Congrats to the Nimbys

They've successfully located the "low barrier" homeless shelter away from where anybody will notice it which is, of course, the important thing.

The former Veterans Affairs hospital site in downtown New Orleans has been picked for redevelopment into a new low-barrier homeless shelter in a joint project of the Downtown Development District and the city with financial backing from tourism and convention groups, according to a draft agreement.

The old hospital has been replaced with the new VA medical facility in Mid-City, although a renovated wing of the building still houses a day center for the homeless to access services at 1530 Gravier St.

Congrats, also, on apparently squeezing some money out of the Convention Center to help pay for it. For some reason they have too much control over too much money that really ought to go to the city directly for things like this.  

So, uh, free agency is still going on, right?

Is this really all the Saints have left to pick from now? If so, we may have seen all the fireworks we're gonna see until Draft Day.  That's when we all get to complain about how badly they will blow whatever value they derived from the Brandin Cooks trade. Now that we've been sufficiently scolded by the Company Men about having expected too much in that deal, is it safe yet to say that the roster is still objectively worse regardless?  Or do we have to wait until after they blow the number 32 pick on Christian McCaffery or something?

(Actually I am going to laugh my ass off at the reactions if they take a receiver with one of those picks. Also... I kind of think they might need to do that.)

Freedom

Paul Ryan just wants you to have the freedom to drop dead.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that he doesn’t know how many Americans would lose coverage under his proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act, which is under fire from fellow Republicans, AARP and virtually every sector of the U.S. health-care industry.

“I can’t answer that question,” Ryan said in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“It’s up to people,” he said. “Here’s the premise of your question: Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance? People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”

It's up to you. You can choose the live saving cancer treatments, or you can have your 218 iPhones.  That's what America is all about. Ryan says this is about freeing us from the yoke of the individual mandate. But actually he means to replace it with one that insurance companies can collect on.

The individual mandate — the loathed requirement that nearly everyone get health insurance or pay a penalty — would be eliminated in the GOP repeal bill introduced Monday. But House Republicans have come up with their own cudgel to compel healthy Americans to purchase coverage, with the goal of offsetting the costs of insuring sicker patients.

Their plan would require individuals to maintain “continuous coverage” — or pay a penalty. People who let their coverage lapse would face a 30 percent surcharge on their monthly premiums for one year when they next buy coverage. The idea, like Obamacare's individual mandate, is to prevent people from purchasing insurance only after they get sick.

I do not know if you can get out of it by buying your insurer an iPhone. I am amused, in the meantime, about the ongoing parlor game over guessing whether the "principled conservatives" in the congress will sink the repeal over issues they may pretend to have with these replacement bills.

Of course Republicans will pass the repeal. Why? Because it does the one thing they actually care about. 

Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $144 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more, according to a congressional analysis.

Logical conclusion

The Trump budget proposes to blow up everything. This is literal in the sense that the proposed $54 billion increase in military spending means more things can be blown up. But that's not the only sort of destruction he's aiming at.

The spending budget Trump is set to release Thursday will offer the clearest snapshot of his vision for the size and role of government. Aides say that the president sees a new Washington emerging from the budget process, one that prioritizes the military and homeland security while slashing many other areas, including housing, foreign assistance, environmental programs, public broadcasting and research. Simply put, government would be smaller and less involved in regulating life in America, with private companies and states playing a much bigger role.

Remember also there's really nothing there to push back against the coming of the new Gilded Age. Not only does a hard right Republican Party control the Congress, but the #Resistance, such as it is, is comprised of a Democratic Party who has swallowed whole and promulgated this exact ideology for decades.  Trump is only bringing it to its logical conclusion.

The real problem, though, as it always has, lies with the faithless Democrats. Every time you heard Bill Clinton tell you, "The era of Big Government is over," this was the logical outcome.  Every Democrat who has held hands with Wall Street bankers or Silicon Valley venture capitalists has pushed the ball further in Trump's direction. Every "Public Private Partnership" trumpeted in Aspen has furthered Trump's argument.

Now Trump is here to blow everything up. And the "opposition" is too steeped in complicity to present anything like a credible counterargument.

More meetings and happenings

VCPORA is hosting a public Q&A with CAO Jeff Hebert about the Mayor's Surveillance Scheme tonight.

The meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the St. Jude Community Center, 400 North Rampart St.

Landrieu's security plan is a sweeping, multifaceted proposal to improve safety in the French Quarter and across the city in the wake of several violent shootings. But questions remain over just how the estimated price tag will cover the changes in a city with little wriggle room in its annual budget.

Remember, if the only people showing up at these events are the pro-Disney faction, the city assumes that's where the consensus view lies.

Also this series of NORA community engagement events is ongoing.  

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority is holding community engagement meetings throughout March to update residents on its investments throughout the city and discuss future opportunities for properties and housing in each area.

The goal is to keep residents and businesses informed on the progress of economic development of properties in each council district.

NORA Executive Director Brenda Breaux and members of the senior management team will present the organization’s sales history, disposition methods, current property inventory, updates on non-compliant Road Home properties and opportunities for housing development, commercial revitalization and land stewardship.

Remember, if the only people showing up at these events are the pro-Airbnb real estate speculators, the city assumes that's where the consensus view lies. The first of these meetings happened last Thursday, by the way. I haven't seen any reporting on it so it looks like the only way to know what's happening there is to go yourself.

Update:  Forgot to mention. NORA is meeting with the public "future opportunities for properties and housing"  at the same time that the city's STR licensing system goes live. So it's pretty clear who these meetings are probably for.

It’s later than you think

Daylight savings. Everyone complains about it. No one does anything.

Monuments should say something

We didn't fight to take the monuments down because we were uncomfortable with social and political statements in our public space. We wanted them down because we are hostile to the social and political statements those monuments made. We should replace them now with statements that are equally as potent as but which refute those we removed. This task must be considered within that context. It can't become a banal exercise in happy civic/tourism boostering. Unfortunately, that's what is most likely to happen.

Extreme vetting

RTA has a new Executive Director. Congratulations.

After The New Orleans Advocate asked later about reports that Cook used a public agency's credit card for a personal flight while serving as a transit executive in Ann Arbor, Michigan — and was separately terminated from another job in Georgia — the board said in a statement late Friday that it had discussed those allegations with Cook.

“Based on the information and references received, the board decided to proceed with making an offer to Mr. Cook, and is confident in his abilities to perform the duties of executive director,” the statement said.

But in an interview before that statement was released, Cook said he was never questioned about those instances specifically.

On the other hand, once you've gone and privatized operations and more or less repurposed the organization into an entity primarily concerned with buidling toys for tourists, what does a little petty corruption matter anyway?

Especially when the guy is a lifelong company man.

As for the latter instance, he said, Veolia paid him six months' severance after it released him from a job in Cobb County, Georgia. That proves he didn’t leave on bad terms, he said.

But in his conversations with the local RTA board members and hiring committee, "we never went through all that," he said.

Cook also has worked for Veolia in Las Vegas, served as general manager of the Salem Area Transit Authority in Oregon and was director of the Gainesville transit system in Florida, according to his résumé. A search of his name in newspaper coverage in those places didn't reveal any similar problems.

