 2017

bombing is fun, MSNBC edition  pic.twitter.com/qbtiBrpWLB

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 7, 2017

See also Pareene from about a month ago.

Here’s what you have to understand about the sort of people who become anchors, nonpartisan pundits, centrist columnists, and cable news political correspondents: They didn’t sign up to be the resistance. They don’t want Donald Trump to fail. They want him to “pivot” and “act presidential.”

Yeah, there are guys (and it is guys, for the most part) out there who spend their whole careers trying to be Dan Rather staring down Nixon or Cronkite turning on Vietnam—or even just Tim Russert making some elected mediocrity stammer with a patented “tough question”—but mostly these guys want to be witnesses to Great Men Making History. They want to Respect The Office Of The Presidency.

Here’s another thing you should understand about these guys: The only thing the elite Washington press corps likes more than a bipartisan commission on debt reduction is a stack of flag-draped coffins.

Bonus: Why do Americans hate elite establishment Democrats?  Can't imagine why.  

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said, "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." 

He added: "It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today."

 Also

(CNN)Hillary Clinton called on the United States to take out Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's Air Force on Thursday, days after a chemical attack killed more than 70 people in the war-torn country. 

Totally validated

Remarkably, the city has had little difficulty identifying some companies willing to suck profits out of a public asset. 

New Orleans could stand to make as much as $55 million upfront and another $76 million over a 40-year term under one of five proposals submitted by companies interested in leasing the Public Belt Railroad.

In fact, all five firms that have expressed interest in taking over the city-owned railroad crossed an initial hurdle this week in the city's nearly two-year effort to reach a long-term deal that could net tens of millions of dollars for the city.

The Public Belt includes 26 miles of track that connect six major rail lines serving the port and industrial facilities.

The companies that responded to the city's request for qualifications include Illinois-based Anacostia Rail Holdings; New York-based MidRail; Colorado-based OmniTrax; and Watco Companies, a Kansas-based transportation firm. Another response came from a joint team of Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming and Oaktree Capital Management, a California global asset management firm.

That's kind of a funny lede.  One would get the impression from the opening paragraph that it's all great news.  It's much more complicated than that. AZ has been on this story for months. Do take a look at that for background, for coverage of the public meetings, and even an interview with the mayor.  There a several issues and concerns involving labor contracts, agreements with warehousing and port services companies, long term development strategies, etc. Jason sums up the fundamental question here.

Probably the biggest question mark with the RFQ is the nature of the current agreement the NOPB has with the Port of New Orleans. Right now, because the structure of the NOPB is designed to solely serve the Port (not necessarily generate a profit), the Port has a $1/year lease agreement with the railroad. If a private entity takes over the NOPB, that agreement will most likely be renegotiated...if the Port even chooses to do business with the new entity.

Whatever way you slice it, this is a proposal to turn a public asset into a profit vehicle for a private third party. So it's really no wonder the city would find at least five bidders ready to leap at the opportunity.  Ryan Berni says the mere fact of this "totally validates" the decision to privatize in the first place.

"It totally validates that there is a lot of interest from major players to invest in this asset and to give the taxpayers a greater return on their investment," said Ryan Berni, a top aide to Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Berni attends Public Belt board meetings as the mayor's representative.

LOL at that "greater return" to taxpayers.  The Landrieu Administration is stuck in the conservative ideology of the early 90s. Everything is better if it's run like, for, and preferably by a private business. The logic validates itself just like it always has.

Below average

All the Hurricane Seasons are below average, though.

Hurricane forecasters at the University of Colorado are predicting a below-average 2017 season. Hurricane forecasters at the University of Colorado are predicting a below-average 2017 season.

In a report released Thursday, the university predicts 11 named Atlantic storms, of which four will strengthen to hurricane level and two will reach category three or higher.

If the forecast bears out, the numbers will be slightly less compared to the average season between 1981 and 2010.

