Scrim Update

By now everyone probably knows he got out again.  MacCash certainly knows, anyway.  As usual, though, Doug is not thinking his clever bits all the way through. 

With the ground floor of Cheramie’s house locked down as tight as Alcatraz, Scrim made his way to the second story, where he found an open window, gnawed through the screen, and recklessly launched himself into space like Wile E. Coyote, plunging to the ground below.

I know it's passe to bemoan the death of the copy editor in professional news gathering organizations. But someone really should tell Doug that 1) You can't use an Alcatraz image in the same sentence as a Wile E. Coyote reference. Wile E. Coyote is not known for escaping from prison. Stick to one metaphor at a time. Also 2) Scrim is not Wile E. Coyote in this analogy anyway. He is the Road Runner. Individual attempts to apprehend him can only result in causing one to appear foolish. 

Cheramie pleaded with the public to abandon any hope of catching the fleet dog and instead asked them to text her and her team immediately with the location of the Scrim sighting and the direction he is traveling (the number is 504-231-7865).

Cheramie is also quoted in that article issuing a corrective to the (hopefully toungue-in-cheek) popular sentiment that Scrim simply be allowed to roam free from now on.  Even if he is having difficulty adjusting, it should be obvious that a comfortable home life is much safer and healthier than what he will find out on the streets. (The two bullets he took during his last adventure should be plenty enough evidence there.) 

On the other hand, it's always possible we don't have all the information.  To hear Entergy tell it, it is the stray animals themselves that pose the danger to everyone else. 

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of Entergy customers in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish are without power. Entergy confirmed to WDSU that an animal caused an electrical short and damaged equipment. The utility did not say what type of animal caused the outage that's impacting more than 12,000 customers on the Westbank.

Now I'm not suggesting that Scrim swam all the way across the river and took out a piece of Entergy infrastructure on his own.  That would be downright nutty.  But consider that he wouldn't actually have to act on his own. Not entirely. 

Local news is so important, yall.

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— Jeff Asher (@jeffasher.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 7:06 PM

Consider that we may only be aware of a mere fraction of Scrim's capabilities. We already know he's an escape artist. What hasn't been discussed publicly is the possibility that, once free, he has quickly reestablished himself in the underground. He's got contacts in the squirrel, rat, possum, raccoon and crow communities with connections beyond that. He speaks all the languages, knows all the customs. He can hide and operate from anywhere. 

 

Now that he's at large, his network has reactivated.  And Entergy's could go down at any moment.  

On the other hand, that's not too different from the every status quo anyway, is it?

Maybe don't run your smash and grab privatization scheme through a nesting doll of pass through grifters

Nevermind. Actually, if you're already stripping the public education system for parts, it's only natural to have as many trucks hauling it off in as many different directions as possible.

The Louisiana Legislature has agreed to pay a private company $910,000 to oversee the rollout of the state’s new school-choice program, which is set to launch next year. 

The Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget voted overwhelmingly Friday to approve a one-year contract with Odyssey, a company founded in 2021 to help states manage grant programs like the one Louisiana lawmakers approved last spring that will give households tax money to put toward private-school tuition.

The tech start-up picking up this contract is pretty much your typical middleman arbitrage operation. Back in August, we learned, that it also comes with the typical... uh.. glitches? Let's call them that for now. 

During Tuesday’s board meeting, BESE members asked about reports of problems with Odyssey-operated grant programs in other states.

For example, in Missouri, parents have complained about delays in receiving grants and problems purchasing items through the company’s platform, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In Idaho, a state review found that Odyssey approved about $180,000 in ineligible purchases by families, according to Idaho Education News. And in Iowa, the state auditor found that the education department had improperly amended Odyssey’s contract to increase payments to the company.

Not that it matters at this point.  The "smash" part of this already occurred when the legislature approved the ESA scheme to drain all the money out of public schools.  The "grab" part is just.. the grabbing.

I can't believe Taylor Swift didn't fix it

Just yesterday, we were speculating about this "accounting error" committed by someone in the Orleans Parish School District. The original T-P report we cited there claimed that staff overshot their sales tax revenue projection by $36 million "because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July." * That might be exactly what happened. But it feels unlikely. At the very least, it's got to be embarrassing for professional accountants to not understand when the fiscal year begins. Let alone, that they would look at a jump in revenue of that size and not suspect something was off. 

On the other hand, lay readers of the Times-Picayune might be forgiven for their confusion. Last week,  when we read that the board had announced a damage control plan to gradually pay back the deficit out of its (fortunately robust) fund balance, this item suggested that maybe the problem was already solved.

Schools would repay the $15 million over the next few years, hopefully bolstered by increased sales tax revenue from major events in New Orleans like Taylor Swift’s recent concert series, which generated an estimated $500 million for the city, and next year’s Super Bowl, Parker said.

Oh dear, here we go again trying to shoehorn an "economic impact of tourism" promo into a serious news story. Look, by all accounts, Swiftie weekend in New Orleans was a much welcomed success for the city's service industry and tourism facing retail.  Anecdotally, we've all heard the crowd was nice. They tipped well. And unlike some of the mega-corporate events, like the Superbowl, they spent money with local small businesses.  But mentioning the $500 number in a throwaway line about the school system's budget problems creates a false impression of whatever eventual benefit may occur.

The article doesn't link to it but they're referring to GNO Inc's estimate of how much money was spent overall by visitors during the weekend. The number is likely exaggerated to begin with, because that's what GNO Inc. does. But also it appears to include the money spent on airfare, lodging, and the concert tickets themselves. The schools do realize a portion of the sales tax on hotel rooms, but they split that money with several other entities. But we're already talking there about a fraction of a fraction of that marquee $500 million number which, again, isn't even itself a figure that reflects actual sales tax revenue.  It's fun to write "Taylor Swift might help with the budget problem" but it's important to be more specific than this. 

Anyway, as of today, none of this is Avis Williams's problem anymore. She is resigning effective December 1. Frankly, who can blame her.  The $300,000 salary must have been nice for a couple of years. But, ultimately, who wants to have to deal with this job?

After a national search to replace Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr., the board hired Williams in April of 2022. This fall, Williams opened the district’s first intentional direct-run school in the modern charter era — The Leah Chase School, a win for traditional-education advocates in the city. But the decision to create the new school within the Lafayette Academy building came amid a chaotic charter renewal process. Lafayette Academy families were first promised their school would remain open, then told it would close, then received a third message, one week later, that the school would remain open, but would be managed by the district.

But critics say that Williams has made little progress in one of the key assignments she was given when she arrived. When she arrived, she was charged with downsizing the all-charter district because local schools, mirroring national trends, face shrinking enrollment. The district asked her to create a “right-sizing” plan.  

Other district superintendents, facing similar declines, have closed schools. But in New Orleans, Williams faced a particularly unique challenge, because the city’s charter schools operate on multi-year contracts and revoking them — to close schools — is only done in serious situations. Schools only come under high-stakes scrutiny at the end of their contracts.

One could argue that a cascading budget crisis is one way to cut through all the piecemeal charter renewals and force more closures and consolidations on an accelerated timeline.   But whatever the excuse, it's no fun when you are the one swinging the ax.  

