Year of the orange man

Exactly one year ago today Donald Trump announced he was running for President.  We thought it was so damn hilarious then.  It's still not unfunny,  exactly.  It's just now kind of an obvious joke that nobody gets.

Trump's early poll numbers in the general election are historically embarrassing. I know it's been a weird year and strange things can happen. I certainly didn't think Trump could be the GOP nominee when I saw him come down that escalator.  But putting that aside, this has all the looks of a severe blowout.

The obvious joke, then, is on the Hillary campaign.  This would be a good time for them to reinforce the sense of inevitability about their candidate.  Make a little bit of fun of Trump, sure. Talk down to him if he comes up as a topic. But mostly talk about the serious good work your serious inevitable candidate can't wait to do.

Instead the Clintons are treating the "threat" of their clearly impotent opponent as some sort of national emergency. It gives him credit for actually mattering more than all polling and logic suggests he does.  Basically the Clinton campaign is doing the opposite of whar they should be doing. They're  pumping up Trump when they should be diminishing him. It probably won't make a difference. But if they do want to let Trump back in the game, they are doing all they can to make that happen.

Bid one dollar

The city and the Industrial Development Board still can't figure out how to unload their swampland.

The latest effort to redevelop the site of the abandoned Six Flags amusement park inched forward on Tuesday, as the public corporation that manages the site voted to hire an outside firm to appraise its value.

The McEnery Co. will gauge the site’s worth for a fee of $23,500. The firm’s bid was the lowest of four submitted to the 15-member Industrial Development Board.

A fifth appraiser, Thorns Consulting, was asked to vie for the job but decided against it, board members said. Some members in April wondered if that firm had a conflict of interest because its owner, Jimmie Thorns, is a former president of the development board.

The board has been mulling Six Flags’ future for years, but the discussions have intensified in recent months. The site has been the subject of one failed redevelopment deal after another since the park closed up shop after Hurricane Katrina.

Is it possible for the consultant to appraise the land at a value less than their fee?  Seems unlikely.  Meanwhile the cost of doing nothing is $10,000 a month which is what IDB says they're paying for maintenance and security. Still it looks like the city sees this as primarily a marketing problem rather than a just plain old shitty land problem.

Rebecca Conwell, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s senior adviser for economic development, said the city has tried repeatedly to help the development board with the site.

She said officials are in talks with at least three developers about the site. One, a Las Vegas developer whom she did not name, has urged the board to think about multiple uses for the sizable site, rather than just one attraction, she said. The city also has suggested the board engage real estate firms to help it market the site.

They'll come up with something nice, I'm sure.  Anything in the "marsh fire" category seems fitting.  

The dominant industries

The saga continues.

NEW ORLEANS -- A few weeks ago, when Irvin Mayfield’s New Orleans Jazz Orchestra formally agreed to pay back $1.1 million in public library donations, the Jazz Orchestra considered the matter “closed.”

But WWL-TV has learned the Public Library Foundation is now demanding payback of an additional $150,000 that Mayfield directed from the library charity to his Jazz Orchestra, this time routed through a third nonprofit where Mayfield also sat on the board.

The third nonprofit, the Youth Rescue Initiative, is run by Jim Bernazzani, the former head of the FBI field office in New Orleans. The centerpieces of the Youth Rescue Initiative are called Illumination Centers, described by the nonprofit’s website as “safe havens for at-risk youth to learn and develop computer skills.”

Ha ha. Y'all remember Jim Bernazzani,  right? He sort of peaked about eight years ago when he tried to use his position as the head of the local FBI office as a springboard to a political career. That didn't work out so well for Jim. Instead he retired from law enforcement and skipped politics altogether once he figured out you can grift just as easily in the non-profit sector. Especially in this city where Mayfield and friends are really just the tip of the iceberg.

Former mayor, and Mayfield patron,  Ray Nagin once gave an inspiring interview about his motivation for getting into public service politics.  "It seemed to be the dominant industry," he said.  But if you can't do that,  con-profiting also works.

When is the second line?

I mean, it says "Rejoice!" right there in the headline.

A gaping, 20-foot sinkhole on Canal Street, which cost the city millions of dollars, provided instant fodder for amateur comedians and which was honored at an impromptu May 5 celebration, has been repaired at least two months ahead of schedule, city officials said Tuesday.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu will reopen the section of Canal Street near Harrah’s Casino on Tuesday. The street has been blocked off since the ground opened in late April.

It's good to see the mayor is going to make it out for the, um, ribbon cutting or whatever they have planned. But you'd think Canal Street could at least get a welcome on par with what they gave Costco or CVS.   You can find those in any city.  Our world famous sinkhole deserves better.

Fracked

Helis oil is about to begin its controversial drilling project in St. Tammany Parish.

This first phase of the project will involve drilling a 13,000-foot-deep vertical well and will not include any hydraulic fracturing, Barham said.

The company plans to collect samples and also conduct tests on a 270-foot-thick layer of rock more than 12,000 feet deep to see if the formation, part of the Tusacaloosa Marine Shale, could be an economically viable source of oil, Barham said.

Analysis of the samples and test results is expected to take several months. If the results are positive — a 50-50 proposition, Barham said — Helis would move to Phase 2 of the project, which would involve hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Let's try this again

Looks like Neil Abramson's House Ways and Means committee will get a second crack at that income tax exemption bill they rejected last week.

A key piece of Gov. John Bel Edwards' tax package will get a second look Wednesday (June 15) after the governor and House leadership talked through a possible compromise.

The House Ways and Means Committee will consider a bill to reduce a state income tax break based on excess itemized deductions used for federal income taxes. The committee killed a similar piece of legislation last week, but amendments are expected to make this proposal more palatable to tax-averse lawmakers.

House Bill 38 would affect about a quarter of Louisiana taxpayers. The governor's staff said most of the people who would see their taxes go up make more than $100,000 per year.

According to a press release put out by Abramson, the bill failed last time because it had been "tied" to the passage of some flat tax legislation proposed by Rep. Julie Stokes which Neil (quite rightly) said he did not care for.  But Stokes's bills passed anyway so that's kind of moot point now.  Anyway something tells me they'll get it passed this time. Why else would they bring it back up if they didn't have a good read on it, right?

Speaking of Abramson, Lamar has really laid into him today in a post questioning Neil's relationships with insurers, oil and gas, chemical companies and other corporate backers. Lamar also hits Neil for his strategic absences including one just yesterday during testimony from parents of children with special needs.  To be fair, though, Neil's committee wasn't taking up any actual business yesterday so he didn't technically have to be there. In today's legislature, you can pretty much follow along from home via the tweets and videos anyway.

Cruelty is expensive

You'd think these conservatives would be sensitive to Louisiana's budget problem.

The state of Louisiana’s refusal to install air conditioning on death row has already cost taxpayers more than $1 million in legal bills, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

The state could spend roughly the same money — and possibly much less — on an air conditioning system that would satisfy a federal judge’s order to protect death-row inmates from dangerous heat and humidity inside Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Then again, if the legislature has taught us anything this year, it's that conservatives don't actually care about fixing the budget. They do care about making people suffer, for some reason. 