And so we begin the months long ritual of issuing and revising predictions about how many storms may or may not form this year until we finally get it right in November.

Any excuse to collect more money from poor people

The pretext here is bicycle safety. The inevitable result, though,  is more revenue-driven harassment of bicyclists and pedestrians to match that which motorists already endure. 

The City Council is expected to take steps Thursday (April 6) to rectify that by considering a raft of laws meant to better outline the relationship between bikes and motorized vehicles sharing the road. The actions would bring city code closer to what is already on the state's law books.

A big contributor to the convenience of biking around town is the assurance that the cops probably won't bother you (heh.. yes, I know..  if you're white, anyway.)  And that you won't be ticketed by a meter maid or some camera somewhere. It's getting to where we're just taxing you for being outside.

Not that this matters to your councilpersons so long as there's money to squeeze out of poor people. And it's hard to think of a package of traffic fines imposed on people who rely on bikes for transportation as anything other than that.

Meanwhile, in a somewhat related matter, take a look at this Lens report on the efficacy of traffic cameras.  Basically, there is zero evidence they do anything at all to improve safety.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu says safety, not money, is behind a major expansion of traffic enforcement cameras in the city.

But his administration has produced no evidence the cameras reduce wrecks, injuries or deaths on New Orleans streets.

It does have data on how many tickets have been issued and how much money they brought in.

The city is adding 45 stationary cameras and 10 mobile ones to catch drivers speeding or driving dangerously in school zones. The new cameras are expected to bring in about $5 million a year after the vendor takes a $3 million cut.

So we already know that revenue supersedes safety when it comes to traffic regulation. It's actually worse than officials simply not being able to justify their own rhetoric with data. In some cities, they've also been caught deliberately making the roads less safe. 

As privately operated red-light cameras proliferate across the country, cities and towns shortening yellow lights spike the number of tickets, and thereby increase revenue. The profits come at a social cost, as shorter yellow light times have been associated with an increase in car accidents.

While not new, the profit-driven development continues across the country, with private companies like Redflex Traffic Systems reaping the rewards. In February, the city of Fremont, California, pledged it would refund at least $490,000 in tickets to drivers after it was revealed that for a period of time in 2016, yellow-light times at two key intersections were shorted from 4.7 to 4 seconds, driving an increase in tickets. Each of those intersections was outfitted with red-light cameras run by Redflex Traffic Systems.

This is one reason to keep an eye on Paul Hollis' bill in the coming legislative session which would put an end to the traffic camera scheme statewide.  I say keep an eye on it, but don't expect it to pass. Not with so much money tied up in maintaining the ripoff.

But as City Council moves toward imposing a new set of fines and fees ostensibly in the name of bicycle safety, it's worth remembering what actually spurs them to action.

So this is how they actually talk

Bannon actually says the word, "cuck" when he's mad. Thought that was just a thing the Reddit frogs typed to one another.

Ok now Mitch really is changing history

I guess to be fair we should note that they're all like this, but there's something extremely Mitch about the out-sized grasping for self-aggrandizement here.

"There is no one in this city that has worked harder to take down these four Confederate monuments than this administration," Landrieu spokesman Tyronne Walker said in a statement. "We have been steadfast in our efforts and are committed to taking down the monuments as quickly as possible.

Well, no, actually the hard work was done by activists like Take 'em Down and others who agitated against the legacy of Jim Crow for decades. Mitch just happened to be the mayor when the moment for taking down the statues arrived.  He deserves credit for taking the correct side at the appropriate time.  But elected people should never be credited with having "worked harder" than the people who actually create the political capital that makes it possible for things to happen.  

This, by the way, is precisely what Take 'em Down is trying to do once again here.

"White supremacists have forced potential vendors to boycott this round of efforts to remove these monuments to white supremacy," Take Em Down NOLA said in a statement. "That the city received only one bid for an outrageous price speaks to that collusion."

