Speaking of shitty laws signed by John Bel Edwards

The pipeline protest criminalization law is going to court now.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, argues that the law is “so vague, overly broad, and sweeping in scope that people in the state cannot be sure of where in the vicinity of Louisiana’s vast 125,000-mile network of pipelines they can legally be present, who decides where they can be present, or what conduct is prohibited.”

“Its actual aim,” the suit continues, “is to chill, and harshly punish, speech and expression in opposition to pipeline projects.”

Tantric Morganza

They're holding back just a little bit longer.

The much-anticipated opening of the Morganza Spillway has been postponed as authorities juggle changing forecasts, a river elevation threatening to overtop the structure, and a hesitance to put any more water in the Atchafalaya floodway than is necessary.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday announced the Morganza Spillway's gates north of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River will not begin opening Sunday as expected, but will be pushed back to June 6.

Probably dealing with an understandably panicked response from people who have to get out of the way.  

One may be given to wonder what is the purpose

John Bel signed the abortion bill just like he said he would. Despite what you might here from some of his Democratic apologists, there's no reason to believe he absolutely had to sign the bill.  There are any number of arguments a Blue Dog "Pro-life Democrat" like John Bel could have made for vetoing this extreme and cruel piece of legislation. He signed it anyway because he really wanted to.

The specific purpose behind the bill was to be as maximally cruel to women as possible.  KCP came back and gave the legislators a chance to deny this. They didn't deny it.

The ultimate hypocrisy! #lalege won’t fund the healthcare for women forced to have a child after rape or incest. @TheDemocrats @LaDemos https://t.co/aUSTlgJVvt

— KarenCarterPeterson (@TeamKCP) May 30, 2019

Downtown land rush

After Katrina New Orleans received a lot of advice from urban planners about how to"shrink the footprint" of the city. We were told to be careful not to repeat the injustices of the past where the city was largely segregated by race and class according to elevation.  Build high, build dense, and build on high ground, we were told.  Of course it didn't work out quite that way, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad reasons.

Because you can't mow down a whole city and start over with a "blank slate," the human beings who live there have real life stakes and interests to consider. In other words, there's politics to do. Unfortunately our politics is dominated by wealthy real estate people so most of the time the results are sub-optimal for most of us.

And this is still true now in the post-post-K era where we are finding out that even though we did go and build high and dense on our high ground downtown, it turned out we were just building more nice things for rich people. 

Domain Companies officials will meet with neighbors Friday, May 31, to explain a zoning map amendment for their South Market District properties including The Standard, The Beacon, The Paramount, and a 36,000-square-foot surface parking lot. They are asking to change the zoning from CBD -5 to CBD-1, which would allow for increased commercial use, including timeshares.

Domain liaison Christian Brierre says the company is seeking the amendment “solely for the purpose of our retail spaces” and that The Paramount and The Beacon will “continue to be market-leading multifamily apartment products.”


Some neighbors wonder if Domain or a future owner could embrace timeshare as the highest and best use for those properties. Already, The Saratoga, the Maritime and 144 Elks Place are being redeveloped as timeshare or extended-stay properties.

While there is general unevenness in real estate sales citywide, business-friendly zoning downtown — which has encouraged the proliferation of timeshares, hotels and short-term rentals — is keeping overall real estate sales strong. Also Trump-era opportunity zones will provide long-term financial relief to many developers, including those acquiring properties in parts of the CBD.

Morganza watch party

There's an historic event going on out there.

Flooding in at least 8 states along portions of the Mississippi River – due to relentless, record-breaking spring rainfall – is the longest-lasting since the "Great Flood" of 1927, the National Weather Service said.

The 1927 flood, which Weatherwise magazine called "perhaps the most underrated weather disaster of the century," remains the benchmark flood event for the nation's biggest river.

Anytime a modern flood can be mentioned in the same breath as the Great Flood is newsworthy: During that historic flood, hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes as millions of acres of land and towns went underwater.

Sunday, everyone will be glued to their live streaming devices to watch the Corps of Engineers pop open the Morganza Spillway for only the third time ever.  In 2011 this was quite a spectacle so gather around and... oh.. well they're gonna do it slowly this time.

Engineers plan to open one flood gate per day for the first three days to allow the water to slowly flood into the spillway. They're aiming for a one foot rise each day during that period to allow animals in the area to safely flee. After that, they'll likely open up 20 to 25 of the system's 125 gates.