Air tax

It's fun when we get to agree with Owen Courreges about something. It doesn't happen all that often. In turn, Owen rarely agrees with VCPORA. And yet here we all are in agreement. Well, except for the mayor, I guess.

In an utterly unprecedented move, Mayor Landrieu recently began to require property owners to sign lease agreements for the “air rights” to balcony features that encroach on city property, leases that can cost upwards of $4,000 per year. The agreements are normally required before a property owner can obtain necessary inspections or building permits.

What this means is that property owners are confronted with two equally-perverse incentives: 1) to not build or retain their galleries; and, 2) to refuse to cooperate with the city in securing building permits for any work performed.

Predictably, advocacy groups and sundry neighborhood organizations are up in arms. “It’s part of the fabric of the city. It doesn’t make sense to penalize people for that,” said Meg Lousteau, head of the Vieux Carre Property Owners and Residents Association (VCPORA).

Although we’re rarely on the same side of any issue, VCPORA has a point here. Landrieu’s policy makes absolutely no sense, except in a single regard – it generates revenue. One of the first tricks Landrieu learned was to task his departments to increase revenues from fines and fees through creative means. Agencies have become less reasonable and more greedy under his direction.

In a way this is similar to the extortionate criminal justice system of fines and fees we just referenced in a previous post. It's less egregious in that it's aimed at property owners in historic neighborhoods but the principle is the same. The city is on the lookout for ways to squeeze money out of, literally, thin air. And why not? I mean isn't this more or less what the whole 21st Century economy is based on?

Nowadays, imaginary value conjured out of nothing via regulatory arbitrage is the just a fancy way of saying "entrepreneurship."  Besides tourism, the amazing resilience of the city's 'Treppin elite is the mayor's favorite subject.   It's hardly surprising that any of this would be right up his alley. Doubly so when someone finds a way to combine those two areas. 

A formalized proposal to legalize Airbnb-style rentals in New Orleans could face it first vote Tuesday (June 14).

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune will be in the City Council auditorium to cover the City Planning Commission's meeting live when it begins at 1:30 p.m.

That's tomorrow. The rest of that T-P article is styled as a "primer" for those who may have come late to this. But here is the key bit about what tomorrow's meeting means.

In recommending the regulatory framework majority of the commissioners voted against legalizing principal-residential rentals. However, the City Council, at the request of Mayor Mitch Landrieu, then asked the commission draft a set of amendments codifying the planning staff's initial recommendation, which included them. 

CPC, following the concerns of many residents and wary of the negative experience of "destination" cities around the world, wanted to limit the practice of turning whole homes and apartments over exclusively to Airbnb. The mayor rejected their modest recommendation and is making them do it over.

The public meeting is sure to draw a lot of attention.  The pro-STR lobbying group with the Orwellian name "Alliance for Neighborhood Prosperity" is pretty good at turning out their membership to events like these when it counts. It helps that a lot of them are professional lawyers and lobbyists who can bill the time unlike the wage earning renters who have more trouble showing up in the middle of the day. So expect a lot of hot air in the room.  If only there were a way to tax it.

Update: Ah and CPC has postponed the vote. It looks like the topic is still on the agenda? Maybe? If so the meting might still be entertai9.

Normalized extortion

Probably not the best basis on which to operate a criminal justice system.

The reliance in some cities on the cycle of arrest, jail, bail, plea, fine and possibly jail again if you don’t pay up has caught the unflattering attention of the U.S. Justice Department.

Just how all that money is divvied up in New Orleans, and to what extent unfortunate arrestees get caught up in government agencies’ demand for it, is the subject of a study now underway by the Vera Institute of Justice.

The aim, Vera says, is to show which agencies take a cut of the money, see how much lands where and “tally the fistally the fiscal impact of these practices, including from increased jail time, on the city’s budget.”

In New Orleans, different types of fees are split differently among various agencies, and issues over collections from Traffic Court and Municipal Court once prompted a lawsuit by Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton’s office.

Ferguson is a few years in the past now. But it's worth remembering the whole context there was a municipal government funded through systemic victimization of the poor by law enforcement.  

A scathing report from the U.S. Justice Department last year concluded that the municipal court system in Ferguson, Missouri, “primarily uses its judicial authority as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the city’s financial interests.”

And this sort of thing is common all over the place.  It was the subject of one of John Oliver's more popular segments last year.


Has anything changed?  Well, not really. But, hey, we're gonna do some more studies now. So that's something.

Antics

Governor Abramson issued another veto last week.

The Democratic chairman of the House tax committee sided with his Republican colleagues to kill one of the main money-raising tax bills sought by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Ways and Means Chairman Neil Abramson cast the tie-breaking vote Wednesday to stall the Democratic governor's proposal to lessen an income tax break given to upper-income earners. The committee voted 10-9 against the bill.

The proposal by Republican Rep. Rob Shadoin would have raised $117 million to fill gaps in next year's budget by cutting tax breaks allowed for taxpayers who itemize on their individual income tax returns.

This was supposed to be the special session where we actually got down to doing some real work. During Special Session Part 1, the previous year's emergency budget shortfall forced lawmakers to resort to unpleasant regressive sales tax hikes (remember the whole "clean pennies" business) in order to catch up. The situation going in to Special Session Part Deux was still dire, but at least this time there was an opportunity to apply fairer remedies. 

Or so we thought there would be. But so far nearly all of the Governor's proposals to raise revenue through progressive tax reforms such as eliminating a capital gains deduction have been rejected by Abramson's committee. Meanwhile the House managed to slip in yet another corporate tax break aimed at benefiting oil and gas companies. So, really, we're going in the wrong direction altogether.

With last week's failure of HB11 following so closely on the even stranger failure of the construction budget at the close of the regular session, Abramson has been the center of attention lately. If you've picked up your Gambit on the way to work this morning, you will have already found this commentary. It goes after Neil pretty hard.

Further evidence of their irresponsibility came last week. House Speaker Taylor Barras, a Republican from New Iberia, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Neil Abramson, a Democrat from New Orleans who is in league with the GOP’s “Gang of No,” strained credulity in preventing a vote on the so-called Capital Outlay budget before the annual session adjourned. Both said the measure as approved by the Senate had unspecified “technical” defects, yet they did nothing with the bill for the final five days of the session. Abramson literally hid from his colleagues to avoid bringing up the bill for a vote. Then, one day after the regular session ended (on the first morning of the special session), Abramson’s committee approved the measure in an hour — with millions more for projects in Abramson’s district. He blamed committee staffers for that “technical” error.

Those "projects in Abramson's district" by the way, are special favors for Audubon and other usual suspects from the NOLA non-profit cartel.

The largest of the two New Orleans projects -- financing for exhibit upgrades at the Audubon Zoo -- is in Abramson's district. That project got a $23.2 million boost, nearly double the original cost of the project. The Louisiana Children's Museum got a 10 percent increase for the planning, design and construction of an early learning village.

Also in the bill was an increase to a Junior League of New Orleans project. That project got an 83 percent funding increase for renovations to its headquarters, annex and thrift store.