The group is also calling on the mayor to hire a structural engineer to advise city workers on how to remove the monuments without having to hire a firm through a request for proposals. Only one company, Couzan Services LLC, submitted a bid for the work in response to the city's request for proposals. It wants to be paid $600,000; the city only budgeted $170,000.

When the process starts to bog down, somebody has to shove something in order to keep it from losing momentum. This is what activists do.  What people like Mitch do is shout down at folks to "stay in your lane"  and show deference to them.  But that's not how any of this works.

Like ketchup on a well done steak

Lead paint is good now, apparently. Eat some every day.

Environmental Protection Agency officials are proposing to eliminate two programs focused on limiting children’s exposure to lead-based paint, which is known to cause damage to developing brains and nervous systems.

The proposed cuts, outlined in a 64 page budget memo revealed by The Washington Post on Friday, would roll back programs aimed at reducing lead risks by $16.61 million and more than 70 employees, in line with a broader project by the Trump administration to devolve responsibility for environmental and health protection to state and local governments.

"Nearly unanimous backlash"

Despite the numerous, strenuous objections voiced here, the city seems intent on plowing forward with a plan to close Bourbon Street (and a good portion of the Quarter by extension) off from the grid that serves to define it as a living, breathing urban place. 

The Landrieu administration's proposal to bar vehicles from most of Bourbon Street faced nearly unanimous backlash from about 150 residents and business owners at a public meeting Tuesday night.

The proposal, a significant part of the city’s $40 million plan to enhance security citywide, is still being fleshed out, and both city officials and consultants acknowledged they have run into significant hurdles as they’ve tried to develop a way to close Bourbon that would allow deliveries to stores, minimize the impact on residents and not create more traffic headaches in the French Quarter.

A month from now when the final plan is rolled out, this meeting will be cited as evidence that the public participated in the decision making process. But the decision has already been made.  None of the options presented at the meeting involved leaving the street open the way it is now. 

They still have all the time they need

But, maybe I'm wrong and they really don't know what they're doing.

Conservatives outside of Congress said Wednesday that efforts to pass an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system in the House had foundered again, after a series of meetings on the Hill produced legislation that the hard-line House Freedom Caucus could not support.

“It was very close a couple of days ago, but it looks like things have gone in a bad direction,” said Heritage Action for America chief executive Michael Needham on a Wednesday morning call with reporters. Needham placed the blame squarely at the feet of moderates: “It’s kind of stunning that in 24 hours, instead of building support for good policy, they’ve kind of abandoned it.”

Still seems like there's nothing stopping them but their own fear of having to own the consequences. But for that to hold, we'd have to assume our democracy is functioning somewhat which we all know isn't true at all.

Update: Here's a smart analysis by Alex Pareene of what has happened to the Republican political apparatus that's made them seem so ineffectual even when they appear to hold all the cards. The real crisis starts with the Wise Old Men of the Bush Administration and their colossal blunder into Iraq.

The genteel Republicans in Washington, meanwhile, still existed in a their own genteel bubble of misinformation—they convinced themselves that the occupation of Iraq would be over and done with in a few easy months—but the major figures in the Bush administration, and its allies in Congress, were not men who got the majority of their news from “Free Republic” and Alex Jones. They put their faith in a fairly traditional conservative orthodoxy: That you can use the levers of power to quietly enrich your friends and their firms, while pleasing the masses with some combination of tax cuts, loud proclamations of religiosity, and a modest, popular war or two.

But the complete and inarguable disaster of the Bush administration—a failure of the conservative movement itself, one undeniable even to many consumers of the parallel conservative media—and his abrupt replacement by a black man, caused a national nervous breakdown among the people who’d been told, for many years, that conservatism could not fail, and that all Real Americans agreed with them.

Rather rapidly, two things happened: First, Republicans realized they’d radicalized their base to a point where nothing they did in power could satisfy their most fervent constituents. Then—in a much more consequential development—a large portion of the Republican Congressional caucus became people who themselves consume garbage conservative media, and nothing else.