Most podcasted Mardi Gras ever

This is the third part of the Mardi Gras recap for this year.  Carnival is a sprawling and diverse event. There's no way to see or do all of it. There's not really even a correct "it" to do.  But I think, among the three of us on the show, we covered a pretty good sampling of events and perspectives. I thought that really came through well when we got to Fat Tuesday here.



We also get into the class politics of Carnival a bit if you're interested in that sort of thing.  Also, Part 1 and Part 2 are available as well.. again, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Borr-ing!

I don't mean Helena Moreno is a boring candidate. It's just boring that all of the set pieces in the 2017 municipal election diorama are arranging themselves exactly as everyone predicted they would.

It’s official: State Rep. Helena Moreno is running for an at-large seat on the New Orleans City Council.

Surrounded by dozens of supporters on the top floor of Basin Street Station on Thursday, Moreno confirmed her candidacy in the October election, one of the first major announcements of the city’s political season.

“I’ve really enjoyed working on state policy. I have,” said Moreno, a former television news anchor.

“But I’ve been listening to you, and I’ve heard you, and there’s more to do right here at home.”

She said she will seek the Division 1 at-large seat now held by Stacy Head, who is term-limited.

And then we get into the pro-forma discussion of "Who-is-White" and "Who-is-Black" and which At Large seat each is supposed to run for. It's a symptom of a lackluster political environment when everything is set up in advance before most voters are even paying attention.

I'm starting to worry about this with regard to the mayoral field as well.  Conventional wisdom currently holds that Jason Williams is out of the running there. And, although we hear often that JP Morrell and Walt Leger are considering it, they could both end up passing.  And assuming Torres is just faking everyone out for attention, that would leave us with, what? LaToya, Bagneris, and Troy Carter?  Jesus, why should anyone even bother?

One gets the impression Clancy DuBos may be just as bored. Because why else would he throw these names out? It can't possibly be because he's actually heard anything... can it?

Dubos also expects a wild card or two, possibly a well-known businessman -- the daughter and sister of former mayors -- and a sitting district attorney.

"Sidney Torres is a potential wild card," DuBos said. "So is Monique Morial. So is Leon Cannazzaro."(sic)

Leon for mayor is a pretty funny idea. Maybe we should do this. Cannizzaro can run for mayor. Williams can be DA. Mitch can run for Sheriff and Gusman can go be on the City Council.  Every 8-10 years, everybody just swaps departments. Every now and then somebody goes to jail, though. In which case that person has to sit out a few rounds until they get a radio show or something.

Anyway, the actual worry here is there is so much going on in the city of New Orleans right now that people at the grass roots level are worried about; inequality, lack of opportunity, a failing and corrupt school privatization scheme, a broken and brutal criminal justice system, an affordable housing crisis, and an official preference for serving the tourism industry at the expense of residents.

The establishment politicos currently shuffling from job to job barely care about any of these issues. Or, at least, when they do, they tend to interface with it from the point of view of the privileged classes in which they themselves circulate. We need a politics that responds directly to the people on the bottom.  It doesn't look like this round of local elections is going to give us that.

The Zulu thing

Who knows what Paul Tuennerman actually meant when he launched the Facebook comment heard round the world. But CW Cannon's interpretation is very close to what I thought when I first read about this dust-up.

To me, Paul Tuennerman’s comment is a critique of media, not a critique of blackness. It suggests his awareness that certain forms of expression are so explosive that they can’t be digested at all by national media, with its inability to process the ironies and inversions of carnival expression. It shows his well-founded fear that the frightened and dishonest world of America’s “conversation about race” is likely to cry “racism” whenever it sees an image that might be racist in some other, very different context.

That might be it.  It might not, though! Unlike the multitude of clubbish yuppies rushing to the Tuennermans' defense this week, I'm suspicious enough of our city's white, professional liberalesque con-profit class to believe most of them are actually pretty racist. But I also think Cannon is probably correct. He's got a pretty good handle on the rest of the context there, anyway. 

Where's the Mardi Gras re-cap?

Y'all I really want to puke out my parade notes onto the internet because, as always, there are a lot. But there hasn't been a whole lot of time.  This is partially because we podcasted most of it Saturday night. Editing that alone has been enough of a chore. Here's part one. And here is part two. Part three is still forthcoming!   There's also been the matter of "curating" and tagging 700 photos from the season (which are here, btw some of them are good.) If I get a chance to write up something substantial, this weekend I'll do that.

Otherwise, you're stuck with "Rex Duke" which is, itself, something of a disappointment this year for eschewing the old parade ratings system.   They try to pass this decision off as some sort of half-woke class consciousness but, really, they're just afraid of dealing with the feedback. Besides, there's no need to compare a fun little day parade like, say, King Arthur, directly with the sort of spectacle Bacchus can afford to put on. One would think "Rex Duke's" five crown rating system could easily take this into account. Both of those parades can be rated the same number of crowns based on what each sets out to do.

I actually think about this every year when I rate parades. But, because I put all them together on one list, it doesn't necessarily come off that way. But that's fine because I think it's funnier. And anyway what I'm doing here is presenting a very subjective view based on one person's first hand experience of being at these events. Orpheus is ahead of Morpheus because, well, there is more to see in Orpheus, but also because my memories of Morpheus are far hazier.  But it should go without saying that they're all fun. Otherwise, what would be the point? Anyway here is this year's final parade list. Every uptown parade besides Mid-City and Okeanos are ranked.  Detailed explanations may or may not be forthcoming.

1. Thoth
2. Muses
3. Orpheus
4. Rex
5. Proteus
6. Zulu
7. Tucks
8. Bacchus
9. D’Etat
10. Hermes
11. Iris
12. Femme Fatale
13. Babylon
14. King Arthur
15. Nyx
16. Chaos
17. Morpheus
18. Pygmalion
19. Pontchartrain
20. Sparta
21. Druids
22. Carrollton
23. Choctaw
24. Alla
25. Freret

Participation Trophies: Oshun and Cleopatra. For gamely rolling in a heavy downpour on a cold first Friday night.

"Kick me"

No idea what your councilmembers are actually squabbling about here. The action in question was already approved by citywide referendum in November.  It looks like they're just arguing over whose name goes on the ordinance. Or, I guess, over who gets "kicked" in the process.

All four of the council members who voted with Brossett said they came to the council meeting prepared to vote on the ordinances. Both Head and Guidry said they were led to believe the ordinances would go through committee. At one point, Head accused Brossett of using Thursday's meeting to "kick" Guidry and called him "horrifically unprofessional."

"There's still some subtle reason I haven't figured out that we're not going through" the normal process, Head said. "Let's assume it's a perfect ordinance. Why is it not going through committee when there are concerns articulated by your colleagues?"

Not sure why Guidry would even care all that much about credit since she's retiring anyway. As for Head, I think it's interesting that she cares so much about eh "normal process" here given that she ran ahead with her plan to gut city pensions before the legal review process was complete there. But that's a whole other can of worms. 

Is the plan for Peat to stay at guard forever?