Meanwhile, there's also an open seat on the School Board that needs to be resolved by a runoff election December 7.  One of the candidates there has articulated support for having the district take more schools back from under-performing charters and run them directly. The other was once on a charter board involved in a grade inflation scandal.  Those sound like serious issues for voters to consider. Unfortunately it may all be overshadowed by the accounting issue. That is, unless we can get another 10 or 20 Eras Tours to swing through the city by the time the next tax receipts are in. 

*Additional note: Today's Lens article about the Williams resignation says the "accounting error" is still unexplained. So the, "whoops we forgot what year it is" bit from the initial reports, seems to have gone away.  According to today's article, 

Some sources say the city, which is responsible for collecting taxes and remitting them to the district, contributed to the district’s poor forecasting. It’s unclear how often the city communicates tax collection estimates with the district.

So we're moving from shady and/or incompetent accounting at the School District to shady and/or incompetent accounting at City Hall.  That's more credible, I guess, given.. (gestures broadly).. but still a mystery.

Who was this for?

The entire reason there even is a Mike VII in the first place is because, when Mike VI passed on, the school had to make some firm public commitments to treating any future tigers humanely.

To this point, LSU has drawn a hard line against involving Mike VII into Tiger Stadium. In September, LSU veterinary school spokeswoman Ginger Guttner said the institution “is not in discussions to bring Mike to any games this season.” 

Mike VII, an 8-year-old Bengal-Siberian tiger that became LSU’s official mascot in 2017, has never attended a football game. Previous Mikes have been placed in a trailer and taken to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium, and some have even traveled to away games. The university announced it would stop the tradition when it adopted Mike VII as a cub.

And they have done that. The tiger enclosure on LSU's campus is very much along the lines of what you might find in any reputable zoo exhibit.  Mike has room to move about and swim and relax in the open. If you at least accept that there will be a tiger in captivity there (and, yes, I understand that many will not, which is fine) then it's reassuring to know that he's being well cared for rather than paraded around like a circus animal. There's nothing in your "tradition" that demands you do anything different.

Shockingly, it turns out this reasonable position is shared by an overwhelming majority of LSU football fans. 

In The Advocate's online poll, which was an unscientific survey, 90% of respondents believed a tiger should not have returned to Tiger Stadium. Nine percent supported bringing back the animal, and 1% felt indifferent. About 1,500 people participated.

“As somebody who grew up with the memory of what it used to be, it kind of sterilized that memory a little bit,” said Justin Giglio, an LSU graduate who lives in Prairieville. “That wasn't what I enjoyed about what it used to be. The part of me that does agree with maybe we shouldn't be doing this to a tiger anymore, that feeling was definitely maximized. I felt bad for Omar.”

We felt bad for Omar, the tiger being lugged around the field in a cage.  And we felt a little bit bad for Mike VII too. The Governor's stunt, cry as he might about "respecting tradition," can only be seen as a direct slap to the face of our very good kitty.  Both of these tigers, and the entire LSU alumni (a community to which Jeff Landry does not, in fact, belong) deserved better.

Democrats: "guess we're gonna have to get more fascist"

 We tried going "anti-woke" and we're all out of ideas.

In the last four years, mainstream Democrats have: nominated a former prosecutor for president; elected an ex-NYPD officer to run New York City; campaigned on deporting more people; funneled money and weapons to regimes committing war crimes; overseen the beatings and arrests of people demanding police reform; sent more police officers to wallop students protesting for Palestinian rights; ratcheted up the War on Drugs; worked with major corporate retailers to arrest more shoplifters; filed racketeering and conspiracy charges against police-reform protesters in Atlanta; made it easier to arrest New Yorkers and Californians with mental illness; defended the use of solitary confinement; supported a landmark Supreme Court case to let cops arrest unhoused people; tried to imprison one of the world’s most famous rappers; promised to build Donald Trump’s border wall; ran endless ads about Trump’s criminal record; and applauded as the president chanted “Fund the Police!” during his most-watched yearly address. 

And yet, after an election last week in which voters all but screamed that the Democratic Party is moving in the wrong direction, centrist and conservative pundits have drawn the opposite conclusion: The Democrats are, somehow, still too soft on crime.

I wonder if they'll try going even further right this time.  What have they got to lose?

Maybe don't run your schools through a nesting doll of scam bureaucracies

You have to read past this headline about layoffs at the Rooted School. It just conveys management's side of the dispute, saying they're just forced to downsize due to a school board accounting error. Read several paragraphs into the story until you arrive at something closer to the actual issue. 

Teachers and staff at The Rooted School have been bargaining for a contract since forming a union in 2022. The four staff members who were let go were union members and UTNO has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board related to their firings.

The charge accused Karpinski of letting the employees go before bargaining with them and offering them a severance agreement directly rather than going through the union. The complaint also says that the school violated employees' rights because the severance agreement includes a confidentiality clause and a non-disparagement clause.

And, of course, due to recent events in national politics, the Biden NLRB is in lame duck status now.  (Senate Democrats still have a chance to do something about that!  But, rest assured, they simply do not care enough to try.) So, in all likelihood, the laid off workers are at the mercy of dueling bureaucracies and their suspect administrators. Today's update in that dispute finds the School Board firing back, (mostly) on the correct side for now. 

The Orleans Parish School Board on Tuesday pushed back on claims by a New Orleans charter school that it was forced to lay off teachers due to an accounting error by the district.

Board members said Rooted School used the district’s miscalculation as an excuse to lay off four employees when in fact the school is grappling with its own financial problems. The main source of the school’s troubles is that it erroneously collected $600,000 over three years by keeping students on their rolls who had left, and now the school must pay back that money, the board members said.

Which brings us to that "accounting error."  Are we sure that's what this is? 

New Orleans public schools are getting millions of dollars less in local tax revenue this year than district officials projected, and schools across the city are bracing for the fallout from the apparent accounting gaffe. 

Typically, the district tells schools in March how much money they will have to spend for the upcoming school year, based on property and sales taxes it expects schools will receive. Schools then budget accordingly, and receive payment in piecemeal from the school district each month.

But three months into the school year, district officials said their projections were likely inflated. That was because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July.

What sort of accountant actually does this?  On accident?  Maybe that's really what is going on there. But, remember, the district, under this superintendent, is under various pressures to downsize schools and divest from its facilities.  

Overall, the 2024 premium increased from $7.9 million to $12.3 million. The district’s total insured value (TIV) also increased from $1.9 billion to $2.4 billion, due to building upgrades and the increased costs of repairs, Story wrote in an email.

The exact per-pupil costs are still being finalized, Story wrote. “But based on the premium increase amount you can estimate it to be near $280, he said. This of course depends on system-wide enrollment,” Story wrote, noting the current market is “a mess.”

The district’s Total Insured Value cited by Story in his email appears to include vacant buildings in the total policy cost. To save money, the district is already looking at ways to reduce total value for vacant buildings and to shed vacant swing space that won’t be utilized.

“We are already looking at ways to modify our program for FY25 to reduce TIV for vacant buildings, swing space that won’t be utilized and other opportunities in an effort to mitigate large increases in premiums,” Story wrote.

As of the beginning of this month, only one school appeared to be on a path toward closure this year. But that was before the "error" was discovered. 

The last thing our public schools need now is another hole in the money bucket. But it does appear as though leaks are starting to spurt out from all sides.

Animals in the news

Congratulations to Scrim. Far and away the number one local hero of 2024. 