Anyway, if you read that Gambit commentary online you'll see that Neil has already responded by pasting a press release of his into the comments section. Therein, Abramson claims he voted against HB11 because amendments had "tied" it to other problematic tax increases. 

An amendment tied the passage of HB 11 to a set of other tax reform measures that were not part of the Governor's tax reform package and were not adequately discussed or analyzed. The fiscal note on the tax measure that HB 11 would have been tied to would have led to a tax increase of more than $100 million. That burden could have fallen on lower-middle and middle income families. There simply was not enough information today to allow this bill to move forward." 

We think he's talking about Julie Stokes's "flat tax" bills. If so, he's at least correct in nominally opposing them.  But the Governor had already ceded the point.

To revive the bill on Wednesday, Edwards agreed with Stokes’ plan to amend HB11 by tying its fate to three measures sponsored by her that would give voters the chance to eliminate a popular tax break in exchange for a single flat rate. (This was the version Abramson referred to afterward. The committee separately approved all three measures; they do not raise more money.)

Plus, as it says, Stokes's bills passed anyway so.. again.. what was the point?  Abramson's colleagues, particularly those in the Senate, are getting more and more frustrated with what JP Morrell called "antics."

"We will try to work with him because he's the chairman of the committee," Morrell said. "But my committee right now is really struggling because we are really frustrated with these antics. There's more games being played."

And then there was this Advocate profile published over the weekend where we learn Abramson's "antics," at least as far as strategic absences are concerned, are actually a standard move of his. 

Abramson has a history of being absent but especially on controversial matters where, had he voted in line with his Uptown New Orleans district, which strongly backed President Barack Obama in 2012 and Edwards in 2015, he risked damaging his standing with Republicans. (Obama won 62 percent of his district in 2012, and Edwards carried it with 74 percent in 2015).

Consider this extraordinary fact: Abramson has voted on two of the 23 abortion bills tracked by the state’s dominant anti-abortion group, the Louisiana Right to Life Federation, over the past five years.

The profile also tells us about Abramson's football career. Neil was the quarterback of his high school team and even went on to play free safety in college. Nowadays, it seems, he just punts. Which is exactly what he does again here when asked about his future plans.

The latest developments in Baton Rouge have reignited a buzz among insiders that Abramson is positioning himself to switch parties and run for a conservative-leaning state Senate seat in 2019 as a Republican.

If so, he won’t admit to it, though he also passed up an opportunity to deny it.

One quick note about that. Neil doesn't actually have to switch parties to run for Senate. Sure, it makes more sense for most candidates to run in that district as a Republican. But suddenly switching parties just in order to do so might seem a little too transparent.  It's probably enough for Abramson just to keep positioning himself as an anti-tax, ambivalent on abortion thorn in the side of the Governor. In other words, it's probably best for Neil to just keep up the same antics that got him where he is.

Which brings us to this afternoon.

.@NeilAbramson is not present to discuss HB2, though @JPMorrell says they talked. #lalege #lagov

— Julia O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) June 13, 2016

A little late this week

The fake radio show was recorede on Monday night but took a while to get it uploaded. The legislature stuff isn't funny ha ha, exactly, but the rest of it isn't bad. Hurricane Season, parking in the quarter, various happenings and cetera.

All is probably not lost

For some reason Saints fans are despairing today because the team has to replace 4 sacks it got from a a guy who proved he couldn't play linebacker last year.  I think they'll be able to handle that.

The New Orleans Saints effort to revamp their defense took a hit after defensive end Hau’oli Kikaha suffered a torn ACL during practice earlier this week, according to a source.

Kikaha figured to be a major piece of the defense, and the team was planning to move him down to defensive end to help aid with the pass rush this season. The former second-round pick served as a strongside linebacker last season and finished the year with four sacks and four forced fumbles.

Really, it will be fine. That same story goes on to talk about how Kikaha was looking real good at "coming out of his hips and attacking square" or whatever while the team was running around in shorts this week.  There are several other guys already on the roster capable of being described in nonsensical coachspeak. You'll see. It will happen all summer.

Besides that the Saints already brought back the team sacks leader from 2011.  It'll be fine.

Nobody actually lives here

Latest "data scrape" from InsideAirnb. There are 4316 listings in New Orleans. 72% of those are whole home rentals. Mitch Landrieu wants to encourage more of that.

Update: Meanwhile... 

Tourists planning to pop over to Berlin for a weekend break may have to give up on the hipster dream of living like a local in a spacious loft apartment, and get back into the habit of staying in an old-fashioned hotel room instead.

Airbnb and other short-term letting agencies face a bleak future in the German capital after the city’s administrative court on Wednesday upheld a de facto ban on short-term rentals, in a landmark ruling that could inspire similar restrictions in cities around Europe.

Under the ban, in effect since 1 May, people who let more than 50% of their apartment on a short-term basis without a permit from the city risk a fine of €100,000 (£78,000).

But Mitch doesn't care about global trends and "best practices" anymore. 

I strongly disagree with Kalen

She concludes a post about the Airbnb travesty this way.

It’s a simple truth: Any housing unit being used exclusively as a short-term rental is no longer available as a home for an actual New Orleanian.

The post-Katrina era is over; now it’s simply the time when greed wins… and we used to be better than that.

Sorry, no. We were never better than that. Greed and exploitation has been the key theme to understanding the whole of New Orleans's post-Katrina "recovery" experience. There's no America to be Made Great Again here. We were in a poor and sinking city before the disaster and afterward what was left of that poor and sinking city was fed bit by bit to a neoliberal profit-taking machine. We failed to stop that from happening. We were always going to fail. 

Why does Mitch Landrieu hate renters?

Getting closer to crunch time on this Airbnb issue.

Airbnb-style rentals on a commercial scale would be legal in residential neighborhoods under a set of rules the City Planning Commission will consider.

The commission, considering a regulatory framework in January, shot down so-called "principal residential" rentals, which are homes in residential neighborhoods that are rented out in their entirety by off-site owners or managers. Commissioners said at the time that opening the door to whole-home rentals in residential areas had too much potential to disrupt neighborhood cohesion and character.

Despite that rebuff, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked that principal-residential rentals be included in legislation as the issue moves through the planning process. At his request, the City Council in May instructed the commission's staff to include principal-residential rentals as it translated the regulatory framework into a set of formal zoning amendments. The commission is set to consider whether to endorse the amendments at its meeting Tuesday (June 14).

Just the other day we noted (for the millionth time.. we've been on this for years now) that this policy decision would run exactly counter to the collected wisdom from the experience of cities around the world.  I thought Mitch was all about adopting "best practices." What happened?

Failure to root

These magnolia trees have been at #lalege since inauguration. Now they are dying because no one ever planted them. pic.twitter.com/Vzfdx583Dq

— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) June 8, 2016

Between the rebels in the House and the various rogue Governors running around, John Bel Edwards has pretty much gotten his butt kicked all over the place his first six months in office. So far we've seen one special session fail to fix a budget shortfall, a regular session that failed to deliver a capital outlay budget at all, and special session part two looks like it's unraveling right out of the gate.

The governor wants to approve $600 million in taxes to prevent cuts to the TOPS scholarship program, K-12 schools, public colleges and universities, safety net hospitals and the state prison system. Edwards has made this pitch in private meetings with lawmakers in recent days and again in a joint address to the House and Senate on Tuesday morning.