That looks like the way he slots into the projected line-up even after the Warford signing. (One assumes Jahri Evans is really leaving this time.) Anyway, the talk about Peat all last year was that they were asking too much of him to keep switching positions all the time. Is he going to just stay at guard from now on? Or will he have to slide in at tackle when either the fragile Armstrong or 30,000 year old Strief inevitably misses time?

Is there a problem with contractor fraud in the French Quarter?

Jeff Landry's office (maybe a little too preoccupied with trying to dictate police and/or immigration enforcement practices in New Orleans) found itself wholly unprepared to handle the quite predictable heavy load of contractor fraud cases in the wake of last year's floods. A Baton Rouge TV station asked him about it. He basically yelled at them for being "fake news."

Trump Presidency somewhat bad for Louisiana

Do you live in a low-lying coastal region where sometimes you worry about hurricanes, maybe?  Prepare to be made great again, buddy.

The other reason that the coastal property bubble is about to burst is that the Trump administration is taking active measures to boost U.S. emissions and gut clean energy programs. The United States may or may not stay in the Paris Agreement, but its leaders are actively working to reduce our ability to warn coastal residents of hurricanes and storm surge in a timely fashion — and they are working to gut coastal adaptation programs.

Donald Trump has appointed climate science deniers to almost every relevant position, and he has floated budgets that would gut not just climate science, but devastate our ability to monitor ice melt and to forecast extreme coastal weather such as hurricanes.

So if you own or invest in coastal property, or insure coastal property, or write 30-year mortgages for such property, it seems pretty clear that the bursting of the coastal property bubble is closer than you might have thought.

South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard has warned that “coastal mortgages are growing into as big a bubble as the housing market of 2007.” He points out that when this bubble crashes it will never recover, but prices will continue to drop as sea levels and storm surges get higher and higher.

The good news, I guess, is Mar-A-Lago is going under too. So, we'll have that.

Connick: "Leave Leon Alooone"

The notorious former DA thinks the current DA is doing a heckuva job.

Louisiana law gives the district attorney sole authority to decide who will be prosecuted for crimes in his jurisdiction and only the district attorney decides the charge. The Orleans Parish DA alone is responsible for this and neither the mayor, the council nor the Metropolitan Crime Commission has standing to suggest otherwise. So those who want to suggest alternative policies for the DA should back off and let the DA do his job.

That's Harry Connick writing in to the Advocate today to cheer on Leon Cannizzaro, for some reason.  It might have something to do with these criticisms of Cannizzaro's aggressive and out-dated prosecutorial practices. 

Cannizzaro's office also leads the state in invoking the state's habitual-offender law, sending away far more inmates under the statute than any other DA. That law allows prosecutors almost complete discretion to ratchet up prison terms based on a defendant's prior convictions, going up to 20 years to life on a fourth felony offense.

New Orleans, with less than 10 percent of the state's population, now accounts for 29 percent of the 2,645 state inmates who are serving 20 years after being sentenced under the repeat-offender law, the data show.

Cannizzaro's frequent use of that law raises the stakes for many defendants facing allegations from a DA's Office that accepts criminal charges against 85 percent of felony arrestees, on average.

That pace of prosecution, which has drawn pointed criticism from the City Council, far exceeds the rates of Cannizzaro's predecessors, former DAs Harry Connick and Eddie Jordan.

Leon locks 'em all up. It's precisely these sorts of policies that have come under fire in recent years for having spurred our national mass incarceration nightmare. The U.S. locks up more people than any other country. Louisiana locks up more than any other state.  The effects of this cruelty have been utterly devastating.

In some ways, we're beginning to come to grips with it. For example, many observers are expecting to see some positive movement on criminal justice reform in the coming legislative session. The New Orleans City Council has taken steps in the past year to reduce the number of people arrested for minor non-violent offenses.  Here is Councilman Jason Williams (and perhaps future DA candidate) knocking Cannizzaro's use of the habitual-offender law. 

Williams argued that the DA's reliance on the habitual-offender law is "an abuse" and a relic of a failed war on drugs.

"Doing that today is flying in the face of a smarter criminal justice system," Williams argued. "A lot of these felony convictions are low-level drug abusers who are getting double-digit (prison terms). We're not any safer than we were. By and large, too many people that none of us are scared of are getting large prison terms."

Cannizzaro's response in that article is basically, "Yeah, well Connick did it way more," which is pretty funny and may also explain why Harry has rushed in to defend him. There's also the matter of Robert Jones whose wrongful conviction was overturned (after 23 years) because attorneys were finally able to show a "clear pattern" of misconduct and evidence suppression existed while Connick was in office.  Cannizzaro seriously considered re-trying Jones before reluctantly backing off.  No doubt Connick has this in mind when he tells us we should "let the DA do his job."

James Gill's commentary on the Jones case said of Connick,  "He has gone down in history as the man who introduced the concept of prosecutorial misconduct to the masses." Cannizzaro must be exceedingly proud to have garnered his endorsement.

Actually all news and politics is "disputed"

The world is a big place where people have profound disagreements about the way things should work. We try to resolve this as best as possible by fostering open societies and democratic forms of government. But that's pretty much the best we can do as far as system design is concerned.  The rest is up to us to work out through constant argument and struggle.  Because, again, different groups of people have vastly different ideas and interests to look out for.

We should expect a healthy democracy and "public discourse" over such differences to be contentious and passionate. I would be highly suspicious of a multi-billion dollar business asserting its obligation to "tamp down" on that.

The "disputed" tag is part of Facebook's grand plan to crack down on fake news as the company tries to tamp down the controversy over its role in the spread of misinformation that sharpened political divisions and inflamed discourse during and after the presidential election.

Ideally election time should be marked by "sharpened political divisions and inflamed discourse."  The alternative to that is apathy and/or suppression.  So there's no secret formula or algorithm that can.. or even should.. make it go away. Anyone who tells you different is either still in the fifth grade or, more likely, is lying in order to tilt the playing field to their advantage. Here's Tom Frank.

Yes, I know, the web is a wild west sort of place, with fake news lurking in every corner. But follow our prestige media for a while and you will start to notice an uncanny unanimity of opinion. From TED talks to NPR, from the DNC to the Washington Post and on to the award-winning blogs, they all agree with each other, echoing and quoting and linking back and forth in a happy conversation, all the comfortable insiders welcoming one another with praise and prizes. What they don’t agree upon, meanwhile, is simply ignored. It is outside the conversation. It is excluded.

A world without fake news might really be awesome. So might a shop where every bottle of wine is excellent. So might an electoral system in which everyone heeds the urging of the professional consensus. But in any such system, reader, people like you and me can be assured with almost perfect confidence that our voices will be curated out.

Will the Republicans pass the Obamacare replacement?

Well, let's see, is it a big tax cut for rich people?  Yes, it is.

4) Taxes repealed

Finally, Ryancare repeals almost all of the other Obamacare taxes, meaning it probably won’t pay for itself. Repealing the Obamacare taxes on the rich is just a big giveaway to the rich.

That's really the only criterion that matters here. Yes, they will pass it. 

Stacy Head still hates poor people

After all this time, this is still what she's all about. 

New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head is proposing changes that would make the city’s main pension plan less generous for new employees and those hired in the past 10 years — changes she said are necessary for the long-term viability of the system.

