Department of Garbage

The Mayor's Cousin Gary this morning during a Council At Large debate on WBOK:

"When I say we're going to get rid of those traffic cameras, those traffic cameras are going to be removed," he said. "I am going to personally remove them if I have to personally go get a garbage truck from the department of garbage and go run them over with a garbage truck."

And, you know, I'm sure we all appreciate the sentiment. But it's not a sentiment we can reasonably expect Cousin Gary to convert into any useful action should he, through some unforseen series of deaths, find himself the winner of this election. Much like his proposal to sell the airport or Austin Badon's proposed commuter payroll tax (also discussed during this debate) we can safely assume it will be filed directly into the "Department of Garbage" upon arrival on the Council agenda.

Meanwhile, as we noted this morning, candidates Head and Badon both signed on to an agenda set forth by something called "Forward New Orleans" which is basically a business lobbying mechanism pushing several backward ideas such as,

"Protecting economic opportunity" for local, small and disadvantaged businesses, such as by opposing efforts to require companies seeking public contracts to recognize labor unions.

It matters that candidates Badon and Head support Forward New Orleans' backward proclamation that protecting unions is somehow different from "protecting economic opportunity" because, as we have seen, each has applied this sentiment to their actions in office. Doubtless the item was added to Forward's agenda in response to Council's passage by a 4-3 vote this week of an ordinance designed to ensure that city contractors are in good standing with regard to federal and state labor laws. Stacy Head was one of those no votes. The ordinance was denounced by the contractors who showed up that day as redundant to existing law but also because it would "stymie economic growth" in some way that those existing laws apparently don't.

Freddy Yoder, the CEO of Durr Construction Co., called the ordinance "bad law'' that would stymie economic growth in New Orleans. Yoder said laws that address the issues are already in place.

If that doesn't make sense to you, you must not be thinking Forwardly enough, I guess.

Badon, meanwhile has been a major proponent of Governor Jindal's ALEC-driven anti-union and anti-teacher school privatization agenda. (Badon has been listed as an attendee at ALEC conferences.)

And so among the three candidates with major name recognition, two of them have cheerfully signed a backward "economic opportunity" agenda put Forward by a coalition of entrenched New Orleans business interests and have demonstrated through their voting record a willingness to back such an agenda. And, as if matters weren't bad enough already, the recognizable candidate who just so happened to not sign on to the backward agenda is... Cynthia Willard Lewis.

The At-large election is this Saturday. Let's hope we're lucky enough to get hit by a Department of Garbage truck before we have to go and vote.