That, broadly, explains the dysfunction of the Obama era, post-Tea Party freakout. Congressional Republicans went from people who were able to turn their bullshit-hose on their constituents, in order to rile them up, to people who pointed it directly at themselves, mouths open.

Basically, this says they've painted themselves into a corner where a significant portion of their own caucus doesn't know whether to believe its own bullshit.   I think that explains the paralysis.. at least momentarily.  But money, power, and lobbyists have a way of clarifying things after a fashion.  Give this congress a few more months and they're still likely to figure it out.

Back to the Future

The Saints are releasing 35 year old Luke McCown, who has backed up the 38 year old Drew Brees these past few seasons and replacing him with the 30 year old (Chunky) Chase Daniel(s). It's a veritable youth movement.  Daniel, for his part, still sees himself as a QB of the future. Because that's what you do, I guess.

The 30-year-old Daniel signed a one-year deal with the Saints last week to compete to be the backup to Drew Brees, and even though the 38-year-old Brees has said he plans to play for at least a few more years, the possibility of replacing the future Hall of Famer was a draw for Daniel.

This will last until the Saints take another quarterback with the 11th pick in the draft, which everyone believes they will, of course. 

Cannot zombify that which was never dead

The Republicans are going to pass ACA repeal.  Just because they couldn't get it together to win a Big Showdown doesn't mean they still can't do whatever they want as soon they get their ducks in a row and everything quiets down a bit.  All they really have to do is chip away at it in parts and/or pass laws that neuter crucial provisions rather than kill them outright.

It's not difficult. They can do whatever they want. And what they want most is to cut taxes for rich people and help insurance companies pull down bigger profits. 

Get Tom Benson to cover it

Maybe if he pays for this we can consider LaSalle Street even.

Only one bidder has submitted a proposal to take down three Confederate monuments in New Orleans and is asking more than three times the amount the city has budgeted for the project.

Cuzan Services Limited submitted a $600,000 bid to remove statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis from public areas in New Orleans. The bid was opened Tuesday afternoon.

According to details from the bid read aloud during the meeting, Cuzan will charge $300,000 to remove the statue of Lee from its pedestal and another $150,000 each to remove the statues of Davis and Beauregard. The bid called for three quotes, one for the removal of all three statues, one to remove only Lee and Davis and a third to remove only Lee.

Of course because this was the whole point

The charter school movement was always about re-institutionalizing segregation by re-branding it in progressive sounding rhetoric.  This isn't a big secret. No one should be surprised at the results.

The earth-shaking overhaul of New Orleans education after Hurricane Katrina has not fixed one of the city's enduring problems: public school segregation. That's according to a study Tulane's Education Research Alliance for New Orleans released Tuesday (April 4).

"New Orleans schools were highly segregated prior to the city's school reforms, especially in terms of race and income, and remain segregated now," the authors wrote.

Before the mass charterization, the schools were divided into separate and unequal public and (mostly Catholic) private schools. The "reform" was a means by which white and wealthy families could reclaim their very own public schools without forfeiting the benefits of segregation. Again, not a big secret. Inevitably will be denied by hordes of screeching yuppies, though. 

Ghost of War On Christmas Future Past

The most disturbing thing about Jeff Landry is his lack of imagination. Investing big money in last year's trend is the surest way to fail in the fashion world. How does he not know this?

If his trademark is approved (the one and only trademark for which his firm has ever sought), the Attorney General of Louisiana could make a private fortune selling cheap clothes with a slogan he shamelessly appropriated from the current President of the United States, profiting from a sacred religious holiday that many Christians believe to be under attack by people who, like Landry, denigrate their faith by marginalizing the life of Jesus Christ like it’s merely a consumer product.

See also, Lamar's previous post about how Landry also stole his model for graft from everything he blasted his opponent for doing during the last election. 