The changes would mean newer employees — who make up almost two-thirds of the workers enrolled in the New Orleans Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, or NOMERS — would accrue benefits at a slower rate and new hires would have to work longer before being vested in the system or becoming eligible for retirement.

The proposal also would either do away with cost-of-living adjustments for all retirees until the system is nearly fully funded or else require the city and employees to kick in extra money to fund those increases.

She's on her way out of office this year. This must be the goodbye kiss. 

Meetings and happenings

This series of NORA meetings (one in each council district) begins in District B tomorrow night.

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority is holding community engagement meetings throughout March to update residents on its investments throughout the city and discuss future opportunities for properties and housing in each area.

The goal is to keep residents and businesses informed on the progress of economic development of properties in each council district.

I believe this is a follow up on a City Council directive to the agency to "collaborate with the community" on ways to put the 3,000 or so properties it holds via the Road Home program to use in alleviating the affordable housing crisis. It's probably a good idea to go there and talk the folks. Otherwise, they'll probably hear from a bunch of flippers and short term rental vultures.

Later in the month (March 25), the Office of Neighborhood Engagement will host a breakfast at Cafe Reconcile where officials are supposed to provide updates on STR licensing as well as the mayor's creepy surveillance plan.

Again, these events can either be genuine opportunities for grassroots input or they can be more face time for insiders, landlords, and developers depending on who shows up. 

What about us brain dead slobs?

The Six Flags endgame may be at hand. And it is looking pretty darn hilarious. The bidding parties, after having failed multiple times to wear down the IDB on their own, have decided to see what happens if they gang up.

Two developers who have made separate offers to buy the abandoned Six Flags amusement park site in New Orleans East are considering making a joint offer for the property.

Frank Scurlock, the owner of Scurlock Entertainment, said Tuesday that he's been talking with Henry Klein of 30/90 Development about teaming up to try to buy and redevelop the park.

“We are in communication ... and are exploring the possibility,” Scurlock said.

Klein confirmed that it was “highly likely" the two men would present a joint proposal to the Industrial Development Board, the public board that manages the city-owned site.

Let's see, if we take your worthless twice rejected bid and combine it with my worthless, rejected bid, well then, worthless X worthless =....   Hey, you know when you've got one Billy Joe at quarterback and that's not working out so well and you think, OK but what if we had TWO Billy Joes at quarterback!  That's kind of what this is like. 

Also what is Scurlock still doing here? When we last saw him he said he was giving up on Six Flags and taking his Noah's Ark or his Zip Line or whatever (his idea has changed several times) and scooting off to Jefferson Parish never to speak on this again. 

Turns out he was just there to pick up a new friend.

Scurlock has hired former Jefferson Parish President John Young to represent him before the board.

During a board meeting last month, he offered $4.5 million in cash for the property but then said he was pulling the offer after board members declined to consider it on the spot.

At the same meeting, Klein said he’d pay $5.5 million but conceded that he didn’t have all of the money available immediately.

Ok well let's welcome John Young aboard to whatever the new scheme is. We also should emphasize that Klein's proposal at the last meeting was basically just him jumping out of the audience and, on the spot, offering the $5.5 million he didn't have. He also didn't have an actual proposal he could describe in much detail.  

As the board heard from the two groups making purchase offers as listed on the agenda, Henry Klein, an attorney who said he represents 30/90 Development, said his group wants to offer $5.5 million for the property, while giving no details who's involved in the group or their plans for the Six Flags site. Klein left the meeting while it was still ongoing.

IDB member Justin Augustine said people jumping out of the audience to make an offer is "not a professional process" and urged the board to use a more professional method to receive offers. Board members noted that analysis of offers will go beyond the purchase price and include a look at what's being proposed on the site and the financial capacity of the developers.

At the time, that struck us as particularly funny.  We're always on the lookout for monorail salesmen when it comes to land use stuff around here. When we read about Klein's stunt, we went and got the meme out and everything.



But that's kind of a tired gag now, anyway. Surely we aren't still dealing with the sort of people who... oh goddammit. 

If the board chooses him, Scurlock said he plans to open what he called the first phase of his project — essentially a preview of the rides that would eventually be open at the park — on Memorial Day weekend.

That preview would include smaller attractions that would be set up in a parking lot outside the abandoned park’s gates, as well as tram rides that would take visitors on a tour of the soon-to-be constructed park, he said.

Well, okay. Good luck to all involved. The next IDB meeting is March 17. 

Intrusive unconstitutional policing is intrusive and unconstitutional

It's not a healthy sign for our democracy in general that we're willing to put up with abuses at the hands of leaders we "trust" rather than demand that the rule of law apply across the board. All of a sudden we're realizing under Trump that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to let the Obama Administration suppress whistle-blowers, spy on, indefinitely detain, and even assassinate American citizens. But that's precisely what happened.  In my more optimistic moments, I wonder if Trump is maybe the reducto-ad-absurdum argument we need to finally blow apart the imperial presidency and surveillance state.  But that's probably not what will happen. More likely we'll gripe for a few years until we put a "responsible" Democrat in charge of the same dreadful regime plus whatever new horrors Trump will have introduced.

In the meantime, though, at least the fact of Trump is causing us to re-think our rush to install more oppressive policies at the local level.  It may not stop us entirely, but at least it's making us pause to think.

But the bellicosity of President Donald Trump's administration on criminal justice topics and uncertainty over what the next mayoral election may bring has cast a pall over what the plan's long-term consequences might turn out to be.

"I think we need to be hyper-vigilant ," City Councilman Jason Williams said in a recent interview.

Williams' main concern radiates from Mayor Mitch Landrieu's proposal to broaden police surveillance throughout the city, mostly through the deployment of new crime cameras. He does not oppose the mayor's intention to target "hot spot" intersections where crime rates are high. Rather, he worries about what happens after that.

Landrieu's term ends in May 2018. State Attorney General Jeff Landry has clashed with the mayor on several fronts, including over the city's violent crime rate and the administration's policies toward immigration enforcement.

And Trump has christened himself a "law and order" president focused on cracking down on criminals rather than promoting crime prevention policies. He has also made clear that he wants to target immigrant populations.

Those policies, combined with access to a citywide camera system, could lead to over-policing or the singling out of specific groups of people, Williams said. He also was worried that any focus on immigration enforcement, which typically falls under federal jurisdiction, would further strain a famously depleted police department.

"If (a presidential) executive order deputizes our police officers to make immigration (enforcement) a priority over the needs we have, then I'm afraid we don't have the manpower," he said.

Incidentally, one might also consider this with regard to the proposed rental registry.  It's not too far fetched to imagine Jeff Landry deciding he wants housing inspectors to also ask about tenants' immigration status, for example. Not that the registry law allows him to do that. But once you've already violated the Fourth Amendment by entering people's homes, you've agreed it's at least conceivable.

You'd think somewhere along the line we'd make the leap from, "A mean person shouldn't have such broad surveillance power" to "No one should," but we never quite get there.  Anyway, this is a bit better for now.  

Please don't start the toppling party without me

Hang on a sec. Just gonna dial up AreTheMonumentsDownYet dot com. Probably still in limbo and... whoah, okay.