Zoning, code enforcement, permitting and other prosaic municipal matters could wait. The first order of business at Thursday’s City Council meeting was to acknowledge the civic contributions of a runaway dog named Scrim, who became a furry New Orleans folk hero.

As Council Vice President JP Morrell put it, Scrim “really did exemplify the resilience that is New Orleans.”

The good feelings didn't last too long, though, as councilmembers almost immediately broke into a territorial dispute over bragging rights. 

Lesli Harris laughingly said that “this is like one of my most exciting council days ever,” before she laid claim to Scrim as “the official mascot of District B.”

District A Council Member Joe Giarrusso, however, immediately contended that Scrim’s territory had extended into his jurisdiction as well.

We're gonna have to see his voter ID. Or, failing that, maybe his "municipal ID."

This article also says the dog was presented with, " a framed proclamation and a sack of dog goodies."  When I bust out of jail and take two bullets while out on the lam for 6 months, City Council better give me a dang medal.

Anyway, everybody loves Scrim. We even dedicated our Jack-O-Lantern this year in his honor. Look at this good boy.

 

Meanwhile, turning our attention the wild animal kingdom, the New Orleans menagerie of oligarchs has been (slightly) rearranged.

Michael Sawaya, the president of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, will succeed Ron Forman as president and CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute, New Orleans’ cherished collection of parks, museums and environmental attractions.

A 40-year-veteran of the hospitality industry, Sawaya, 64, was chosen as Audubon’s new leader on Wednesday by the Audubon Nature Institute board of directors. His selection follows a six-month search that attracted nearly 500 candidates from around the country.

They went on a nationwide safari to find the heir to Ron Forman's grift. What are the odds that the guy they were looking for was here all along!

And, hey, look at the price they got.  

In his new role, which begins Jan. 1, Sawaya will earn $525,000 a year in salary and benefits, according to Audubon officials. That’s far less than Forman’s $800,000 annual compensation package but more than the nearly $433,000 Sawaya made at the Convention Center in 2023, according to a legislative audit.

The "non-profit" zoo that is heavily subsidized with public funds will now be paying its CEO only half a million dollars instead of nearly a million.  Personally, I still hope they feed them all to Valerio.

Finally,  speaking of big cats ,in order to get around being shitty to one tiger, Governor Landry is forcing LSU to go out and get a whole burner tiger. Unsurprisingly the source is disreputable.

The owner of a live Bengal tiger slated to appear at the LSU-Alabama game Saturday has a history of having his big cats escape as the result of employee errors. 

The university and Gov. Jeff Landry’s office won’t say who would be responsible for any accidents involving Omar Bradley, a 1.5-year-old tiger that’s being transported from Florida for the game. Landry and Surgeon General Ralph Abraham have pushed to return a live mascot to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium.    

After the Illuminator confirmed that a live tiger will appear in Baton Rouge at the LSU-Alabama game on Saturday, WBRZ reported that the tiger is being supplied by Mitchel Kalmanson, who has a long history of federal citations for mistreating animals.

Sounds pretty exciting. Can't wait to see how that goes. It's good of Governor Landry to take time away from his busy work throwing more children in jail and making poor people pay higher taxes to focus on this. Are we sure he knows what he's doing, though?  

Landry’s initial request was for LSU to bring its own live tiger mascot, Mike VII, to games. Previous tigers have attended LSU football games, most recently Mike VI in 2015. LSU announced it was discontinuing this tradition when it adopted Mike VII in 2017 out of humane concerns. 

Landry did not attend LSU but claims to be a lifelong LSU football fan. 

“Our hope is that maybe we can get this tiger to roar a couple of times, and that’ll indicate how many touchdowns we’ll have, and it’ll be more than Alabama,” Landry said Friday in an interview with Fox News. 

Previous Mikes have been provoked to roaring by beating on his cage and taunting from the costumed Mike the Tiger mascot, a practice LSU discontinued.

Who is this for? Which piece of shit Landry donor is pushing this hard to bring back an animal cruelty ritual we all finally moved past a decade ago? Even if you buy into this far enough to be all, "yay the tradition is back!" and are totally cool with the cruelty of it, how do you not still see it as a slap in the face to our beautiful boy Mike VII?

We'll see if the cheer squad wants to be involved in all that this time around.  If not, maybe the Governor could get in the cage and try poking the tiger with a stick or something. 

Can't use the ring to do good, Frodo

There's a bunch of baby brained takes from Democrats today. Some of them, I suppose, are introspection in good faith, but many of them, I am certain, are not. But bypassing that for a moment, one thought I will offer is the kind of tactics that work for the right, don't work for the "left" (including left leaning liberals) and shouldn't.  

You aren't going to be effective at building and winning working class power with marketing tactics. This isn't a product that people need to be tricked into buying. Democrats don't need a slicker podcast or a stable of influencers that appeal to isolated demographics. This is not about smart guys sitting in a room devising ways to move the hogs in the right direction.  That's what con artists do.  Right wing politics is a con job.  Participatory democracy is not.

Something something something "the master's tools" etc.

Epilogue

 Much more on this to come, hopefully.  But the tl;dr is something I already put up on X The Everything App a few weeks ago.

Right now there is no viable political party or project capable of, or really even intent on, solving any of our many societal problems. At the same time, though, there are numerous political projects dedicated to parsing out exactly who deserves to suffer the most and why.  

This morning you're already seeing the Democrats, who just ran a hard right campaign against a hard right opponent, cast about to place the blame for that failure on everyone but themselves. It's still an open question as to whether they settle on "Americans are just to evil and racist" or "There's too many people doing woke."  Maybe there's some synthesis there that will allow the party to ignore working class voters some more. Anyway, once this exercise is done the professional Dems will be taking all the money they made on their billion dollar campaign and headed out to brunch. They'll be fine. Someone else will deserve to suffer.

Popping in with a couple of overdue book reviews

For whatever reason, I've taken up a project of transferring several years backlog of book notes I've had sitting in a spreadsheet onto more fleshed out reviews for Goodreads, an app I've been on forever but never really got into using.  What is the purpose? Who even knows?

Anyway, in the process of going through these, I hit upon a couple titles I read in 2021 that seemed to pair well for a blurb here. Especially, so if one is in the mood to think about where we've been and where the US political economy has been and where it might be going a week out before, "the most important election of our lifetimes" again. 

Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America by Darren Dochuk (2019)

This is a sweeping history of the American oil industry with a focus on its peculiar relationship to American Christianity. The book describes political and religious tensions throughout the history of oil between the rationalizing paternalistic ecumenism of the major firms vs the independent libertarian evangelism of the wildcatters.It's a division we can recognize as threaded through the long Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian archetypes of American political economy although I don't recall Dochuk stating this in the book. 

In part, it explains why we see the inheritors of the Rockefeller and Pew fortunes involved in supporting liberal-ish causes today through legacy NGOs while a contrasting strain of evangelical cosmology can fold concepts like “peak oil” and climate change into their expectation that the Apocalypse is near and the fact they feel fine about that. 

For an example of the latter, here is Dochuk writing about Ernest Manning, Premier of Alberta in the 1950s and an evangelical thought leader. 