But the governor ran into a wall of opposition among Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee to his proposals that would raise individual income taxes by taking away tax deductions or by changing tax brackets.

Republicans used their 12-7 majority on the committee to keep those tax measures from advancing.

All three of them would have hit upper- and middle-income taxpayers in the pocketbook, in a state where the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.

Not advancing was House Bill 11. It would limit the deduction on state income taxes that individuals can claim from the itemized deductions they take on their federal tax returns that are in excess of the federal standard deduction. Under the proposal by state Rep. Rob Shadoin, R-Ruston, taxpayers would be allowed to take 57.5 percent of the deduction, instead of 100 percent today. The change would raise $116 million.

A study by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based group, shows that taxpayers who earn more than $103,000 would shoulder 76 percent of the tax increase.

It's not easy when you're negotiating with people who don't actually care whether anything gets funded so long as their wealthy friends and backers are protected. But the game here is to beat those people. And so far Governor Edwards hasn't figured out how to do it.

Thus we witness his failure to rein in the school voucher program or pass a minimum wage increase or equal pay law. On top of that, consider Edwards's decision to sign the absurd "Blue Lives Matter" bill as well as the most heinous abortion restriction passed by any state this year and, well, the bloom really does fall off the magnolia tree pretty quickly.

Were it not for the Medicaid expansion, one wonders if things would be any different at all now if we had just elected David Vitter.

Update: The good news is they seem to have rescued the trees.  So score one for Governor Edwards today.  He needed that.

I forgot about Governor Nungesser

So many Governors running loose these days, it's difficult to keep track.  A few months ago Governor Billy was going to get us a sweet deal involving some Iraqi oil and a defunct shipyard and... a Nigerian prince or something like that. I forget the details.

Anyway today he's back with a scheme to make us rich selling furniture on eBay.

After six months on the job, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been looking for ways to cut costs and raise revenue for the museum. One idea he’s exploring: selling the system’s storage building, which sits on 7,700 square feet of prime French Quarter real estate, and some of its more than 400,000 artifacts — those that are deemed to be of limited value.

“Why are we storing art in the middle of the French Quarter in such a valuable building?” Nungesser said. “That’s such an expensive building to maintain. I’d much rather see that cost going into maintaining and improving our museums.”

Clearly that building should be Airbnbed immediately. Don't these people understand value? I mean, look at some of this stuff just sitting around not being monetized. 

As far as reducing the size of the museum’s collection, Nungesser isn’t interested in holding a fire sale. But some items have limited historical or local ties, he said, citing a folding chair that former President Ronald Reagan once sat on at the Rivergate exhibition hall.

“To me, that doesn’t have any historical value,” Nungesser said. “Some Republican would pay big money on eBay to buy that, but I don’t think we should be using tax dollars to store it.”

We don't want it. But surely someone out there will bid big bucks for St. Reagan's Holy Assprint.  People used to joke about Bobby Jindal's habit of covering up budget shortfalls by selling off state property.  Nice to see Nungesser go the whole nine with this eBay scheme.  

Might still have to pay this one out

One minor result of the regular legislative session this year finds the mayor of New Orleans is still subject to the rule of law, more or less. 

But Landrieu got no traction on a related matter: a bill that would prevent city officials from being held in contempt of court for failing to pay legal judgments.

During the height of the city’s dispute with the firefighters last year, Civil District Judge Kern Reese ruled that Landrieu should be put under house arrest on weekends until the city paid up the money it owed the firefighters. Though that decision was later stayed by the state Supreme Court, Landrieu’s bill, which fizzled, would have prevented the same thing from happening in the future.

 Seems like a small thing. But it turns out there were other judgements pending.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is out of options in his funding fight with Criminal District Court Clerk Arthur Morrell, ending a dispute that has been simmering for four years.

The Louisiana Supreme Court last week refused to hear Landrieu's appeal of a lower court's ruling that he must pay Morrell's office $141,600 to make up for shorting the clerk's 2012 budget.

It's fine, though. You have to figure we can hold off on paying that for a few years. But the next mayor might have to do the house arrest.

Yep, and that's how they're going to beat you

John Bel Edwards is upset that Republican legislators won't help him fix Bobby Jindal's budget crisis.

Edwards called Seabaugh’s comments a “bitter, partisan attack.”

“When he had the chance to do his part, he sat on the sidelines. He would neither identify cuts to make to stabilize the budget, nor would he support raising additional revenue. He said ‘no’ to every single possible solution without offering any of his own,” Edwards wrote in the Tuesday editorial.

“Rep. Seabaugh needs to look no further than his own voting record when he decides to place blame for the continuation of these problems and the lack of funding for critical programs in this area, like TOPS and the medical school, and I will not let him distract from the work that so many other bold leaders, in both parties, from this region are willing to do,” Edwards continued.

Yeah well good luck with that. The budget crisis may be a Jindal era leftover but that hasn't discouraged Republicans (and others) from making sure it becomes Edwards's problem rather than theirs. They've had almost no political incentive to cooperate with him in good faith.  Instead we've seen a series of insincere political postures from Governor Kennedy, Governor Landry, and yesterday, Governor Abramson.

Governor Kennedy is running for Senate. Governor Landry is running for... well.. Governor, eventually. And Governor Abramson is probably running for State Senate in a conservative district. All of those guys have a greater political incentive to distinguish themselves as enemies of the Governor than they do to actually resolve the budget problem. In fact, the longer the crunch persists, the easier it is to pin everyone's woes on Governor Edwards.

All Edwards has going into the special session is the faint hope of offering TOPS as a carrot to Republicans in some sort of  bargain to raise revenues.

The budget passed by the Legislature on Sunday night funds only half of the TOPS scholarship program while five safety net hospitals are short $100 million and the state’s colleges and universities are missing $55 million if they were to receive as much next year as they got this year. The budget also cuts spending for K-12 school spending by $44 million — the first reduction from one year to the next in decades — and does not contain money to open the new $24 million Acadiana Center for Youth, a 72-bed facility in Bunkie.

Edwards is asking lawmakers to raise more money by eliminating tax breaks for individuals and corporations and by raising a tax on insurance companies. In all, he wants to fill what he says is a $600 million gap.

Already, though, it's clear that won't be enough. 

“I would like to fund TOPS at 100 percent,” said state Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, who chairs the budget-writing committee. “But TOPS is only short this year. Do you permanently raise income taxes to fund TOPS this year?”

The answer for Henry is definitely no.

And the reason for that should be obvious as well. The Republicans don't actually have to fund TOPS in order to win the issue politically. All they have to do is complain that the Governor failed to do it for them. Yesterday's HB2 fiasco as well as the ridiculous way the earlier special session ended demonstrate quite clearly that the conservatives are well dug in against this Governor. And that's how they're going to beat him.

Sine Die is coming

During these final hours, a sense of urgency and purpose comes over the legislature. Or, you know, not.

The battle over transgender bathrooms nearly sidetracked Monday an effort to tap into a federal apprentice program to help train Louisiana workers.