New Orleans officials can begin the process of removing the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle and three other monuments at the center of a long-running, city-led effort, a federal appeals court ruled Monday (March 6).

In the ruling, the three-judge panel with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found that the groups trying to block the removal of the monuments, Monumental Task Committee and the Louisiana Landmarks Society, failed to present a case that contained a legal argument that showed the monuments should stay up. The court wrote that the groups relied on two legal claims, "both of which wholly lack legal viability or support."

I last took a good look at the Lee monument a little over a week ago when our float passed (Tivoli) Circle.  I only had a second to take a picture. I was a little bit busy at the time. But I did take a moment to think about how ridiculously long the process of getting them down has been.



It's been so long, in fact, that earlier in the season I found myself sighing at monument floats in Druids and Chaos.  It had started to seem like such old news. Can't these guys just let it go?





But then I remembered the specific subject matter in question which is all about.... not letting it go.



Well it looks like the time has finally come now. When can we get started?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office said that a request for proposals will be issued within the next day to obtain bids for a company to remove the monuments, which will be stored in a city-owned warehouse until it's determined what will happen to them.

Oh boy. Well let's hope all the bidding contractors make sure they've got their auto insurance up to date. As for the monuments themselves, why not just give them to these parading krewes since they love them so much?  They could each make one into a recurring signature float. We'll give Lee to Chaos, Davis to D'etat, and Beauregard to Druids.  The Liberty Monument, of course, will have to be dragged down St. Charles each year to the Comus Ball where Erroll Laborde will curtsy to it thus signaling the end of Carnival for another season.

But what is to stop them from doing this?

We can yell until we're blue in the face about landlords threatening to jack up rents should City Council pass its "healthy homes" rental registry ordinance. But what is actually going to stop them from doing that? One gets the impression that proponents of the ordinance don't care. Or at least they don't care enough.

Back in January, a Gambit cover story on the ordinance, made plain the gross power imbalance that exists between landlords and tenants in the city.

Brown moved into the one-bedroom apartment in 2010. There were leaks in the foyer, holes under the kitchen sink, mold and mildew in the cabinets, and two broken air-conditioning units. She suffered through it for the affordable rent: $450 a month. She waited 30 minutes for hot water to drip slowly into her bathtub. She was told it was an old house and the pipes were old. "Excuse after excuse," she says.

She asked her landlord to make repairs, which he rarely did, and the more she asked, the more defensive he became. A month before she was told she had to move, Brown wrote him a letter. "I love where I live," she wrote. "I don't plan on moving." She asked for help paying for the window units she replaced, whether through reducing her rent or paying her for their cost, and to install a lock on the fence — or reduce her rent so she could buy one — after a man broke into the backyard. Her landlord responded with a letter giving her until the end of May to move out and prorating her deposit if she waited that long. She left before the end of April.

"I was confused, I was mad," she says. "I hadn't done anything. I called like, 'Why am I getting evicted?' He said, 'You typed me this letter. It's time for you to go. You're not being appreciative.'"

"'You're not being appreciative,'" she says.

The registry is supposed to alleviate that problem. I'm not convinced it does, though. If we take the landlords' threats at face value, in fact, this may make matters worse. Without strong protections for tenants against evictions or rent increases, the "burden" of inspections and fees inevitably become yet another bit of leverage for landlords looking to exploit vulnerable people. There is already abundant evidence that landlords behave badly towards tenants. There is little in the ordinance that prevents them from continuing to do that.

Instead, the main thrust seems to be about reducing "blight." By which we mean it's about protecting property values from the ill effects of living near unpresentable buildings and (unspoken but implied) people. Here's Latoya Cantrell in the Gambit article emphasizing this, in fact.

"Any substandard property that exists, in any neighborhood, brings down that neighborhood. No one deserves that," Cantrell said outside City Hall on Jan. 18. "If we're going to improve the quality of life for all New Orleanians, we're going to have to improve the rental stock."

It's subtle, but part of what she means by improving the "rental stock" references the renters themselves. If the registry ordinance ends up tipping more problematic properties over to more well manicured short term rentals where nobody actually lives, so be it. So long as the tourists don't make too much noise, it's better than having to deal with living too close to the poors. Short term rentals are exempt from the registry, in fact.

It's true that New Orleans has a problem with slumlords. But a policy approach to that problem should directly address the power relationship between an impoverished struggling population and the city's disproportionately wealthy landholders.  "Healthy housing" standards are great. But if you aren't addressing the affordability issue you aren't actually improving the health of the community.  Instead, the Healthy Homes law is essentially Obamacare for housing. It's a step toward encouraging better practices, but housing in New Orleans also is badly lacking a viable "public option." Without stronger measures to address access to housing, whatever improvements are made in quality will remain out of reach.

Maybe they should just give us our money

The Convention Center board sits on a bit pile of public money while the city scrambles each year to fund services. Recently they've used that money to bail out Ti Martin's con-profit and to help the mayor install security gates and surveillance cameras in the theme park formerly known as Bourbon Street.

They're happy to have finished with this business because it means now they can get back down to the much more serious job of handing even more money over to hotel developers. Just something to remember later in the year when we're arguing over the city budget again.

Torres Fest

Krewe D'Etat float depicting "serial entrepreneur" and potential mayoral candidate Sidney Torres as a "Chalmatian" dalmatian. 


It's a celebration of all things Sidney at the Advocate this week. On Day One we were awed by the "dashing derring-do."

As Sidney Torres IV — sheathed in black, sunglasses on, hair slicked into a tidy man-bun — strode along Royal Street on a recent sunny afternoon, the driver of a passing mule-drawn carriage spotted him.

“There goes our next mayor,” the driver announced to his load of bewildered tourists.
Torres didn’t break stride. Such shout-outs are not uncommon.

A self-described “serial entrepreneur” and scion of a powerful St. Bernard Parish family, Torres made millions redeveloping houses and hotels and hauling trash. He also made headlines launching an app and a private patrol to combat crime in the French Quarter.

Along the way, he’s promoted himself and his dashing, derring-do attitude as aggressively as his various enterprises. His next campaign aims to replicate his local notoriety nationwide.

What follows there is a rather flattering recap of Torres' career beginning with his being born into St. Bernard.. uh.. royalty, going off on a youthful rumspringa with Lenny Kravitz, and his coming home to parlay his family privilege into personal fortune.  It finally all came together for him when his  grandmother co-signed a loan allowing him to flip his first house.  In Torres-speak, this qualifies as "self-made" wealth.

Day One concludes with the obligatory speculation about Sidney's political ambitions. Will he run for mayor? He's gonna leave us hagning as long as he can. He's got "a great team of people," working on that question. It sounds here like it may come down to whether or not he can buy any other candidates.

“Honestly, I will not decide until probably 10 minutes before qualifying closes,” he said last week. Meanwhile, he has “put together a great team of people” to lay out “what I think needs to happen with the city as far as education, crime, roads.

“It’s not cheap," he said. "If I don’t run, I’m serious about being heavily involved with somebody who will carry out the ideas and thoughts that I have. My preference is really to find someone that I could work with. But there’s nobody out there.”

