New Orleans 2017 in a nutshell

Exhibit 1:

have to wonder if any of landrieu's people actually got to the end of the article https://t.co/vNWLM17ZDe pic.twitter.com/ltaYz0AOr5

— andruokun (@andruokun) April 19, 2017

Maybe the tweet embed is a bad format here. This is the part the mayor may not have read.

Douglas S. Noonan, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, has studied cultural districts and questions their effectiveness as urban policy. Such areas “usually don’t do much in terms of alleviating poverty or bringing in new jobs,” he says. “Their largest impact probably has been in terms of increasing property values.” That, in turn, leads to what some refer to as the SoHo effect: People of means like the big, open loft spaces that developers renovate—supported in Maryland by tax credits—which leads the artist population to be priced out.

The reality, says Dr. Noonan, is that “cities are competing for people who are drawn to cultural areas, who tend to be rich or upper middle class. It raises the question of why is government supporting this group of people.”

The answer, of course, is the neoliberals who direct urban policy are rich or upper middle class and therefore believe cities should work in ways that suit them. For the upper class careerists in government and politics, the work is primarily about promoting and enriching themselves and their friends. Whatever notions you may have about social justice or participatory democracy are seen, at best, as means to suit their ends and at worst, as annoyances to be put down.

Here, for example, is Deputy Mayor Ryan Berni (and we'll call this Exhibit 2) on Twitter congratulating "smart and capable people" like Suzie Terrell's daughter on their having found jobs in the Trump administration. 

Julie Radford — who like her boss is a mother of three young children — was chosen to work for the first daughter after being recruited in February by Powell.

A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Radford, 34, first connected with Powell as a consultant to Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses initiative, which was overseen by Powell in her previous job. Based in New Orleans, Radford oversaw Goldman Sachs’ entrepreneur-boosting programs in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

As a supplement to that background, please enjoy this 2013 video from Aspen where Mitch Landrieu and Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein chummily talk up the 'treps. At the end of the day, everybody here is on the same page. Solutions and good governance come from the bankers and capitalists. The politics stuff is just a bunch of noise.

Democratic Party professionals are doing pretty well raising money off of their #Resistance brand. So it serves well to kayfabe for the cameras as principled anti-Trumpers whenever the opportunity arises. But, really, these elite careerists all have more in common with each other than they do with anything most of us experience in our daily struggles.  We're getting ready to kick off a new round of municipal elections in Orleans Parish.  Seems as good an opportunity as any to start thinking about ways to change that.