State Rep. Michael Johnson, R-Bossier City, said as good as the program would be in training workers, it could fall under President Barack Obama’s recent directive forbidding institutions from discriminating against people whose gender identity differs from their sex at birth.

House Bill 1001 brings the language of an apprentice program, which currently has about 4,000 participants, in line with federal guidelines and thereby allow the state to receive a $10 million federal grant for the program, said Rep. Patrick Jefferson, the Homer Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Labor and Industrial Relations.

Also there seems to be some drama over HB2 which is the capital improvements budget. The House seemed ready to pass it and get it on to conference but then this happened.

Alario is also very frustrated with @NeilAbramson, who wasn't in Baton Rouge to talk to Senate leadership yesterday about HB2. #lalege

— Julia O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) June 6, 2016

RepSamJones publicly wonders where Ways & Means Chair @NeilAbramson was yesterday. Speaker Barras says he can't answer #lalege

— Greg Hilburn (@GregHilburn1) June 6, 2016

Rumor: HB2 has enough votes for concurrence. But @NeilAbramson has been whipping votes for rejection. End result still uncertain #lalege

— Justin DiCharia (@JDiCharia) June 6, 2016

And then Neil left the building.. or something. That's what it seemed like anyway. The reporters (and Dan Claitor) spent some time pretending to search for him. They were gonna send Michael Johnson to check the bathroom but that got weird real quick. And then they found him!

Abramson has returned to the chamber. #lalege

— Kevin Litten (@kevinlitten) June 6, 2016

And then he left again.  It’s a very fluid situation.  Or maybe Neil is playing a different game than everyone else.

Catching up on #HouseofCards @Netflix with my wife. The irony isn't lost on me...

— Neil Abramson (@NeilAbramson) March 11, 2016

Update: Here's a more thorough report from NOLA.com 

The tweets say we might have a budget deal

It's happening in the legislature as I type this so I have no idea what they've actually agreed to.  The good news is, it looks like they've rejected this bizarre idea.

The siphoning plan initially was part of the House budget proposal, but it was removed by the Senate amid concerns about whether it was constitutional.

Barras, a banker, said he’s studied the state laws related to the plan, as well as the funds that would take about a 3.3 percent hit, and said he believes the state should have been taking a cut of the money that flows through the debt fund all along.

“It’s just pretty eye-opening the benefit to our budget,” he said.

Louisiana’s unique Bond Security and Redemption Fund is used to bolster the state’s credit rating and reassure bondholders. Nearly all money that flows into the treasury goes through that fund.

Under state law, certain funds normally protected under statutory and constitutional dedications for certain services can be skimmed to help pay down the debt. For the past 18 years, the state has relied largely on general fund dollars to make debt payments, though.

“We’ve been taking out of the wrong account,” Barras said. “It’s just too strong for me to let it go by.”

They were trying to use a mechanism for debt service and use it as a back door to impose departmental cuts they couldn't pass through the ordinary process.  It's probably not legal despite Barras's assertions and Fake Governor Kennedy's approval. Anyway it's certainly dishonest. Like I said, it now looks like we don't have to worry about it now. But I wanted to flag it before the session ended. 

Much more work to do starting this week. Special Session Part Deux is coming Monday. 

The party doesn't decide

Co-Governor Kennedy has his plate full these days. When he's not busy being the fake Governor at some legislative hearing, he's apparently running some sort of political campaign for something.

Louisiana’s everyone-in-the-pool primary system definitely has its charms. But as the state gears up for this fall’s U.S. Senate election, its quirky way of choosing candidates is turning the election less into a contest of ideas and more into a multicandidate muddle.

A new poll by Southern Media & Opinion Research conducted for Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby pegs Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy as the contest’s clear front-runner, followed at some distance by his many rivals for the seat that U.S. Sen. David Vitter soon will vacate.

The survey of 500 likely voters, taken May 19-23, put Kennedy at 32 percent, followed by U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany with 10 percent, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell at 9 percent, U.S. Rep. John Fleming at 5 percent, retired Col. Rob Maness at 4 percent, attorney Caroline Fayard at 4 percent, former Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commissioner Troy Hebert at 2 percent and Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta at 1 percent.

I'll never understand the continuing beef many Louisiana political writers seem to have with the jungle primary. Grace doesn't exactly slam it in that column. But she does say, "Things all would be clearer if the Democrats could choose their standard-bearer and the Republicans pick theirs." Which is a dubious thing for anyone who likes watching politics to wish for.

For starters, there's nothing preventing the parties from doing just that. In fact, they have been known to officially endorse one of several in a field. But what's great about the open primary is it can show just how little a party endorsement (and by extension the party itself) actually matters. This year, the Governor has already endorsed one of the Democrats. As the supposed standard bearer of the party that should hold at least some weight. 

But, in reality, the Louisiana Democratic Party is an uncomfortable coalition of disparate personalities and power bases in perpetual competition with one another. Mitch Landrieu hasn't endorsed anyone yet. But he has close ties with Caroline Fayard and that could put him at odds with the Governor's backing of Foster Campbell.  The open primary keeps these fissures out in the open and makes them relevant where a party primary would suppress and obscure them.  Why, for example, is Kip Holden running against Cedric Richmond? And would that even be much of at threat in a closed party primary?

Besides, the 2016 Presidential campaign suggests the major party duopoly is in a state of flux anyway. A party controlled election tier has rarely made less sense than it does now. Barring some major constitutional reform, this will inevitably settle back down once the parties realign themselves. But right now, voters aren't connecting with either of them nationally or locally. A few weeks ago, Gambit ran a feature on increased interest in alternative parties.  As of last October, a full 26 percent of Louisiana voters were registered with "minor" parties or no party at all. Compare that with the 28 percent registered as Republican.

And yet somehow the top two candidates in this (admittedly very early) Senate race poll are both Republicans. That does reflect the basic trend in statewide elections (last year's Governor's race excepted). More to the point, though,  it reflects a more direct voter preference than would a process mediated by questionably relevant party structure.

How did we get here

Obviously Governors Kennedy and Landry and Henry consider this ancient history by now. But it's nonetheless worth noting how we got here.

Templeton, the New Iberia chief for IMC, said the downturn in the oil and gas industry has hurt the Acadiana economy, including those who provide health care. But, he said, the real economic crusher for the state’s medical community has been Louisiana’s reluctance to expand Medicaid coverage for the poor.

That situation is changing: On Wednesday, Louisiana started enrolling more people in Medicaid, the federal health insurance for poor people.

Templeton said, “For many years, we left significant federal matching dollars on the table,” which “caused significant stress on all of the health care providers across our state.”

Medicaid expansion was blocked by former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who sought to fortify his conservative bona fides for a run at the Republican presidential nomination.

Keep talking about "Bernie Bros" as though they are a thing, though

I know this is obvious but here goes anyway. The crucial substantive divide during this heavily contested Democratic primary was never about race or gender. It was always generational and, to a lesser but related degree, ideological. 

Among Latino voters under age 50, Sanders led, 58%-31%, not much different from his 62%-27% lead among younger white voters. The views of other ethnic and racial groups were too small to break out separately by age, but when all younger minority voters were considered, Sanders led, 59%-32%.