Incidentally, who is on Sidney's "great team of people," anyway?  Does anyone know?
Surely some of them would have been on hand to talk with on Day Two of Torres Fest when the featured entertainment was the premiere of Sid's reality TV show about, yep, real estate flipping.  The setting for the evening was eerily appropriate.

Torres hosted the party at The Monastery, a former Carmelite monastery in the 1200 block of North Rampart Street in the French Quarter that he bought in 2016. Guests, including his mother, Earline Torres, his grandmother, Lena Torres, and entertainer Chris Owens, watched a live feed from the CNBC broadcast on a theater-size screen set up for that purpose.

Is there anything more perfect than a deconsecrated holy ground for gathering the ghouls together to watch a show that dares to tell the story of gentrification from the vampire's perspective?  The cadaverous presence of Chris Owens is probably a step too far, really.

The first of four hour-long episodes of "The Deed" to feature Torres centered on his dealings with Nicole Webre. Webre bought a former bakery in the Irish Channel, tore it down and subdivided the plot into individual lots, intending to build upscale homes on each and sell them. She borrowed money from her parents, in addition to taking out loans.

When the lots and the first two houses she built on the site didn't sell, she found herself overextended and unable to keep up with her monthly payments.

Producers of the show selected her for Torres as an investment client. One of the premises of "The Deed" is that he must loan his own money, but then earns a piece of the project's profits, if any materialize.

I hope it's not spoiling anything to assume that Nicole (and Sidney) come out OK in this deal.  But how can they not? Anything in such close proximity to "the culture" is primo-short term rental material.  For example, here is an article about a study released by the New York based Inside Airbnb last week. What was found there doesn't translate directly to New Orleans, but this pattern looked familiar.

It’s mostly white residents cashing in as Airbnb hosts in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods, according to a new report by a watchdog website.

Using host photographs, Inside Airbnb determined that across 72 mostly African-American neighborhoods, the Airbnb host population is 74% white — compared to just a 13.9% overall white population in those neighborhoods.

They estimate that white Airbnb hosts in black neighborhoods earned $159.7 million, compared to $48.3 million for black hosts.

“It’s clear that it’s a racial gentrification tool,” said Inside Airbnb founder Murray Cox. “They’ve been using people of color and black faces in their marketing and lobbying campaign, but they’re not fundamentally the people who are using it.”

I thought about this on Mardi Gras morning when we walked over to see the Wild Magnolias come out to sing Indian Red at the Sportsman's Corner.



Central City is a heavily active parading ground for Indians as well as for second lining organizations year round. And, thanks in no small part to the growth of Airbnb and "authenticity" tourism, it is fast becoming a neighborhood where nobody actually lives. What does it mean for these community-based expressions of folk culture when their community setting no longer exists?  The day may come when it falls to Sidney Torres and his "great team of people" to solve such existential cultural and economic problems for us.  How might that go, one wonders.

On Day Three of Torres Fest, Stephanie Grace wrote a column about the mayor's race using Sidney as a framing device. Her conclusion about Torres' week in media: "But hey, when you're trying to keep your brand out there, there's no such thing as bad publicity." In that case, we'd better get used it. There's likely plenty more bad publicity to come.

Archaeology

Uncovering the lost civilization that was New Orleans in the latter half of the 20th Century.

Amid the debris, Greg Lambousy, Director of the New Orleans Jazz Museum, spotted a long iron rod with a curve like a shepherd’s crook and used it to pull down a gutter.

We were trying to get a better look at what we’ve come to call the “Panther mural.” Painted on cinder block, covered over with stucco years ago and relegated to oblivion, it appeared to embody themes of African-American empowerment and militancy from the era of black nationalism.

Also relegated to oblivion, except in the minds of a few, is the memory of how powerful the New Orleans Panthers were in 1970 when they took up residence in a Desire Public Housing Development unit and vowed to stay there to protect residents from police.

Champions of the poor, unifiers, revolutionary educators, the Panthers were dreaded by some — including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who vowed to eradicate them — and a source of inspiration to others. As I explain in my book, “Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans,” believers saw them as a divinely protected force for good.

After our strenuous, resourceful, and somewhat dangerous clearing efforts, photographer Mark Sindler got a pretty clear angle on the mural where the stucco had fallen away. Propitiously, just then the sun came out.

If you follow the wildly improbable twists and turns of this story, you could conclude that we, all of us, are being led to pay attention, to notice something that has revolutionary and artistic relevance to New Orleans history.

Nobody likes Leon

You know it's bad when neither side of the case trusts you to handle it properly.

After the NOPD initially booked Stemle on misdemeanor counts of simple battery and trespassing, White complained to law enforcement authorities and media that police had undercharged the offense. Two weeks later, Cannizzaro's office brought the charge of home invasion, a felony punishable by 5 to 20 years upon conviction. The DA's office said the harsher charge was based on screening of the evidence, not White's complaints.

But Stemle's hearing on the recusal motion last summer took a surprising turn when White was called to the witness stand and said she also didn't want Cannizzaro handling the case. The judge testified under oath that she neither liked nor trusted the district attorney, and was "concerned about him handling my case" because Cannizzaro had been "very personal in his disdain for things I have done professionally."

What a goofball comedy that whole story is. The real bad news, though, is it gives Jeff Landry more stuff to do in New Orleans. 

Attorney General Jeff Landry's office instead was tasked with prosecuting Alabama attorney Joshua Stemle, whom New Orleans police said staggered into the courtyard of White's Governor Nicholls Street home and scuffled with the judge's husband, Thomas Wilson III, around 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 20, 2015.

And it's over a thing that happened in the French Quarter. If anything this will just encourage Landry to beef up his "task force."  Maybe there should be a curfew on lawyers in the Quarter after 3 AM. 

The vaporware industry

Putting tens of people to work on ceremonial groundbreakings that never lead to anything.

“Foxconn is going to spend a tremendous amount of money on building a massive plant,” Trump said the day after the investment was revealed, “and probably more than one.”

But, as Harrisburg learned, the gulf between these eye-popping announcements and what takes place on the ground can be huge — and frequently overlooked.

“They are scrambling to look good,” Mark Selden, senior research associate at Cornell University’s East Asian program, said. “It’s a sign of the pressure that Trump is placing on everyone in the world to deliver on his agenda.”

Companies tend to view these announcements as an opening bid in a negotiation, said Alberto Moel, a senior analyst with Bernstein Research in Hong Kong. Firms know politicians like the splashy headlines. And if everything falls into place — the business climate improves, they extract enough concessions such as tax breaks and free land — they might be able to make it happen.

“It actually puts the onus on the U.S. in a way,” Moel said. “They are saying: ‘I’m along for the ride. Here’s my proposal.’ ”

If the deal falls apart, as it often does, no one is going to talk about it.

“The government themselves aren’t going to remind you of that, Trump has no intention of helping you remember that,” Moel said. “What’s the downside?”

The company makes a big promise contingent upon a package of fine-print concessions and giveaways. That either comes together or it doesn't. Everyone's PR needs are satisfied in any case. By the time the deal is quietly shelved, everyone is off to sell the next circus.  Either way, the pols involved (especially, the Trump variety pols) will go on touting the mere announcement as a great victory regardless of what alternative facts say.