Well, okay, if we have to give up a bit of the show for the sake of some fleeing animals, I guess that's the sort of trade we have to make.  Safety first.  Oh also in that vein, please remember to secure your basketball players before the spillway opens.

At its peak, the water in parts of the Morganza Spillway will be high enough to cover professional basketball players.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts up to 7 feet of inundation in the spillway around Krotz Springs after the Morganza opens Sunday, said David Ramirez, chief of water management for the Corps’ New Orleans district.

As long as we're measuring wetlands loss in football fields, we can do river flood depths in these units.  It makes as much sense.

Anyway the real reason I'm even posting this today is so I don't forget to mark these Jeff Masters posts about the Old River Control Structure that went up at Weather Underground last week. There are three of them. Here are the links with key excerpts.

Part 1: America's Achilles' Heel: the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure

The mighty Mississippi River keeps on rollin' along its final 300 miles to the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans—but unwillingly. There is a more attractive way to the Gulf—150 miles shorter, and more than twice as steep. This path lies down the Atchafalaya River, which connects to the Mississippi at a point 45 miles north-northwest of Baton Rouge, 300 river miles from where the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico southeast of New Orleans.

Each year, the path down the Atchafalaya grows more inviting. As the massive amounts of sediment the Mississippi carries—scoured from fully 41% of the continental U.S. land area, plus a portion of southern Canada—reach the Gulf of Mexico, the river's path grows longer. This forces it to dump large amounts of sediment hundreds of miles upstream, in order to build its bed higher and maintain the flow rates needed to flush such huge amounts of sediment to the sea. Thus, the difference in elevation between the bed of the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya—currently about 17 - 19 feet at typical flow rates of the rivers—grows ever steeper, and the path to the Gulf down the Atchafalaya more appealing.

The two highest floods on record at the Old River Control Structure occurred in 2011 and 2019, and the 2018 flood ranked as the fourth highest on record. Floods like these further increase the slope, as flood waters scour out the bed of the Atchafalaya. Without the Old River Control Structure, the Mississippi River would have carved a new path to the Gulf in the 1970s, leaving Baton Rouge and New Orleans stranded on a salt water estuary, bereft of their main source of fresh water to supply their people and industry.

Part 2:  Escalating Floods Putting Mississippi River’s Old River Control Structure at Risk

In Beyond Control: The Mississippi River's New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico, historian James Barnett Jr.’s fantastically detailed 2017 book, he brings up a possibility that other experts have also warned about: while the Old River Control Structure is the most likely place for the river to break through and carve a new path to the Gulf, the river could also breach its levees elsewhere and accomplish the same feat. One possible location for such a breakthrough: Widow Graham Bend, the location of a sharp meander bend in the river about thirteen miles north-northwest of the ORCS. This location was identified as early as 1882 as a possible location where the Mississippi could breach its west bank levee and send its waters southward to join with the Atchafalaya River (though it would also have to break through a second levee that lines the Red River).

The river did breach the levee at Widow Graham Bend during the great flood of 1927, but the Mississippi was not ready to jump to a new channel then. Since the flood of 1927, the critical west bank levees near the ORCS have been built to a height of 71 – 74 feet--at least seven feet higher than the all-time record flood from 2011.

Part 3:  If the Old River Control Structure Fails: A Catastrophe With Global Impact

Failure of the ORCS and the resulting loss of barge shipping that might result could well trigger a global food emergency. The U.S. is one of the world’s largest exporters of grain, and 60% of that grain is transported to market by barges travelling on the Lower Mississippi River. A multi-month interruption in the supplies of more than half of U.S. grain to the rest of the world can be expected to cause a spike in global food prices, and potentially create dangerous food shortages in vulnerable food-insecure nations.

As I wrote in my 2016 post, Food System Shock: Climate Change's Greatest Threat to Civilization, the greatest threat of climate change to civilization over the next 40 years is likely to be climate change-amplified extreme droughts and floods hitting multiple major global grain-producing "breadbaskets" simultaneously. An interruption in U.S. grain exports due to failure of the ORCS, if it occurs during the same year that another major grain-producing nation experiences a serious drought or flood, could cause a frightening global food emergency. The impact might be similar to what was outlined in a "Food System Shock" report issued in 2015 by insurance giant Lloyds of London, with rioting, terrorist attacks, civil war, mass starvation and severe losses to the global economy.