Manning, like Aberhart before him, held to a dispensational premillennialist view, which encouraged him to decode signs of societal strain as evidence that Christ’s return was nigh. His eschatology grafted onto contemporary theories of petroleum geology. At that moment, M. King Hubbert, a founder of the social movement known as Technocracy, which underscored the importance of engineers in the management of society and had ties to Social Credit, crafted his theory of “peak oil” holding that US domestic production would crest by 1971, then steadily decline. This prediction confirmed Manning’s belief that the world was entering its last phase. Not only did time seem to be running out on America - God’s City On A Hill - but it was now favoring non-Christians located in the very place to which Christ would return: the Middle East. His response was twofold: first, to train Western Christians’ eyes on the Middle East, where rising oil production and politics seemed to portend Christ’s return, and second, to extract expeditiously whatever oil was left under their soil before their dispensation expired. In Manning’s scheme, wildcatters offered North Americans a last glimmer of hope: they alone had the courage to find new reserves and inspire patriots with pure capitalist drive.

In other words, the rational response to “peak oil” was to keep on producing oil as quickly as possible. The mere prospect of a cataclysm is not necessarily going to cause a change in behavior. Which is why, now, as the climate crisis worsens in ways that more and more Americans can feel in their daily lives, the policy response from a rather loud faction of our body politic continues to be an unreserved chant of, “Drill, baby, drill!” 

Anyway, in his conclusion, Dochuk entertains the notion that the wildcatters have "won" their battle with the patricians. Or at least, it appears their political and religious expression has retained a surprising power and resonance. Here is the key graph there.

Battered by oil’s bloody cut-throat system, yet determined to follow their calling, they clung to a personal trust in the supernatural, which came with a transaction. Place your faith in a higher being and honor his rules for holy living, the logic read, and ride the capricious offerings of the earth and the markets to heavenly fulfillment - no matter the heavy human (and ecological) costs. Place your trust in a God who giveth and taketh suddenly, but who is always there, and watch (and feel) the pain of oil’s boom-bust cycles and ever-present maladies melt away in the face of his saving grace. Our current age, in which the fluctuations of economy have intensified on a global stage and during which the inequalities of capitalist society have calcified, has only emboldened that ethic all the more. Its promises of spiritual and, in unpredictable moments, financial returns on the magical, miraculous workings of oil, its allowances for stark enigmas and contradictions in the modern condition - between hope and futility, empowerment and despair, hyperwealth and utter poverty - and its panic to drill, find and sell redemption before the Messiah returns have proved more than prescient and resilient.

 

Ages of American Capitalism: A History Of The United States by Jonathan Levy (2021)

A history of the United States from colonial times up until the time of the 2008 financial crisis. Much in the way Taylor Swift divides her career into eras, Levy breaks the American economy up into “ages.” There is an Age of Commerce (1660 until 1860), an Age of Capital (1860 to 1932) an Age of Control (1932 to 1980) and the Age of Chaos which we, presumably, are experiencing now. 

After acknowledging the elusiveness of a proper definition of capital, Levy settles on this phrase: “The process through which a legal asset is invested with pecuniary value, in light of its capacity to yield a future pecuniary profit.” The political push and pull over the nature and direction of those investments; the tension between short term hoarding and long term redistribution is central to his narrative. 

Obviously, this is a story told on a big sprawling scale. But it’s one well worth diving into for students of US history. One doesn’t need a whole lot of background in economics to access it. Rather than get too far into the discussion, here are a few items I wrote down in my notes as I read. 

1) Levy’s commentary on Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man illustrates that a "booming" market in short term speculation is fundamentally the same thing as a stagnant economy. 

Melville’s novel parses three contradictory desires and emotional states. His analysis was correct: the capitalist credit cycle of boom and bust, only just emerging in his day, is motivated by a contradictory drive of speculative investment. The contradiction consists in the fact that while credit-fueled and energetic speculation can lead to genuine capitalist investment booms, instigating wealth-generating enterprise, individuals can also succumb to the temptations of short-term speculation alone, in which, benefiting from the transactional liquidity of capital markets, they simply move their bets in and out of assets, confidently seeking short term gain. But speculations may not fix on objects of investment long enough for long-term economic development to happen. Capital just spins its top. And the speculative desire to leave all potential investment options open is only a fantasy. For if all options are kept open, but never exercised nothing actually ever happens. 

2) Nostalgia is also a symptom of stagnation. 

Capitalism demands an orientation of economic life toward the future, and so the constant urge to look back, and nostalgically stamp past ages “golden” is probably some kind of psychic compensation for the unremttingness of that demand, especially in moments when, to many, it feels difficult to muster a positive vision about the future. 

3) By the time of the 1970s neoliberal turn, capacity for a coherent collective economic policy was diminished by a politics of alienation, fractionalization and “individual practitioners of narcissism.” 

The federal government simply did not have the mechanisms at hand to master inflation. There was no notion of a unified public interest on the basis of which to act anyway. Instead the polity was splintering into Nixon’s Silent Majority, black nationalists, “back to the land” farmers, white ethnic revivalists (including neo-Confederates), Friends of the Earth, pro-live evangelical “family values” Christians, radial lesbians, international bankers, advocates of Indian sovereignties, Business Roundtable CEOs, black women activists of the National Welfare Rights Organization, white nationalist Vietnam veterans, and last but not least, individual practitioners of narcissism. 

4) Finally, this book (along with Malcolm Harris’s Palo Alto later on. I may post about that one too, eventually.) drove home for me the huge impact Herbert Hoover has had on the American political economy of the 20th Century and beyond. Ideologically, Hoover was the equivalent of today's centrist Democrats. He believed the nation's business leaders should contribute to progress. But he wanted that to happen through public-private partnership or at his polite request. 

On the telephone and at two White House conferences, the president personally pleaded with the corporate executives of the largest, most regulated industries to increase capital investment expenditures. In 1930 railroads and utilities obliged. Yet everywhere else, especially in residential construction, fixed investment kept falling. Hoover recognized that during the 1920s, corporate profits had run ahead of wages, and he believed that high wages would stabilize spending, a good thing. “The first shock,” he declared, “must fall on profits and not wages.” Whether because of Hoover’s promptings or not, the nation’s largest employers agreed not to slash wages, even as they continued to fire their less desirable employees, a pattern that would persist. Proudly, Hoover said the agreements were, “not a dictation or interference by the government with business.” Rather they were the result of “a request from the government that you co-operate in prudent measure to solve a national problem.” The president boasted, “This is a far cry from the arbitrary and dog-eat-dog attitude of the business world of some thirty for forty years ago.” Hoover believed his “associational state” transcended the Jacksonian sphering of public and private, state, and market, which under the banner of equal commercial opportunity, had withered state action throughout the Age of Capital. But he drew one line in the sand. He would not coerce capitalists to invest. 

This is famously the path to failure. And yet it has persisted as canon for respectable politicians and pundits far and wide. Case in point, here is Joe Biden in 2021 taking the Hoover approach with insurers and utility companies after Hurricane Ida. 

“I’m calling on the insurance companies at this critical moment. Don’t hide behind the fine print and technicality. Do your job. Keep your commitment to your communities you insure,” he continued. “Do the right thing. Pay your policy holders what you owe them to cover the cost of temporary housing in the midst of a natural disaster. Help those in need. That’s what all of us need to do.” 

Biden also expressed that, throughout the week, he’d expressed that same message to local officials and utility and energy company representatives during virtual meetings.

How has that approach worked out?