On the other side of the age divide, Clinton’s lead was no less impressive. She led by 56%-32% among white voters over 50, 69%-16% among older Latinos and 64%-20% among older minority voters.

The same generational splits were visible when it came to gender: Clinton led by 33 points among women over 50 and by 31 points among older men. But Sanders led by 31 points among younger men and 25 points among younger women.

The key difference is between older professional class types who were able to go to school with little or no debt and who have some sort of modest retirement waiting for them vs. younger people who are basically fucked.

Mileage varies, of course, so let's throw in a #NotAllClintonVoters for good measure here but that's the rough sketch.

Meanwhile the Clinton campaign has manufactured a "Bernie Bro" narrative based entirely on the fact that random anonymous idiots often say mean things on the internet.   And that's been sufficient to satisfy a class of people who are comfortable enough that "someone was mean to me on Twitter," qualifies as a serious life challenge.  It's a completely farcical  defense of the powerful at the expense of the weak. But that's Clinton style politics for you.  Welcome back to the 90s.

Like an adorable toddler

Quasi-Governor Landry is "testing his boundaries."

“I believe there are some real issues with the relationship, and I think that, you know how good fences make good neighbors? Good delineations of authority also make for good neighbors in terms of statewide officials,” Edwards told The Advocate editorial board in a meeting this week.

Edwards said he thinks Landry is testing boundaries.

“I think there’s a little going on to figure out where those lines are,” he said. “I think I know where they are, and they aren’t in the same place he would want them to be.”

Political insiders have speculated that Landry is increasingly positioning himself to run against Edwards in the 2019 governor’s race, which Landry has denied.

You know they say you gotta dress for the job you want, right? When I am elected Registrar of Conveyances, I'm going to just set up a chair in the Mayor's office and go to work there. Maybe no one will even notice. 

People need to actually live there

Seattle is looking to impose some limits on Airbnb.

Under the regulations, only property owners using their primary residence would be allowed to operate short-term rentals year-round, according to Burgess. Those not using their primary residence would be limited to 90 total nights over 12 months.

That's still kind of a modest rule. If something like that were imposed in New Orleans, for example, it's conceivable a landlord may do pretty well with 90 days of STR revenue compared with 12 months of renting to locals.  But at least it's something of a step in the right direction.  Because a city is not just a playground for wealthy vacationers.  People actually live in cities. 

The distinction would prevent landlords from choosing tourists over tenants, Burgess says.

“We have whole floors of apartment buildings that have been taken off the housing market,” he said. “We have entire buildings that essentially have become hotels.”

In any case, the leadership in New Orleans is making the exact opposite policy choice. Stacy Head says she hears a "drumbeat" in favor of putting more tourists into neighborhoods, not fewer.

“There’s been a consistent drumbeat of requests to move tourists into other neighborhoods than the French Quarter and the CBD,”

Mitch Landrieu specifically rejected the City Planning Commission's suggestion that New Orleans adopt a policy similar to what Seattle is proposing.  The CPC is scheduled to hold a public hearing on this matter during its June 14 meeting.

How much does criminal conspiracy to defraud investors and obstruct justice cost?

If you are BP, it costs basically nothing.

BP Plc said it agreed to pay $175 million to settle claims by U.S. investors that its managers lied about the size of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to prop up its stock price, removing the company’s last major overhang from the disaster.

The investors, who blamed BP for massive losses when the true scope of the spill was revealed, had sought as much as $2.5 billion. The settlement averts a trial that was set for July in Houston federal court.

Telling the truth about David Duke

In 1989 John Treen lost his bid for a Jefferson Parish based Louisiana House of Representatives seat to David Duke.  Treen's strategy during the campaign had been based on "telling the truth about David Duke." Those quotes are just from my own memory of watching Treen talk to TV reporters on election night. I can't find a direct source on those exact words. But here's an LA Times article that comes pretty close.  

Treen, a Metairie home builder and brother of the state's former governor, David Treen, called Duke "a disaster for our area."

"I know what this man really is," he said. "The public . . . doesn't or they wouldn't have voted the way they did. He's a master of deception. He conned them into believing he is something he is not."

Treen had been operating under the assumption that Duke voters just didn't have enough information about him. Surely if they had only had the facts; if they had understood "what this man really is" they would have behaved differently.

But the problem with David Duke was never that he was hiding some awful truth. The awful truth was out in the open. It was, in fact, the source of his appeal. As it turned out, it was Treen who didn't understand the awful truth about the voters. This is from a New York Times report just days before the election.

If some of his support reflects blatant racism, much of it comes from working people convinced that politics as usual has failed to serve the white working class. 

''He is appealing to a frustration that is pretty deep,'' said James Boulware, a state court administrator in Jefferson Parish, which includes the 81st District seat Mr. Treen and Mr. Duke are seeking. ''They're angry about minority set-asides, affirmative action, busing. I think they feel the fairness of society is being tampered with.''

Thankfully, frustrated white working class voters who "feel like the fairness of society is being tampered with" are totally irrelevant in today's political landscape. So there's really no point in trying to learn anything from the David Duke experience. But, just to continue with the point for a second, John Treen was wrong. Duke voters understood exactly what that man really was.

For instance, two contractors, Jon Procell and Charles Worth, were at the bar together when Mr. Duke strode into Martine's, television cameras in tow. 

When asked why he supported Mr. Duke, Mr. Worth said, ''I don't like John Treen, and I don't like n__s.''

Doesn't seem like those guys needed a whole lot of supplemental instruction from John Treen. But, again, there is clearly nothing like that situation happening anywhere in today's politics. So there's no lesson anyone could possibly learn from John Treen's failed campaign strategy of just making sure the voters know "what this man really is" rather than offering them any sort of positive alternative.  We'd really hate to see someone make that mistake in an election that affected more than just one Louisiana house seat, right?

WTC ruling may come soon

This report sure makes it seem like the judge is about to toss the lawsuit.  But it's hard to know since Fisher just kind of sues defensively at whim sometimes.

Fisher, who has issued a barrage of lengthy news releases during the case expressing outrage over the city's handling of the project, appeared in court Wednesday for the first time since the lawsuit began. Twenty minutes before the hearing started, Fisher filed a motion to have Chase recused from a separate but related lawsuit.

He argued that Chase made biased decisions against him and had a conflict of interest through her campaign for a seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal. Chase ruled against him and sent the motion to another district judge for second decision on the recusal.

Fisher sat with attorneys for Two Canal Street Investors, but attorney Daniel Davillier emphasized that Fisher was representing himself.

So that's fun and confusing.  Which is about par for the course with this saga. Anyway, you don't have to like Fisher. He seems super sketchy. But there are reasons to root for the lawsuit to go forward. I've written about that a bunch of times.  Most recently here.

Only about eight years too late

Maybe it's too far in the past now, but probably there are a lot of people still hanging around who can actually remember the things that happened during the Obama Administration.  A major theme during this now long lost time was the President's perpetual search for a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" with Republicans which would have cut Social Security and Medicare by billions of dollars.