We are living in Robocop

Hard to think of a more perfect allegory of late capitalist dystopia than Uber driver shoots carjacker.  Maybe if it was a self-driving car Uber somehow connected to Sidney Torres's app. But this is close enough.

Whose streets? Tom's streets

Last week the NFL voted to allow the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas. The reason, as always: pure extortion.

The relocation feels like the money grab it is. Davis and the other N.F.L. owners said they were impressed with the city’s potential, but what persuaded them most was the $750 million tax subsidy lawmakers in Nevada will provide for a big, modern stadium with suites, fancy restaurants and concession stands, not to mention the prospect of a marquee naming-rights partner and other financial benefits.

Fans might not care about such amenities, but in the money-first N.F.L., the other 31 owners certainly do because they receive a cut of what every team generates in its stadium. The Raiders have been near the bottom in the amount of revenue they have produced in their deteriorating stadium, which is more than 50 years old.

Now, in a sane world, hulking landmarks like sports stadiums probably should be expected to have a shelf life well past 50 years. That's allowing for the occasional renovation or two, which the Oakland Coliseum certainly has had.  But this is professional sports where decisions on such matters are more about what the ownership cabal can squeeze out of the public.  And every franchise relocation crisis brings a new opportunity. 

The owner Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, a power broker in the league who embraced and pushed the move, had an extra incentive. He owns half of Legends, a marketing and hospitality company. Last year, he persuaded the owners to let the Rams move to Los Angeles, and his company won the contract for the new stadium the Rams are building there. Jones pulled off the same daily double with the Raiders.

So the age of any stadium isn't nearly as important as what fortunes can be derived from building a new one. The Superdome is a few years past 40. And nobody is (currently) talking about any dire need to pull the Saints out of there.  The Advocate's Nick Underhill tries to tell us this is because the team's home grown ownership and management "gets it" or some such nonsense. But those of us with longer local memories than Underhill's might disagree.

Take, for instance, this passage where Underhill unquestioningly repeats Dennis Lauscha's assurances that all is well and the good people are working to keep you happy well into the forseeable future.

The Saints have already begun discussions with SMG’s Doug Thornton about how the two sides can keep this relationship going beyond 2025. The Saints have started soliciting proposals from architects for a long-term plan for the Superdome. The goal is to start shaping what the “next generation” will look like for the area around the stadium.

“I can sincerely say that our team and Doug and his team and the state, they’re investing in the future,” Lauscha said. “(All) of us want nothing more than to make that area great and really make it the jewel of downtown.”

He added: “You have two partners who want to dance. We’ve seen when that happens — particularly in our market, but all throughout all professional sports — when that’s the case, good private-public partnerships can exist and work long-term.”

[Before we get too much further into this, let's assume that, unlike Underhill, most of us remember well that Tom Benson was determined to move the Saints out of New Orleans when the city was at its lowest point after Katrina and had to be dragged back kicking and screaming. In case you are like Nick, though, and need a refresher, I always liked Oyster's explication best.]

Anyway, about that "jewel of downtown" public-private partnership the guys are all working on. It's less of a "partnership" than it is a.. well, grift isn't really strong enough a word for what this is. A new post at AZ takes an in-depth look at it. Apologies for the long quotation.

Easy Street...courtesy of Louisiana

The 2009 deal between Benson and the State/LSED consisted of two parts.

The first was an extension of the Superdome lease by LSED through 2025 and an $85 million dollar disbursement to the LSED by the State of Louisiana for improvements to the Dome as well as scaled payments to the Saints pending the amount of money the team generated annually from 2011 to 2024.