A Louisiana State University survey last year found that 17% of Louisiana homeowners reported their provider canceled their policy. Sixty-three percent of policyholders said the cost of their insurance coverage increased from the prior year, the survey found. 

There was roughly a 10% to 12% increase in homeowners’ insurance costs last year in the United States, said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit industry association.

You can't just ask these people to be nice. You have to force them. These “commitments to community” Biden imagines exist in corporate America are more tenuous than ever, if they even existed at all. And today’s political leaders, having abandoned the lessons of the New Deal, are less equipped to deal with that reality as a result.

Sorry, no, you have to keep writing it down

Every time I put up a new post here, I end up griping that I need to post here more often. I do mean that. 

Last week, as we read about these legislative hearings on the state's COVID response, we once again had to remind ourselves of the importance of taking notes as things happen. Otherwise, when the details of events come up later in a different context, you might miss the point.  See, between the time that COVID arrived in Louisiana and the time when this committee took up its investigation, the state government has been taken over entirely by a paranoid anti-vax faction so whatever facts are brought to light now about the emergency response will, unfortunately, pass through that lens.  Here, for example, is a representative taste of that atmosphere. 

Dozens of anti-vaccine bills have died in the Louisiana Legislature since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultra-conservative lawmakers are gearing up for another fight.

In the process, truth has become a major casualty. 

In two days of hearings last week on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security heard hours of testimony from doctors with fringe views on the COVID-19 virus. They included the state’s chief medical doctor, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who himself amplified misinformation. Abraham is a general practitioner who is also a veterinarian. 

“It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, counterproductive and antithetical to the core principles of a free society,” Abraham said last Thursday, citing mask use and vaccines as examples of ineffective measures. 

Abraham’s deputy surgeon general, ophthalmologist Dr. Wyche Coleman III, went a step further, touting the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations cause autism. 

“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” Coleman told lawmakers. 

Experts agree the amplification and legitimization of COVID-19 misinformation by state officials can have a detrimental impact on public health. 

When asked if he was concerned the negative talk on vaccines could discourage people from getting vaccinated, committee chair Rep. Jay Gallé, R-Covington, replied, “So what if it does?”

So Baton Rouge is overrun with right wingers and this is the sort of thing we can expect to hear from them. It's interesting, though, that we get to hear a little bit of it from New Orleans Democrats like Alonzo Knox as well.

Knox is claiming no hospitals in Louisiana were overwhelmed during the pandemic, and said no media outlet reported that they were. Here’s a thread of reporting that disproves that. https://t.co/StC9FUFQZz

— Piper Hutchinson (@ByPiperHutch) September 26, 2024

Knox has become quite the character up there. Let's put a pin in that, actually. It's something we'll have to return to in more detail later.  For now, let's just note that he looks to be following the Neil Abramson playbook. Politics is never short on guys who will enable whatever atrocity they have to just so that they get to be "in the room" for a while with its perpetrators. 

But here is the thing. Just because the capitol is under the control of lunatics and the opportunists who flatter them, doesn't mean that these hearings won't stumble on a few unfortunate facts, in spite of all the nonsense drowning them out.  So let's return to this hearing now. It's a good example of what I'm talking about here.

Jacques Thibodeaux, director of Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told a panel of state lawmakers Wednesday that the agency received “an inquiry” in March from the "major fraud investigation unit" of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

The inquiry was “in direct relation to the medical monitoring station” at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans that was originally set up in early 2020 as a 1,000-bed field hospital to treat patients with COVID-19 and relieve strain on hospitals.

Several lawmakers were gathered at the State Capitol Wednesday for a meeting of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security to gather information for a future report on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The field hospital was set up through no-bid contracts under emergency circumstances.  Emergency circumstances tend to be closer to the norm in Louisiana than one would think is ideal.  Having seen first hand how that plays out a few times, I thought it prudent to mark some things out for future reference. COVID began to affect Louisiana in March of 2020. It wasn't until May that I had a chance to sort some things out.  This post is now a little bit of a time capsule, I guess.  

Here's what was going on then. 

Some local union leaders are angered that dozens of workers have been brought in from Texas to help convert the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center into a medical facility to deal with the coronavirus crisis, at a time when hundreds of their members are out of work.

The order to convert the convention center into a facility to provide up to 3,000 beds for spillover COVID-19 patients was made by Governor John Bel Edwards two weeks ago.

Two contracts for just over $76 million were quickly put out to bid. One for about $38 million, primarily to provide medical staff and services, went to BCFS Health and Human Services, a faith-based non-profit based in San Antonio, Texas that was formerly known as Baptist Child and Family Services.

According to an audit that December, BCFS ended up getting paid $89 million. We pointed out at the time that BCFS had recently taken in $179 million in federal contracts for its work on migrant detention facilities along the Texas-Mexico border. This was the so-called "kids in cages" operation. Remember when people cared about that? When the Trump Administration was spending money on contractors who put kids in cages?  Now we have a Democratic candidate for President promising to do a bigger and tougher kids in cages program so I guess that's all good money now. But at the time it seemed pretty bad! And our Governor was directing money to accomplices in that endeavor.

This is how fast the framing can change and it's why you have to remember to write everything down. Otherwise you might also forget the things, everyone else clearly has, or at least expects you to ignore.  Do we think, for example, that the current legislature in its pursuit of undiscovered fraud in the COVID resonpse is going to ask any questions about Mike Edmonson? 

Garner Environmental, a division of the Texas-based Ksolv group, counts former Louisiana State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson as a consultant. Edmonson resigned from the State Police amid a series of controversies at the agency in 2017.

The state paid Garner $9 million to establish and run a quarantine facility adjacent to the Convention Center, a project that lasted about a month. Nine patients stayed at the facility in all, according to Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

More about Edmonson's "series of controversies" here. The Advocate-Times-Pic should really link back to their own reporting when they reference it as context. There's a reason to write these things down, after all. In this case the reason is to remind ourselves that, while the political winds change, the essential corruption underlying it all remains universally intact. And unless you can see that for what it is, you're liable to get lost in the noise.

Whoops!

 Shot (September 10)

New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Director Ghassan Korban said Tuesday the city’s pumping and drainage system is in a “good place” ahead of Francine.

Ninety of 99 drainage pumps are working across its 24 pumping stations, he said, and the city has 70 megawatts available to power its drainage pumps, above the 44 needed to run the system at peak demand.

Korban said 70 megawatts “is probably one of the highest numbers we've seen in a long, long time ... Today, this is the best that we can all really count on.”

Chaser (September 11)

The large generators the Sewerage and Water Board uses to supplement its turbines and provide power to its drainage system went offline for about 15 minutes late Wednesday as Francine battered New Orleans, leading to widespread flooding.

Canals were high in Hollygrove, Lakeview, Gentilly, and New Orleans at 10 p.m., and over 30 locations in the city were flooded, according to Streetwise NOLA.

Nobody could have predicted... 

 

20.5 of those 70 megawatts are carried by overhead lines from four east bank frequency changers, which themselves are well over 50 years old.
12.5 MW come from EMDs which are wildly unreliable.
T4 (18 MW) failed in December and February when it was called upon. https://t.co/PuprII1ws5

— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 10, 2024

We'll know more tomorrow. But tonight there is widespread street flooding both in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Right now I'm listening to Helena Moreno tell Channel 4 that Sewerage and Water Board had problems with the EMD generators and that it lost Entergy power a couple of times during the night.  She has used the phrase "whack-a-mole" several times.  She says there are Lakeview and Gentilly residents reporting flooding where there hasn't previously been flooding. 