There's a problem with the #Standing

The SLFPA-E lost another round in court.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday refused to revive a Louisiana levee board's lawsuit blaming dozens of oil and gas companies for damage to the state's fragile coast, a major victory for energy companies and their political supporters who cast the suit as an attack on a vital state industry.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upheld a federal judge's 2015 decision in favor of energy companies that argued the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East lacked legal standing to bring its damage claims.

This isn't necessarily the end of the line although it is disheartening. Still, even though the flood protection agency may... for whatever reason... lack the standing to sue, governments themselves may still be able to.  Several parishes have brought their own lawsuits. The Governor has encouraged all coastal parishes to join, in fact. He has also suggested that the state would step in and bring its own lawsuit if all of the parishes do not.  Naturally, the Attorney General is not on the same page.

Edwards says he'll have a comment later today.

America was not great

It's only March 2017 but the T-P is already deep into something called "300 for 300." It's a nostalgia kind of like what they did when they spent a year remembering the 10th Katrinaversary. Only this time we are remembering the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city... which in a lot of ways is the reason we had a Katrinaversary in the first place so it's appropriate. 

Today they take us on a trip down segregation lane with separate but equal features on the history of the Pontchartrain and Lincoln Beach amusement parks. The times, they were bittersweet.

There's no way around the fact that Lincoln Beach, while separate, was far from equal to the white-only Pontchartrain Beach across town. That, after all, was the hallmark of America's segregation area. "We would drive by Pontchartrain Beach and marvel at the Zephyr roller coaster since Lincoln Beach's was much smaller," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial told The Times-Picayune in 2014. To that extent, it was a cruel reminder of the status quo at the time. Still, for a decade Lincoln Beach was a place of fun, sun and family memories for countless New Orleanians -- even if those memories were often bittersweet.

The times, they were also toxic. 

Two in-ground pools were constructed in the park in the 1960s so patrons could still escape the heat when Lake Pontchartrain had a high pollutant count.

But thanks, in part, to the creation of EPA in 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Lake Pontchartrain basin and similar water systems nationwide have made slow but steady progress. For example, EPA helps support efforts of local government agencies and NGOs like the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation  to manage and monitor water quality. Recently, EPA's Urban Waters Partnership has helped create projects that ensure the lake's sustainability while enhancing public access and recreation opportunities.

But maybe that's all about to go away. President Trump's budget proposal announced this week proposes a 24 percent cut to EPA overall. During the campaign, Trump actually called for abolishing the department altogether. And the man he chose to head the agency has spent much of his career in government working to roll back its authority. 

It's all part of the plan to "Make America Great Again." But America has not been particularly great. And making it even the slightest bit more tolerable a place has always been and will always be a struggle. Perhaps if Tump's opposition in 2016 had been the least bit honest about this and not barked empty crap at voters about how "America has always been great," then maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. Oh well. #BernieWouldaWon, though.

Anyway, as a companion to this morning's nostalgia pieces from the T-P, here's a look at what America's Great Cities were like before EPA. Presumably, Trump will make them that way again.

Filling slots, getting the titles in order

It's the traditional time in the municipal elections process where we sort out the "Who-Is-Blacks" and the "Who-Is-Whites" and figure out which of those runs for what.

It's been an unwritten political rule in New Orleans for decades that each of the two seats goes to one black and one white candidate. The trend has been bucked only twice since the mid-1970s, and both times at special elections that were held after Hurricane Katrina.

If it holds in this election, Williams, who is black, one could take one seat, while Moreno, who is white and Hispanic, could take the other. Moreno, for her part, said Thursday that she would make up her mind on that point as soon as next week.

Of course, no law would prevent black candidates like District D Councilman Jared Brossett from also seeking the seat, as he is considering doing. All at-large candidates now run for a designated seat, rather than in a single field, as was long the case.

One thing to consider is that, if things are starting to line up this neatly this early, it's a sign that the regular process of deciding everything behind the scenes is going forth undisrupted this year. That's probably a bad thing. 

The Year Without A Winter

Hope you enjoyed the warmest February ever

If you thought February was a lot warmer than normal in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, you'd be correct.

On Wednesday (March 1), the National Weather Service said the two cities observed their warmest February on record. The average temperature in New Orleans last month was 64.4 degrees, which is the highest temperature recorded in February for the city since weather scientists began record-keeping at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in 1947.

Baton Rouge in February saw an average temperature of 64.5 degrees. This was also the highest temperature Baton Rouge ever recorded for the month since record-keeping began in 1893.

Usually Carnival begins with frostbite during Krewe Du Vieux and ends with heatstroke during Rex. This year it was just hot the whole way through. Great if you like to incorporate a lot of nekkidness into your costume ideas.  Better get used to it, though. 

Locker room talk

In addition to being stupid, mean, and misogynistic, it's also not funny. Does Cedric write his own jokes? There's plenty of ripe material besides this rotten low hanging fruit.

Conway's fair game on any number of fronts. She's the one who first asserted President Donald Trump's right to peddle "alternative facts." She's the one who shamelessly and unethically used her position to shill for her boss's daughter's clothing line. She's the one who was photographed recently kneeling casually on a couch in the Oval Office while Trump was posing with officials from historically black colleges and universities.

There's plenty enough reasons to despise Kellyane Conway. Cedric must not be familiar with them.  Grace is spot on to point out the unmistakable similarity between this and similar behavior in Trump. There's a tone deafness common to bullies that causes them to say and do stupid, and mean things and mistake that for comedy or, at least, for some sort of profound commentary.  At the end of the day, though, they're just excited for a chance to be assholes. Maybe that's all they care about.

Let them eat resilience

If the rent is too damn high and wages are too damn low for, for most people, things are not going so great. 

New Orleans ranked last among the nation's 100 largest cities for economic prosperity between 2010 and 2015, when the metropolitan area experienced a decline in worker productivity, standard of living and average wages, according to a Brookings Institution report released Thursday (March 2).

This might be an issue of some importance in the upcoming municipal elections.  But, as long as the tourism magnates and real estate developers behind most of the likely candidates are happy, the rest of this isn't seriously on the radar.

Prosperity looks at the change in wealth and income produced by an economy. On that measure, New Orleans ranked last. Its productivity fell 4.9 percent, average wages declined 2.1 percent and the standard of living decreased 3.2 percent. Standard of living is calculated by dividing the gross metropolitan product -- the local economy's total value of goods and services -- by the total population.

"Economic growth that improves standards of living for all people is possible, but not as common as one might hope," Brookings Senior Research Associate Richard Shearer, lead author of the report, said in a news release.

Possible but not as common as one might hope.  Can't imagine why.

Gone Guidry

A prescient representation of Councilwoman Susan Guidry on the side of a Chaos float this year


Well this changes things a bit.

After serving two terms representing Uptown, Mid-City and Lakeview on the New Orleans City Council, Susan Guidry said Thursday morning that she plans to retire next year instead of seeking another office in the fall elections.

Guidry is term limited, and had been considering a run for one of the council’s two at-large seats. Instead, she said she will serve out the remainder of her term that ends in May 2018, without running for any office in the Oct. 14 election.