The second part of the deal involved the newly acquired Dominion Tower and properties purchased by Benson’s Zellia, LLC. In addition to the State agencies leasing over 70% of the office space in the tower, a state organization called the Louisiana Office Facilities Corporation (essentially an extension of the LSED) agreed to lease the New Orleans Center property which included the Mall and area now known as Champions Square, as well as the aforementioned parking garage for $2.3 million annually. The LSED agreed to take on the operations of the parking garage, mall and Macy’s retail store, retaining all revenues up to the $2.3 million mark (to compensate for the rent to Zelia), then any additional revenues would be split with Zelia 50/50. The agreement called for Zelia to be responsible for any initial renovations and repairs to the properties with the LSED maintaining daily operations and maintenance.

Benson/Zelia agreed to a $10.5 million dollar investment in the property over a three-year period (from 2010) and the LSED committed to making $85 million in capital improvements over the following two years with a completion date of 2011.

Public/Private Partnerships: The Road to Prosperity for the Private

After ratifying the agreement in an LSED Board of Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Robert Bruno stated the deal was (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “One of the most complicated, creative, bipartisan examples of a public/private partnership that could ever be imagined.”

Ron Forman, then President of the LSED Board of Commissioners and CEO/President of the Audubon Institute said (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “Without Mr. Benson’s willingness to invest, it could not have happened.”

How would one not be willing to invest in a multi-million dollar contract that placed any business risk solely on the State of Louisiana? The deal guaranteed near full occupancy rate of Benson Tower on top of a guaranteed 2.3 million dollars a year lease for the Champions Square property and the parking garage in which Zelia doesn’t even have to manage (The management of the properties is contracted to the company SMG by the LSED).

All Benson had to do was purchase the properties and the state took on any and all business risk to guarantee Zelia a financial windfall.

As obscene as all that is, it's pretty well known to most New Orleanians. (Except, I guess, Nick Underill.) Ask anyone to define the boundaries of Bensonville and most probably wouldn't even need to consult the Noligarchs Map.



But a lot of people may not know about the public street Benson's fiefdom managed to absorb for what appears to be zero compensation back to the city.. or scarcely any acknowledgement of the transaction.

An entire city street, the 1400 block of LaSalle which lies between Benson Tower and the Superdome, has been appropriated into the Champions Square venue….sans any contract with the City.

The street has been completely closed to automobile traffic with numerous permanent structures erected by the LSED including gateways  on both ends of the street.  During concerts and events in the Square these gateways are closed to the general public and used as a ticketing entrance for private events.

There are numerous problems with this, as Jason goes on to point out. Most crucially, it's probably illegal in that it violates a state constitutional prohibition on public property being "loaned, pledged, or donated to or for any person, association, or corporation, public or private." It's also just a ton of money the city is leaving on the table for use of the public property. At the same time the mayor is squeezing as much as he can out of ordinary people by raising parking fees, installing traffic cameras, and taxing people for air, he's doing this multi-million dollar favor for a billionaire.

Here's something else from the AZ report that would make you spit out your $12 Dome Foam.

If the City of New Orleans is as cash-strapped as Mayor Landrieu suggested when I interviewed him, why have we left millions of dollars on the table in respect to 1400 LaSalle?

When I asked the LSED if the City has received any compensation for the use of the street from them or Zelia they replied:

"The City of New Orleans has received the economic benefit of (i) the improvements that were made to LaSalle Street, (ii) the ongoing maintenance, repair, etc. of LaSalle Street, and (iii) increased tax revenues derived from events that occur at Champions Square. "

It’s kind of hard to understand how shutting a city street off to the public, taking it out of commerce (including parking meters and fines), installing permanent fixtures....all to generate income for a private venture...is an “improvement” or benefit to the City. 

If I fix the potholes on my own street, can I put up two gateways on each end and charge people to use it?

No. No, you can't do that with your street. These Newcomb Boulevard residents found that out the hard way a few years ago. Also, this is pretty much the same argument advanced by defenders of the city's Confederate monuments now scheduled for removal.

Led by the Monumental Task Committee, the monument supporters argue that the upkeep their members have done over the years at the statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard gives them an ownership interest in the statues and therefore a say in what happens to them.