Anyway, we'll see about all that later. Meanwhile, just keep in mind that Francine ended up being, basically, a direct hit on New Orleans. Here is a picture of the eyewall approaching a little after 7:30.  We're actually lucky that it was already being torn apart by wind shear at this point. If this had been a major hurricane there could have been catastrophic damage. 

 

As it stands, the damage looks to have been significantly annoying at the very least. (Approximately 350,000 without power, for example.)   Anyway, we'll know more about all that later.  One thing we can't say at this point is that we're in an especially "good place."

Not ideal

 Old Francine. 

Tropical Storm Francine has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to further develop into a hurricane and impact Louisiana later this week, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday morning. 

The storm is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday evening as a Category 1 storm, though forecasters say there is a bit of uncertainty as to Francine's exact track.

As of 1 p.m., Francine had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. The storm is expected to turn north-northwestward over the next day, turn more east and intensify before making landfall on the Gulf Coast as a hurricane.

Cat 1 predicted as of this afternoon but some of the weatherfolk are concerned at the accelerated pace of its organization. 

Not liking the look of things this afternoon. #Francine appears poised to strengthen even quicker than expected. Already seeing hints of an eye trying to clear out in visible satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/NmSc1bRijW

— Steve Caparotta, Ph.D. (@SteveWAFB) September 9, 2024

That isn't great news given the path of the storm.  Drawing a bullseye bead on Lafayette is not great. Also it places SE Louisiana's highly vulnerable coastal marshes and heavy petro-chemical infrastructure on the "bad side" of the storm. If the intensity forecast gets any greater than it is this would be a very bad track.

 

 Anyway, let's hope this reasoning holds up. 

In a forecast discussion issued Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that models are showing a heightened possibility of rapid intensification Tuesday through Wednesday. Then, after the period of intensification, high vertical wind shear could cause the storms intensity to plateau before it makes landfall on Wednesday, according to the NHC.

Both those predictions influenced the NHC's forecast that the storm will hit Louisiana with Category 1 winds.

In addition to the shear, the storm is expected to pull in dry air from Texas, which could serve to as another check on the intensification process, Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes said.

Together, those two factors may prevent Francine from becoming a monster storm.

"I wouldn’t say its not on the table, but it seems to be fairly unlikely," Grymes said, though he cautioned that the storm will still bring dangerous conditions that residents need to prepare for.

 

 

There was an S&WB that swallowed a fly

See, they swallowed the ordinance to replace the ordinance to fix the billing errors...

The ordinance, which replaces one passed in 2022, matches laws passed in the spring legislative session. The rules are aimed at stabilizing billing, long a source of public outrage, while the S&WB replaces underground meters with new “smart” meters that track usage in real time. 

“We are hoping to have this issue resolved forever," Council Vice President JP Morrell said Thursday.

(Forever! Okay) 

That means they needed the "smart meters" to fix the "wonky software" that was supposed to fix the "human errors"... 

Utility officials say the smart meters will eliminate the need for estimates, reduce human errors and replace wonky software, which have all been blamed for inaccuracies. Half the city’s 144,000 meters are set to be replaced by the end of this year, and the rest by the end of 2025.

(The smart metering is a dubious solution, though) 

By the end of 2022, there will be over 124 million smart meters installed in 78% of U.S. households, according to data released in April by the Edison Foundation’s Institute for Electric Innovation. But less than 3% of today’s smart meters fulfill 2009 promises of customer savings and that must be prevented in the coming Energy Department-funded deployment, according to a September analysis by Mission:data Coalition.

“Utilities used federal and state funds to deploy smart meters and many explicitly promised to empower customers” to lower bills and earn rewards for supporting system peak demand reductions, said Mission:data President and analysis lead author Michael Murray. “The public policy failure is that utilities benefited from returns on capital expenditures and reduced operational costs but did not deliver those customer benefits,” he said.

Which is why they needed the contractor to fix... well, I guess, the continuing billing errors.

HGI will see a significant boost in compensation with its new role, a reflection of the higher volume of work it will perform, said Council member Joe Giarrusso, who sponsored the ordinance with Morrell. Its current contract is for $600,000, and the council voted Thursday to extend the contract through the end of next year with maximum compensation of $3.4 million.

Giarrusso said the council opted not to put the contract out to bid so the new appeal procedure could get up and running as quickly as possible.

Yes, yes, of course. Oh, also, they need a second contractor to fix the... wait, I think I'm lost here. 

The new billing ordinance prohibits estimated meter readings starting next year, and offers customers the option of receiving fixed bill amounts. It also mandates a contractor to hear all appeals and make bill adjustments the contractor deems necessary. A separate contractor will be hired to ensure bills are correctly sent in the first place.

Is that the mail? They need to pay a company to mail things for them?

How many private contractors should it take for a public agency to fulfill its basic administrative functions? The answer should be zero, right? This is just absurd. Nobody's bill will improve here. But some consulting companies will make a chunk of change off of the deal.  Seems to be the only thing that matters.

I'm thinking of a number between zero rats and thousands of exploding rats

 Could be anything I guess.

 New Orleans City Hall officials are still trying to identify the cause of a bad smell inside the building.

According to a city spokesperson, an inspection of the building Friday has ruled out both gas leak and rat concerns. 

Portions of city hall remain closed as city officials continue to investigate the cause behind the smell.

The Bureaus of Revenue and Treasury, the Office of the Registrar of Voters, and the Department of Sanitation remain closed due to the smell.

 

 

Rat jokes

On most days, it's hardly surprising to learn that somebody might walk into City Hall and loudly proclaim that they smell a rat. It just isn't always quite so literal as this.

According to these sources, the city recently decided to exterminate the rodents in the hall. But while it may have succeeded in culling the rodent population, it also apparently left a lot of carcasses in its wake, which as they decomposed have apparently released a potent cloud of noxious fumes into the building.

According to one source, there could be thousands of rat corpses left behind in city hall and that some of the bodies may have "exploded," presumably due to the petrification process.

NOPD's stoner rats declined to comment.

That's Gambit's John Stanton sharing the scuttlebutt with us there. I think he means "putrefaction process" instead of petrification there. Don't worry. We'll get that cleaned up in copy editing before it goes to publish. 

I've been watching everyone's similarly labored attempts online to merge the previous popular rodent meme with the most recent one and I think I may have it. 

When you walk into City Hall and start to go woozy from the putrefied rat fumes, does that mean you are also high?

Right?

Folks?

Better?

Okay maybe not. 

Anyway, I'm sure it smells petty bad. But, as someone who has been around the block a few times, I should point out that this "thousands of dead rats in the walls" story is a common urban legend in New Orleans. (And probably in a lot of other cities too.) It's a tall tale I've heard a few times from different bosses or co-workers. There's always a story about a building downtown where so-and-so "used to work" when they opened up the walls for some reason and found the Khmer Rouge of rats in there. 

This doesn't mean there isn't some truth to it. Animals do die and rot in buildings sometimes and it is unpleasant.  I just think John's source on the "could be thousands of rat corpses" angle is probably repeating a version of the popular hearsay. 