It was a dream that persisted throughout Obama's term frustrated only by a Republican controlled congress so hard-headed and reactionary that they never could bring themselves around to collect a gift from their IslamoKenyaSocialitler nemesis.

So the whole Presidency has been one long push. Which, under the circumstances, amounts to a win for consensus elites who all agree that Social Security is "doomed" eventually. Of course there are some simple things we could do to save and expand the program.  Maybe we could have gotten that started eight years ago if President Obama actually gave a shit. 

But he wanted a "Grand Bargain" instead. Thank God he didn't get it.  It's a shame, though, that everyone wants to give him credit for hopping on the bandwagon now that it doesn't matter what he does anymore.  But, then, he was President so long ago, I guess people have forgotten.  

Can't have the riff raff messing up our "high quality retail corridor"

Did you know South Claiborne was "New Orleans's next high quality retail corridor"?

On Thursday, City Councilwoman Stacy Head convened what she described as an annual summit before the council’s Governmental Affairs Committee about South Claiborne Avenue, which she hails as “New Orleans’ next high-quality retail corridor.” The discussion featured the heads of numerous city agencies, who each reviewed their departments’ commitment to improving and maintaining the busy stretch. 

It's an annual summit! Next year they'll get together again and congratulate themselves on their next strip mall. 

“The tone has totally changed,” Canada said. “Now it’s about where people want to go and what the opportunities are here. People are talking about opening multiple units in the city, instead of just saying they want to be downtown. That bodes well for South Claiborne and other areas of the city.”

On South Claiborne, Canada said she and council members have been meeting with specific shopping center owners about attracting tenants that will draw more customers. She praised the opening of Magnolia Marketplace as a model for other property owners, and offered a slide that said retail sales there have been ahead of expectations.

Funny they didn't mention the "model for other property owners" is a kickback funded by their own customers via mall-specific sales taxes but ok.

Anyway, here is Stacy Head's new project.

The next area of focus, Head said, should be the areas of the neutral grounds where the grass cannot be maintained because of all the people who spend all day “camping” in them. One option, she said, would be to provide actual outdoor seating areas that anyone can use, instead of the folding chairs and other items dragged into the neutral ground.

“They [areas of the neutral ground] are ‘bald’ because they become areas in the center of a state highway that have become gathering spaces, often with people drinking alcohol. It’s very unsafe. People have been run over because of walking in and out of the highway,” Head said. “They’re using the neutral ground as more like a camping area.”

NOPD Sixth District Commander Ronnie Stevens said his officers regularly speak to people hanging out in the neutral ground, hoping that the appearance of an officer will encourage them to move along, since the law prevents them from taking any action if loiterers are not breaking other laws. Head asked Stevens to check on one couple she is aware of living on an Entergy box on South Claiborne, who moved down from Ohio because New Orleans was such “a nice place to live and drink outside.”

Three things. 1) Some guys sitting around on milk cartons are really preventing you from "maintaining" the neutral ground? Really?  2) We can't do anything because they aren't breaking any laws. But let's send some cops out to intimidate them anyway.. you know.. because.

But mostly, 3) heck yes this is "a nice place to live and drink outside." Isn't that what we tell all the kids Airbnbing in for Fried Chicken Fest or whatever?  Or does it only become a problem when it gets in the way of you making your "retail corridor" great again?

Gentrification is a policy choice

Stacy Head says there is a "constant drumbeat" to turn your neighborhood over to tourists. She seems like she means that in a good way.  Mayor Landrieu wants to turn more of the housing stock near you over to short term rentals. (The Planning Commision takes up a related issue this week that may be a barometer as to their willingness to comply with the mayor.)

Meanwhile, nobody who actually lives here can actually afford to live here. This week's Gambit points us to a recent report from the National Low Income Housing Association which says that, in order to afford a "fair market" 2 bedroom rental in Orleans Parish, a renter would need a household income of $38,520.  The same report estimates the median income for renters in New Orleans at $24,773.  So there's not a lot of money flying around the local economy for ordinary middle or working class people. But the rents are still going higher and higher.  That seems weird.

Also, real sstate sales are still hot.

Why is that? 

What Confederate monuments actually do

Rather than preserving history, most of the Confederate monuments you see in New Orleans and in other cities throughout the south popped up during the Jim Crow era. At that time they were part of a deliberate attempt by white supremacists  to suppress rather than preserve history. We've been having a heated argument about this in New Orleans for a year now.

Anyway, Happy Memorial Day.

During the spring of 1865, African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina—most of them former slaves—held a series of memorials and rituals to honor unnamed fallen Union soldiers and boldly celebrate the struggle against slavery. One of the largest such events took place on May first of that year but had been largely forgotten until David Blight, a history professor at Yale University, found records at a Harvard archive. In a New York Times article published in 2011, Blight described the scene. While it is difficult to pinpoint the precise birthplace of the holiday, it is fair to say that ceremonies like the following are largely erased from the American narrative of Memorial Day.

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

This story of Memorial Day, also reported by Victoria M. Massie of Vox, was not merely excluded from the history books but appears to have been actively suppressed. The park where the race course prison camp once stood was eventually named Hampton Park after the Confederate General Wade Hampton who became South Carolina’s governor following the civil war.

Let's play two

John Bel is going to call the legislature into special session half an hour after the regular session ends on June 6. Maybe this will be when they finally get the heavy lifting done.

Among the largest revenue-generating items Edwards has included in his call are efforts to change the state’s personal and corporate income tax brackets and limit the itemized deductions from state income taxes that people can claim in excess of their federal tax deductions. Limiting those deductions would make middle- and upper-income taxpayers pay more. Shifting tax brackets also would mean that some people would pay more in taxes.

On the other hand, thetc do-nothing spirit is strong with this group and will probably continue. As much as they might like to fund TOPS the Republicans probably have more to gain politically by making Edwards look like a failure. I saw a rumor yesterday   that Jeff Landry is already polling his chances for Governor in 2019. Wouldn't doubt it.

"between 30 and 60 seconds"

Not saying Felton doesn't have a legitimate complaint about deployment and manpower but this seems superhuman.

Within eight minutes of the time the fire was spotted, McConnell said, the Fire Department had 21 personnel on the scene. He said national standards call for having 10 to 15 people on a fire scene within eight minutes.

“Five minutes is not a bad response time — compared to what?” Felton shot back. “We are centrally located around the city to ideally get on the scene somewhere between 30 seconds and 60 seconds, if at all possible. The longer it takes us to get there, the worse things get.”

Gentrification is a deliberate policy choice

And so called inclusionary zoning is a tool of that scam

Gentrification in Harlem might well be likened to the progress of the British Raj, where the most that “civilizing” interlopers could muster was a patronizing interest in token elements of local culture. Thus: Yes to the hip Afro-fusion restaurant, but complaints to 311 over Sundae Sermon dances, barbecues and ball games in parks or church choir rehearsals.

These are people who, in saying “I don’t see color,” treat the neighborhood like a blank slate. They have no idea how insulting they are being, denying us our heritage and our stake in Harlem’s future. And, far from government intervention to keep us in our homes, houses of worship and schools, to protect buildings emblematic of black history, we see policies like destructive zoning, with false “trickle down” affordability, changes that incentivize yet more gentrification, sure to transfigure our Harlem forever.