This isn't the first time Guidry has publicly spoken about getting out. But she sounds serious this time. Guidry wasn't a a perfect councilperson but she did some good things. In this brief interview she talks about her work on criminal justice reform. She admits it isn't finished.  But mostly this is a good assessment of what she and others have accomplished. A bit optimistic, I guess. But that's ok. 

Guidry: “I don’t think you could ever stop working on criminal justice reform in this city. I would like to turn my attention to supporting program that are preventative, to provide the 0-5 age group support and parenting. There’s a chance I can do that outside political life. 

“The jail is still a major issue, but I’m very happy with the work being done by Director Maynard. Initially, we walked into office, and [the sheriff] was planning five buildings, with something like 5,000 beds. To have not only put the brakes on the size of the jail, but also to have educated the public about our seriously harmful penchant for over-incarcerating our citizens has been a major accomplishment.

“We ended ‘per diem’ budgeting, so we’re not just looking at how little can one person live on per day. It had the incentive for the jailer to keep people in jail longer than required to be. The consent decree litigation was filed on behalf of inmates, but the city has supported that litigation, and supported the plaintiffs rather than fighting them. That has made all the difference in terms of the progress that we’ve made.”

The Trump era is about to undo a lot of this, especially if the Sessions (?) DOJ drops the consent decrees. So that's one reason to see why Guidry might be burning out a bit.  Of course this also means now is exactly the wrong time to lose a strong reformist voice at the municipal level.  In addition Guidry became a better and better advocate for fair housing policies during her tenure on the council. That may also be missed.

With Guidry out of the way, Helena Moreno would be a clear favorite for the open At-Large seat. Whether or not she would be as strong on these issues as Guidry remains to be seen.

Kern World Amusement District

So now we know that, in addition to the bouncy house, they also want to put in a golf ride of some sort. 

NEW ORLEANS – A few months after a group of local investors bought the former Times-Picayune building, neighbors are learning what is planned for the site.

According to a letter mailed to nearby businesses and residences, Dallas-based Topgolf has plans to build its latest location on the property at 3800 Howard Ave., along Interstate 10.

Topgolf if a driving range that caters to families.

But instead of just sending balls soaring, Topgolf is a game in which players aim for 11 giant dartboard-like targets on a 215-yard-long field. Microchipped balls provide instant feedback to players who tee off from climate-controlled hitting bays.

A restaurant and bar would be included on the site, according to the letter sent to neighbors.

Where your newspaper once lived, let's build an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. Sure, why not? At this point, that makes more sense than anything.  At least we're getting a clearer idea of what the vision for Kern World was.

Shoveling snow

Still buried under beads and other accumulated detritus. Also there are photos to upload and tag and an apartment to bleach. Then it will be time to try and make sense of it all.

Anyway, in the meantime, it's Ash Wednesday. Theoretically that means relief from the intrusive onslaught of people coming into your neighborhood and appropriating your space.  Today, what it means is... people will be coming into the neighborhood and appropriating our space.

Ash Wednesday Purge

Bye, Jairus.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The New Orleans Saints will release safety Jairus Byrd when free agency opens on March 9, a source familiar with the situation confirmed Tuesday night.

Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network was the first to report the news.

Byrd was due a base salary of $7.4 million in 2017, but was projected to count $11.2 million against the cap. He had three years remaining on a six-year, $54 million deal signed in 2014.

The pending release of Byrd signals $8 million in dead money, but the Saints pick up $3.2 million in cap space provided the move is not a post-June 1 designation, CBS sports contract/salary cap analyst Joel Corry said in a telephone interview.

Man we were so freaking excited when they went out and got Jairus.  

Happy Mardi Gras

I thought this was a good essay by Bart about I guess what I'd call the spiritual politics of Carnival. There's more to it than this but here is the key bit.

There’s a subversive aspect to the disruption of Carnival, and I like that. It’s not revolutionary, of course. In fact, the function of Carnivalesque celebrations is generally to reinforce the social order by providing a temporary relief from it. In ancient Rome, slaves became masters — but only for a day. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

Still, as we have seen, these traditions can have unintended consequences. We get a glimpse of how provisional and arbitrary our social order is during Carnival. If we can carry that insight forward, we might work and fight for a better world all year round.

This gets to the heart of it. Part of the drama of Carnival lies in devices and symbols turned alternately to oppressive and subversive purposes in a cycle of competitive co-option.  With the proper context, one can read in it the story the city's social and political equilibrium in any given year. And this is what I mean when I say that Carnival is our annual act of collective civic mediation.  This, more than anything else, is what makes it invaluable.

To that end, I do my best to see and document as much as I can each year.  I see every parade I can get to. I take tons of photos. I try to write down as much as I can. Some years that overwhelms me and I never catch up. I'm a little behind right now, in fact. That's okay, though, because the key to doing this is to take it as it comes. You are participating in a citywide fever vision which bends reality toward absurdity and thereby tells us truths. It is cathartic and revelatory and sprawling and baroque and silly and profane and you should be very tired at the end of it. But you can't force that to happen for you. You just have to go be in it for a while.

More later. I don't want to miss it.  

March of the Chads

Not many people know this but there is an actual #KreweOfChad parade.  It kicks off every year at about 2:00 PM on the Saturday before Mardi Gras when the Chads stationed along the Uptown parade route begin migrating en masse down to see Endymion.  If you want to see them all you have to do is turn around and watch the opposite side of St. Charles for a while during Tucks.



Krewe of Chad doesn't throw much but they do leave a distinctive trail behind them.  These red Solo cups strewn about the street are their version of the Tucks TP streamers seen also below.





Chad probably won't be your favorite parade. But it's worth knowing about. Consider it another in the grand tapestry of spectacles one happens upon during these days of Carnival climax.  For example, on Friday night, after the parades had ended, Menckles and I sat out on the stoop and watched the neighborhood reverberate in their wake.  The Krewe Of Municipal Vehicles (file photo 2009) clanged and banged and bulldozed the streets clean again. The rented out house across the street hosted a party well into the night. It provided the background music as a neighbor loaded (with some difficulty) several bags of aluminum cans she had collected into the back of a vintage Ford Aerostar.

As for the Chads, themselves, they will be back. Those among them who aren't arrested, run over, or shot by a Port-O-Let tonight will be back in position Uptown tomorrow morning.  We'll do our best to entertain them.

Busy Carnival Season

Downman House on Friday afternoon flying three Comus flags. Krewe D'Etat is basically Comus


Sorry that makes for light posting until the big photo dump comes along at some point. The weather has been fantastic and we've been at every Uptown parade so far. This morning we were up early and hungover to load our float for Sunday.  I've got some notes on all the parades I'll post later if I'm not too exhausted. Very quickly though.

1) Even though Nyx is much more generous with the throws, Muses is still a better parade. Prettier floats, better staging, more interesting things to look at. Most of all, a funnier, satirical theme.



2) What's up with every satirical parade being obsessed with Mike Yenni? It's just not that interesting compared to other stuff going on around town.



3) Last night, Alli found a cart vendor selling something called "Korean Jambalya" and it is amazing!



Anyway, more later. I gotta go get ready for D'Etat.  I am given to understand they have Yenni-themed dancers this year. *sigh*