Consider also that the culture at City Hall is very, well, anti-City Hall as a physical space.  In March, the city approved a land swap agreement with the state that should clear the way to construct a new building just across Perdido Street.  I don't think a construction timeline has been announced yet, though. And there are likely several steps remaining toward approving a budgetary allocation all of which will require continuing political pressure.  So any number of exploding rat carcasses can probably help with that. 

The more of those that can be conjured, the better. Which is another reason you are probably reading about "thousands" of them today.  Recall that dubious rat memes helped move NOPD into a suspicious deal for a new HQ this year. Might as well stick with what works.

Return to normalcy

Ha, see, you probably thought this was going to be about the Democratic national ticket. But, no, Wine Mom and Football Dad will have to wait. Even more normal things than that are happening in New Orleans. 

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board issued a boil water advisory for the city's entire east bank and Algiers Point Tuesday night after a power outage at the Carrollton and Algiers water plants. 

The outages caused water pressure to drop across the city, prompting the advisory "out of an abundance of caution," S&WB said. The cause of the power outage is under investigation.

It's been a while since we've had a citywide boil advisory.  I can't begin to guess why the Boil Order Decade came to a pause, but I would start with assuming they just stopped reporting the minor outages.  When the pressure goes down everywhere at dinnertime, though, too many people notice. So they have to pretend to act. 

The initial press release raises several questions.  

The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO), in consultation with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) has issued a precautionary boil water advisory (BWA) for the East Bank of New Orleans and Algiers Point. A map will be forthcoming.

Water pressures in thease areas fell below 20 pounds per square inch (psi) due to power failure at the Carrollton Water Treatment plant. The Algiers Water Treatment plant was also briefly affected by this power outage. The cause of the power failure is still being investigated. Water pressure to the New Orleans Eastbank and Algiers Point have been restored, but a precautionary boil water advisory is necessary until water samples can be collected and tested.

How long was the power to the pumps out? In 2019, SWB installed two "water hammer" towers that are supposed to maintain pressure in the event of a power outage for up to 40 minutes.  Entergy tells WWLTV that tonight's outage was a "brief power fluctuation."  Is and event that can be described in those terms, more than the "hammers" can handle?  If so, what good are they? 

How is it that the "brief power fluctuation" affected both the East and West bank treatment plants?  I didn't think they were connected. Also what is going on with Entergy in general?  Anecdotally, we've been experiencing little brown outs around here just about every evening this summer.  I haven't seen any explanation for this. 

In fact, it seems like they aren't even trying to communicate anymore.  Tonight, for example, when tasked with explaining the brief fluctuation that somehow overcame SWB's big expensive hazard mitigation system, they just went into their bag of standard excuses and pulled out...

BREAKING: A spokesperson with Entergy N.O. says a Mylar balloon is behind tonight's power outage that led to SWBNO losing power and the subsequent boil water advisory that is currently affecting almost all of the city. @WWLTV @CmGiarrusso

— Lily Cummings (@lilyrcummings) August 7, 2024

Balloon? On both sides of the river at once? That's enough to knock out the most critical public infrastructure in the city? Still? After so many rounds of this?  No way that makes sense. 

On the other hand, it's an extremely normal thing to hear from them.

How a bill becomes a law

Yeah sure, the legislature gets together and argues and writes some stuff up, passes something, or maybe doesn't pass anything. It doesn't matter. What really happens is Jeff Landry says such and such thing is a law so he gets to act like it is a law and therefore, it is one. 

Landry complained that public records had been “weaponized to stifle deliberative speech.” His Republican allies in the Legislature moved to carve out a “deliberative process” exemption to allow government officials to have candid conversations with one another about proposed laws and regulations without fear that those communications could become public.

Even as Landry campaigned for the change to the law – which legislators nixed amid public outcry – he already was citing “deliberative process” and “executive privilege” exemptions to deny some records to members of the public. His administration cited those exemptions even though neither of those phrases currently appear in Louisiana’s public records statute.

A review of Landry’s first five months as governor shows that in nearly a quarter of all public-records requests his office fielded, his attorneys withheld records by citing deliberative process or executive privilege. The documents they withheld for those reasons included records related to Landry’s attempts to expand the death penalty, records dealing with the Louisiana National Guard’s deployment to Mexico and records related to Landry’s travel.

Getting the feeling this is going to be sad 4 years. Lots of hand wringing about the Governor's bad behavior but little or no accountability for any of it.

Economic indicators

I did see the signs. I tried to tell you.

Hey it's August 1 and still no Halloween candy stocked in the Rouses? Must be a recession coming

— skooks (@skooks) August 1, 2024

And now, look. 

U.S. stocks saw their third-straight trading day of heavy declines as recession fears continued to mount and Wall Street abandoned a popular trade that had helped counter high interest rates.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down roughly 900 points or nearly 2.5% Monday morning, while the S&P 500 declined 2.3% and the tech-focused Nasdaq fell 2.5%.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported worse-than-expected jobs data, showing the U.S. unemployment rate had climbed to 4.3% and that the economy had added just 114,000 jobs

 Always trust financial advice from this website and its affiliated social media.

The incredible shrinking administration

The New Orleans Saints opened training camp last week.  And the question on everyone's mind is, who is paying for Mayor Cantrell's tickets?

At the National Urban League press conference, Cantrell was all smiles despite the legal troubles surrounding her. Once she was on stage, she stayed on the theme, pointing to the political moment the nation is in and the challenges that may arise.

Cantrell is also facing a federal investigation into her dealings with Randy Ferrell.

WWL Louisiana reporter Alyssa Curtis tried to ask Cantrell about the investigation as she hurried away.

"Mayor Cantrell, did you attend the 2019 NFC championship, and who paid for the ticket?" Curtis asked. 

Cantrell's team responded, "We’re not going to do that. I told you all that this morning. We’re going to keep moving." 

All credit to Alyssa Curtis, of course, for at least trying. But I do have to say that this is very similar to the question I said I wanted to ask the mayor at the budget townhall last Monday.  It turns out they cancelled that anyway. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell's office has cancelled a town hall meeting scheduled for Monday night, citing the death over the weekend of longtime political consultant Bill Rouselle.

The meeting, where city officials were set to brief residents on the city's plans for its 2025 budget and take input on how tax dollars should be spent, was scheduled to take place at the University of New Orleans. The city cancelled the event late Sunday "due to the integral role" Rouselle's firm, Bright Moments, played in planning the budget presentation, a city spokesperson said.

The city will announce a new date for the town hall "in the near future," the spokesperson said.

No doubt, the passing of a monumental figure like Rouselle is worthy of remembrance. But it's difficult to understand why a basic public information function, like these budget sessions, would be so reliant on one private PR contractor. Or if we take that much for granted, does the unfortunate passing of the firm's founder leave its staff incapable of going ahead with what surely had to have been a fully prepared presentation by that time?  Or was Bright Moments always just Rouselle?  This really raises more questions than it answers. So why did they cancel the townhall? As that WWL story suggests, it probably has more to do with not wanting to face difficult questions from reporters and the public about various overlapping controversies surrounding the mayor right now.  

I have to say I'm at least a little sympathetic with the mayor about some of that. The celebrity gossip nature of the way local TV has handled the Vappie affair should be beneath all of us. And the way the media has made a hero out of this politically connected wealthy socialite who involved herself in it is regrettable as well. At the same time, though, the mayor's did react to her with the familiar clumsy and bullying abuse of power that has become one of the hallmarks of her time in office.