How will we all die under President Trump?

The choices right now are

1) Superbug

(CNN)Superbugs could kill one person every three seconds by 2050, the equivalent of 10 million people a year, according to the final report last week from the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, established in 2014 to keep the world from being "cast back into the dark ages of medicine." 

The authors highlight the increasing burden of resistance and call for greater awareness of the problem, including the need for public campaigns beginning as soon as this summer.

2) Loose nukes

The term "wake-up call" is a tired cliché, but it is appropriate in the case of Command and Control, the frightening new exposé of America's nuclear weapons mishaps by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. (Click here to read an excerpt and my detailed review.) In short, Schlosser delivers a book full of revelations that left me agape. While we still worry in the abstract about Iran and North Korea and Pakistan, it's easy to forget that we still have thousands of our own ungodly devices on hair-trigger alert at this very moment. And even if we never drop or launch another nuke on purpose, these weapons are, in his words, "the most dangerous machines ever invented. And like every machine, sometimes they go wrong."

That's what the book is about. Through hard-fought documents and deep digging and extensive interviews, Schlosser reveals how close we've come, on numerous occasions, to a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war in which there are only losers. Command and Control will leave many readers with a deep unease about America's ability to handle our nukes safely. Schlosser's hope is that this unease will beget a long-neglected debate about "why we have them and when we use them and how many we need." But his book is no screed. He delivers an engrossing page-turner. Would that it were fiction.

That interview with Schlosser is from 2013. But since we're talking about Hiroshima today, it's worth a look.

3)  Robot uprising

One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post.

Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit."

China is investing heavily in a robot workforce.

In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations" but denied that it meant long-term job losses.

 4) Trump Drunkeness

In his speech at an energy conference, Trump called for cutting regulations and for building the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has blocked.

"I'm drunk on Trump," proclaimed John Olson, a North Dakota unbound delegate and attorney representing oil, natural gas and coal companies.

It's probably that one.

Who will be the next Governor of the week?

NOLA.com is all over my case lately. Here they are stealing my lame-ass gag, even.

Attorney General Jeff Landry seems to be confused about which elected official is the top executive for the state of Louisiana. It's not him.

Perhaps he will get that message after Wednesday's (May 25) Senate Finance Committee meeting, where senators rejected his effort to grab budget control from the governor.

 "I just think the AG's budget is too interconnected to the rest of the state budget," said Sen. Jim Fannin, a Republican from Jonesboro, who previously headed the House Appropriations Committee and is an expert on the budget. "You've got to operate with one person at the top handling all the money."

Wake me up when we get to Governor Abramson. 

"I did a damn good job and got fired for it"

We are going to miss having Rob Ryan around. Who even knows if anything he says makes any sense. But boy is it ever wacky and fun.  You're going to see this MMQB article blasted all over your internets today. Expect to hear a lot of people blasting Rob for "making excuses" or whatever. Here's where he does that.

VRENTAS: Were you forced to run a different system?
 
ROB: No, I’m not going to say I was “forced.” I advanced the plan to the best of my ability. All of a sudden, we let some good players go; we changed the system after we finished fourth in the league in defense. I don’t know, it just seems strange to me. But I have a lot to prove, and I’m going to prove it. And that’s why I came to Buffalo, to be “all in,” right here. People can throw stones, but we will be throwing them back at them. They better be watching out.

VRENTAS: If you weren’t running your defensive system the past two seasons in New Orleans, what were you running?

ROB: Everyone wants to run Seattle’s defense. They should have hired a Seattle coach. I did the best job I could. Under the circumstances, trust me, I did the best job I could. I’ll be better anywhere else. (Pause). I’ll be great anywhere else. But it was unfortunate.

You might remember when Ryan arrived in New Orleans he had a lot to say about how unfair things had been to him in Dallas previously. So he talks like this a lot. At the same time, some of this rings sort of true. 

VRENTAS: After you placed fourth in the NFL in defense in 2013, you are saying there was a decision to change the philosophy. Where did that come from?

ROB: I am not real sure. Maybe a respect for Pete Carroll or something by upper management. And the Seahawks have done a fantastic job in their system. They believe in it. I believe in being a multiple defense, an attacking defense, a physical defense. That’s no slight on Seattle by any stretch. They are a very physical defense; they play a very simple scheme and let their guys play. But I don’t think that’s why you hire a Ryan. I think you hire a Ryan to get the best out of your players and put an enormous amount of pressure on an opposing team. We are going to do that mentally and physically. You lose half the game when you take it off mentally. It is better when you are more multiple. That’s what I believe in. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s what I believe in, and some of the great coaches in this league have done that, too. Seattle has been great, but all the other teams doing [that scheme] are finishing sh--ty like I did. Right there next to New Orleans is Atlanta, Jacksonville. That’s not sour grapes. That’s me getting pissed off. Because I am great.

VRENTAS: Who made the decision to run a version of Seattle’s defense?

ROB: I think everything starts with the head coach and goes higher than that. They signed players; they signed a free-agent free safety [Jairus Byrd in 2014], and said, we are going to keep him in the middle of the field like the goalpost. Well, that’s great. He’s not going to make one play back there, and now we have changed the entire defense for one signing, and it ruined us. He’s a great kid. But the truth of the matter is, you let an All-Pro safety walk, Malcolm Jenkins, and lost your two best leaders on the team, him and Roman Harper. We changed the entire style of play. It was strange. But hey, I did the best job I could. And it wasn’t good enough. They should have fired me. They probably should have fired everybody that made that decision to go in that direction. Now I’m going to move my whole family over here to Buffalo for a reason: to go kick everybody’s ass, including theirs.

Remember when the Saints hired Ryan, Sean Payton had spent a lot of time talking about how he wanted to change to more of a 3-4 type scheme. But by that second year... and after the Byrd signing.. it was pretty clear they had decided to do what Ryan is describing there.  Except for that one year when Ryan was allowed to do what he wanted and the brief, uncomfortable period where Payton stayed out of Gregg Williams' way, the Saints have been atrocious on defense under Sean. Maybe it really is all his fault. 

Nobody cares what's in the platform

Of course it's a good idea to do whatever one can to move the party away from blind fealty to hyper-militant Israel. But I hesitate to use even the word, symbolic, here to describe the actual significance of this.

The presence of Dr. Zogby and Dr. West on the 15-member panel, which also has six appointees of Hillary Clinton and four from the party chairwoman, does not guarantee their views will prevail. But it raises the prospect that one of the party’s most sensitive issues will be open to public debate while Mrs. Clinton is in a fight to unify her party and appeal to voters turned off by Donald J. Trump.

It also laid bare a steady shift in the Democratic Party, whose members have been less willing to back Israel’s government than in years past. According to a Pew Research Center survey in April, self-described liberal Democrats were twice as likely to sympathize with Palestinians over Israel than they were only two years ago. Forty percent of liberals sympathized more with Palestinians, the most since 2001, while 33 percent sympathized more with Israel.

At the end of the day, though. Nobody cares what the platform says or who was on the committee. The actual candidate for President is Hillary Clinton. And we know where she stands.