Just a few things to think about while you're watching them pull open the first bays on Sunday. 

Maybe Sidney can buy it

Probably we shouldn't speak such things into being but Sidney has been running around scooping up iconic New Orleans properties as well as bars/music venues lately.  And, well, now it looks like the Dew Drop Inn is available.

Plans to redevelop the historic, dilapidated Dew Drop Inn building on Lasalle Street in Central City into a modern hotel, restaurant and music venue have officially been scrapped.

A deal had been in place late last year that would have seen the 80-year-old, predominantly Jim Crow-era music venue sold to a developer with plans to renovate the two-story, 10,000-square-foot space to include 15 hotel rooms, along with a restaurant, music venue and a museum dedicated to New Orleans music.


But that deal — to sell the space to Ryan Thomas and his company Peregrine Interests — fell through at the end of the year. In late April, the effort officially ended.

Back in 2015 then councilwoman LaToya Cantrell helped create a cultural overlay district intended to spur development along that stretch of LaSalle Street. 

The LaSalle Street overlay is designed to promote businesses catering to the cultural arts and live entertainment as well as hotels, similar to what was done on Freret Street. Adult-themed businesses and karaoke bars would not be permitted.

The main benefit of the proposal would be to pave the way for the redevelopment of the historic Dew Drop Inn into a boutique hotel and live music venue, Cantrell said.

No idea why karaoke is prohibited.  Maybe that's what killed the Dew Drop plans. In any case, the zoning overlay is still in place. So if somebody wants to invest in a live music club in that spot, the opportunity exists, theoretically.

BUT, speaking of opportunity, last week we mentioned this quirk in the way the Trump Administration is handling so-called "opportunity zones" now that makes them even more open to exploitation as scam tax shelters than they already were.  Is the Dew Drop in one of those? The way this is drawn it looks like it might be just the wrong side of the street. But I don't know how that boundary works, exactly. If so, it might make the land more valuable to "investors" as a vacant lot than anything else. 

 Not that this would deter Sidney from buying it one way or the other.

Could make for a real hot summer

Well these are some fightin' words right here.

The key details of a teacher pay raise remained unresolved Tuesday with nine days left in the session, sparking questions on whether a controversial end to the debate could spark a walkout or other job action by teachers.

Education leaders and some lawmakers say that, if the pay raises are for one year only, action by already restive public school teachers is all but certain.

"If it doesn't happen the way it needs to will teachers even come back to school?" asked Shane Riddle, legislative and political director of the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state's two teacher unions.

Right now there are two versions of the teacher pay raise.  The details are a little bit technical.  The Senate version boosts salaries by $1000 for teachers and $500 for support staff baked into a $39 million increase in the Minimum Foundation Plan formula for public school funding recommended by BESE. The House version is a one time gimmick that raises teacher pay by $1200 and support staff by $600. The critical difference is, without the MFP increase, the salary bump is not a guaranteed recurring raise.

The tea leaves I've been looking at this month suggest that the Senate version is going to be what eventually comes out of the process.  Maybe there will be some nail biting during conference but even so it sounds like that's where we're headed.  Otherwise, the teachers had better be ready to back up their fightin' words when the new school year comes around.  If something goes haywire during this last week in the legislature, it's going to be a scramble trying to organize a strike over the summer.

The Bungalows

Maybe you've been reading this WWLTV and Advocate series on Ken Matherne's animal scam in Folsom.  It's not exactly news. Matherne has been running his "attraction" for over two decades during which time many a red flag has been raised with not much consequence. The reasons for this shouldn't be too much of a mystery either.

Matherne owns a for-profit business called Global Resources LLC, which began as an oil-related business. He also owns the north shore property, which he acquired through inheritance and buying out other heirs.

He makes no secret of his wealth. In a 2001 article about the animal park, Matherne said his family's success in the oil business allowed him to retire in his early 30s. Campaign records show he's given six-figure sums to charity and to Republican political candidates, including a $100,000 donation to the Donald Trump Victory PAC in 2016. He also owns a two-story yacht, called The Boardroom, which former employees estimate was a million-dollar purchase.

We're pretty accustomed to letting our land barons do whatever they want in Louisiana, especially the ones who conduct so much oil money into politics.  In Matherne's case, it's best not to even joke about him.  In 2010, he tried to sue a northshore blogger for writing a parody story about "killer giraffes" kept on his grounds.