Of course that wasn't a winning argument for the Monumental Taksers. But it's remarkable that the city (or LSED on the state and city's behalf) would turn around and make that case now.  It's especially dubious for anyone to argue that Benson has gained some sort of property right to LaSalle street simply by virtue of presuming to collect rent from it.  On the other hand, stealing public goods and purposing them to enhance the profits of billionaires is what the NFL was built on. So who could expect anything different?

And this does seem to be the way we treat our public spaces now be they streets, parks, or federally protected wilderness. If it isn't being monetized and "put back into commerce" we no longer recognize its communal value.  But as long as Mitch Landrieu and the neoliberals are applying the privatization model to New Orleans, they probably shouldn't just be doing it for free.

Appreciation gratitude

Never figured out if that was supposed to have been hyphenated or whether an "and" was omitted. It's just one of many reasons Sidney's prose is difficult to present out loud.

Also there is this.

"I accept that I will never fully understand—
I embrace the mystery." pic.twitter.com/RqO2QOcLLK

— RevVargVargas (@vargvargas) March 31, 2017

QOTD part 2

The Mayor's Cousin Gary is at it again.

Gary Landrieu is feuding with the mayor on Facebook. https://t.co/mY0Ewrw0nl pic.twitter.com/tTyCMe5xTp

— Charles Maldonado (@CMaldonadoLens) April 1, 2017

And just to clarify further, the COMMIE LIES making Cousin Gary puke this time involve Mitch saying on Facebook that Jackson Avenue is being paved when, in truth, what was actually happening was WE ALL GOT SHOT.

Be careful out there.

Hadn't thought of that?

It seems highly unlikely that anyone involved in planning the Bourbon Street excavation would not have already thought about how it might affect Jazzfest check-in. 

But the possibility of major work during some businesses' peak tourist seasons worries some on Bourbon Street.

Chuck Schroeder, of Bon Maison Guest House in the 800 block of Bourbon, said his busiest months are between April and October, as tourists come in for Jazz Fest and other events.

“How are you going to handle ADA compliance and guests checking in during Jazz Fest, our most productive month of the year?” he asked.

“Let me give that some thought,” Jernigan replied.

On the other hand, the city does seem to have a blind spot where ADA compliance is concerned so maybe that better explains things. 

In any case, the more interesting question about this project is that it's largely funded though money set aside to enact the mayor's controversial "security plan." That is both good and bad news.  The good news is it means the mayor has successfully wrested money away from the Convention Center, and applied it directly to maintaining vital city infrastructure. It's unfortunate that we have take these kinds of bank shots in order to put our public money to good use but congratulations are in order for getting something done in that regard.

The bad news is, it's also a pretext for shutting the street off from traffic entirely thus removing us one step further from whatever remains of the French Quarter as an organic urban place. 

In fact, the portion of the security plan most closely tied to the roadwork — installing bollards at intersections to prevent vehicles from entering Bourbon Street — won’t even be finalized until after the roadwork starts, though it’s possible some of that work could be integrated into the latter phases.

Not everybody was on board with the bollards. But the decision to throw them in as almost an afterthought to the road work apparently makes them a done deal. Very clever.

Maybe Jernigan still needs to give some thought to the problem of keeping the tourists comfortable. But rest assured, no one is thinking about how to maintain a city that works for people who actually live here.

QOTD

DeMarcus Cousins:

Someone recently asked Cousins if he enjoyed his first Mardi Gras experience in New Orleans.

"Did you see the pictures," Cousins asked incredulously, alluding to photos of him on a Zulu float with a pair of women's underwear on his head, a string of beads in one hand and a bottle of Hennessey in the other.

"Let's just say," Cousins added, "I fit right in."

I got one photo of that float. But the crowd was kind of thick and I didn't have a great shot of them. You can kind of see AD and Boogie behind the big phone there.




Anyway, they didn't have quite enough time after the trade to get it together this year. Next season, the Pelicans are gonna be an awful lot of fun, though.