Remember, also, that if we look past the soap opera stuff, some of the allegations are actually serious. They just haven't been named in any indictment... yet.  But this story strongly suggests that the mayor moved to fire a city permits official in order to protect a crooked contractor. Yes, the one who gave her the football tickets. Even though he doesn't know how to spell her name. 

In a recording that WWL obtained of a meeting held Aug. 19, 2019, Chan complained to Cantrell that Cecil was “charging me with things” and creating a “hostile work environment.” Cantrell responded by praising Chan and asking, “Do you believe that we have what we need internally to fill leadership gaps should they become open? So, like running OneStop, that sort of thing?”

In an interview in March of this year, Cantrell denied having discussed Cecil with anyone else before firing her. She also denied that Cecil’s firing was a “favor” to anyone.

But Farrell claimed at least some credit. Last September, the TV station reported, Farrell wrote in an email to current Safety and Permits Director Tammie Jackson that “I had asked Mrs. Lotoya (sic) Cantrel (sic) to Look into Jennifer Cecil's Toxic environment at Safety and Permits and she chose to remove her.”

Adding to the intrigue is the appearance, once again, of controversial businessman Fouad Zeton who has shown up as a comic relief character in several Cantrell episodes. 

Farrell may have been introduced to Cantrell by Fouad Zeton, a friend and business partner of his who boasted of relationships to many politicians, including Cantrell. One of Zeton’s businesses was raided by the FBI in 2021; in addition to a series of paintings, the government seized his phone, which contained communications with Cantrell and others.

Zeton has pleaded guilty to falsely reporting a dozen or so paintings as stolen and then inflating their value – with the help of a New Orleans cop – in order to land a big insurance settlement. He is set to be sentenced Sept. 19.

Adding to the irony in this case is the fact that the tickets Farrell allegedly got for Cantrell were to the Saints-Rams NFC Championship game now infamous for its "no-call" pass interference ending which should remind us all that there really is no justice anywhere.  After all, the Supreme Court tells us that municipal bribery is basically legal now anyway. So maybe none of this matters. Still it sure would have been fun to go to the budget meeting and ask the mayor how many football tickets it would cost a person to be named the next Night Mayor.  But now we don't get to ask about that. Or about anything. Which is not good because, as it limps into the final year of its term, the Cantrell Administration looks to be falling apart. 

Take STR enforcement, for example. On second thought, maybe that's a bad example since there hasn't been a time when STR enforcement was actually functional. In any case, the regime such as it is, appears to be in complete disarray now.  The process for handling cases is toothless. The department doesn't want to assign lawyers to attend hearings. Oh and also the whole Zoning Department just up and quit for some reason. 

At the same time, Morrell told Mulligan in his July 17 letter that he was concerned Mulligan was now pushing hearings at a pace the understaffed STR office can’t handle.

Mulligan mentioned in his letter that the Zoning Division, which is supposed to be conducting STR hearings, hasn’t been able to have any “because its entire staff left earlier this year.” Mulligan doesn’t explain why the entire staff left.

As a result, Code Enforcement has been handling them in the meantime, while the Cantrell administration works to create a new office that handles hearings across nine city departments.

As of May 31, there were only 14 employees in the STR office, despite the office having a budget for 26 positions. According to Morrell, the 14 employees are now supposed to handle 40 hearings in two weeks.

Compare that with the 50 hearings per month previous memos estimated a staff of 23 employees could handle, and staffers now have more than twice that workload.

“When understaffed officers are forced to rush adjudications, mistakes are inevitable,” Morrell wrote. “There is a difference between quality and quantity of enforcement.”

Driving staff to quit en masse and overworking those who remain while refusing to fill the open positions sounds bad. But consider, also, that this phenomenon is hardly isolated to a single department. In June, we read about the similar (arguably far worse) situation at Public Works; the department responsible (for now, anyway) for keeping your streets un-flooded by clogged catch basins. You may think that's pretty essential work. The city, though, has purposefully made it less and less a priority.

It’s work that requires manpower, usually three to four to a crew. Two operate the equipment and at least one person for the manual labor that Casby was doing on a recent afternoon.

The problem for New Orleans is: There’s not many employees like Casby left.

An Algiers native, Casby, 58, joined the public works department in the late 1980s, when its maintenance yard on Norman C. Francis Parkway — then named for Confederate president Jefferson Davis — had more than 400 employees like him.

Today there are fewer than 30.

The city used to have its own rock crusher that ground asphalt that an army of frontline workers used to patch roadways. Now the city is down to just one pothole crew.

Because of the lack of staff, the city can only operate three of its four vacuum trucks full-time. In a good month, the in-house crews can only clear around two-thirds of the amount of catch basins needed to meet a benchmark previously set by the city.

“They just started cutting back,” Casby said about the late 1990s, when the city began outsourcing a lot of its work. “And everyone started moving out.”

Every story about the city's failing infrastructure can trace back to the 80s and 90s advent of austerity, privatization and outsourcing. This is not merely a New Orleans issue. Rather it is a long running policy regime that has emaciated public services in cities across the country. The turn against support for urban governance began with neoliberal technocrats in the 1970s and was put into practice by reactionary conservatives in the 1980s who passed billions of dollars worth of cuts in federal aid to cities. During the 1990s, cynical Democrats regained and held onto political power by fully adopting the reactionary rhetoric and consultant-driven policy grifts around notions of "reinventing government." 

It's worse now.  Over time, what might have once been dismissed as disingenuous Clintonite triangulation, metastasized into basic conventional wisdom. Anyone who had ambitions to become anyone in politics, especially at the local level in cities, had to learn to parrot tropes like "run government like a business," which was what our CEO Mayor Ray Nagin promised to do, or "do more with less," which became a frequent mantra during the Mitch Landrieu years. But those were just the poseurs.  

The current generation of politicians and administrators, like our Gen-X Mayor Cantrell, grew up as true believers in this stuff. The ideology was baked into the firmament of their careers before they even arrived.  It's the world they were trained for. No one in city administration actually believes in hiring people to do jobs. They're just looking to become conduits for outsourcing public funds to "private partners." And so it was inevitable that the Cantrell administration, from the first day it took office, could only have been ideologically opposed to governing. No one in charge there believes in the basic function of hiring staff to provide services to citizens. They don't think that is something a city should do.

There are real consequences for that. The understaffed and overwhelmed zoning and public works departments are just two examples of what happens when those who are charged with conducting the people's business do not take that task seriously. Even the things that they clearly want to do, such as, collect money from motorists via robotic cameras, can't get done in time to comply with new laws.  Last month, a key rental assistance program ran out of money because the administration didn't bother to request a renewal from the feds. 

Nor did they bother to answer reporters' questions about why. 

Monet Brignac-Sullivan, a spokesperson for council member JP Morrell, said the Cantrell administration didn't inform the council about the depleted funds or request more money in its mid-year budget adjustment.

"The Council is ready and willing to help solve problems when program administrators alert us there is one," wrote Brignac-Sullivan. "To date, there has been no communication from the program."

The Cantrell administration did not respond to a request for comment on why no additional funding was requested.

Nobody seems to be answering the phone at all over there anymore. According to this Axios story, that's a deliberate choice. We just hope the last whole department to resign remembers to turn out the lights before they go.