Usually, though, when someone is that defensive....

The incidents often took place at company parties and crawfish boils held at The Bungalows — Matherne's house on the grounds of the park — or his yacht.

“At Christmas parties, sometimes he would have girls dancing on his yacht bar, throwing money at them,” ex-employee Brett Guillet said.

Another ex-worker, Brad Nethery, said he saw Matherne engage in unwanted physical contact that included “him groping, kissing, grabbing” — behavior that Nethery said happened “at his private parties, at work, at any time.”

Anyway, obscenely weatlhy person lives on a private animal compound in a building he calls "The Bungalows."  Yeah, something creepy is probably going on. 

NIMBY neighborhood associations

There are a lot of different things to focus on with this OPSB and HANO land swap deal. But the important detail is the neighbors are suing now so they don't have to fight against an affordable housing project later.

Neighbors who want the building to remain a school, however, are upset about the prospect of a trade that would allow HANO to move forward with plans to build a mixed-income housing complex on the historic site.

That fight didn't go well for the NIMBYs in Bywater last week although they certainly made things more difficult than they should have been.  Maybe the Uptowners will have more clout with City Council if it come to that. But they'd rather not find out.

Updated: Transdev must does have pretty good odds

RTA is in the process of deciding on whether or not it wants to renew its relationship with Transdev this year or contract out operations to a different management company.  It's tempting to think, then, that the fact that 2 of the 4 candidates being considered for CEO have Transdev ties is a pretty big tell as to where that's headed.

Regardless of whether Transdev wins the contract this year, its role is expected to be diminished somewhat.   RTA will still outsource most of its operations management. But the executive level leadership will be directly hired by and accountable to the publicly appointed board.  Maybe that's a distinction without much of a difference. It would certainly seem that way if the new CEO is hired straight out of Transdev.

One of the four candidates is former longtime RTA executive Mark Major. Major, technically, is a former Transdev employee. But it's worth noting that he tried not to be.

Major, 58, a Loyola University graduate, spent more than 30 years at the RTA in various roles, including general manager from 2006 to 2008. In that role, he sought to keep the RTA's operations under local employees' control, but lost out to Transdev, which hired Justin Augustine III to run the agency.

Major was actually pushed out of RTA just last year in the midst of a controversy over the new Canal Street ferryboats. 

Under a resolution the RTA approved in January 2016, the agency was supposed to spend no more than $10 million on the catamaran-style boats, which will carry up to 149 passengers each across the river between Canal Street and Algiers Point.

The firm chosen to build them, Metal Shark of Jeanerette, originally had until late May 2018 to complete them. But Transdev later negotiated a revised $10.7 million contract with Metal Shark with a March 21 delivery date.

Apparently the extra money was a rush order to get the boats up in running in time for Mitch Landrieu to have a big celebratory ribbon cutting before leaving office. That didn't work out so well. As of the beginning of May this year the new ferries still weren't ready.

So what went wrong?  A lot of things. This September 2018 article summarizes a series of delays incurred last year due to failed inspections.

Though the ferries were complete enough by May to warrant inspection by the U.S. Coast Guard, the inspectors said the ferries’ stairways were too steep and the access plates for their fuel tanks were on the wrong side of the tanks. Metal Shark had to remove the stairways and the fuel tanks and start over.

In July, one of the boats began test runs on the Mississippi, and Transdev’s crews began to learn how to operate both vessels. But training stopped after only a week as the RTA and Transdev found still more problems. The boats didn't drain correctly and there were issues with how some of the equipment was mounted. A door seal failed, and there weren't enough safety signs, according to the RTA.

What was worse, though, was this wasn't the company's first such complaint. That Advocate article also notes that the previous year Metal Shark ferries delivered for use in New York City had to be taken out of commission when the boats, "began leaking and corroding after only a few months in the water."

That was interesting to me so I looked up a few more details. Turns out the New York City deal with Metal Shark involved a strange kind of competition with an Alabama based firm called Horizon.  Here is how that went.

Two years ago Metal Shark and Horizon were selected to build — on an aggressive schedule — 19 aluminum catamaran Incat Crowther-designed 85’4″x26’3″ ferries for New York City. Both yards were given contracts for a certain number of ferries by ferry operator HNY Ferry Fleet LLC, the Hornblower subsidiary that is running the system for the city. By November 2016, 16 contracts had been let and there was what amounted to a competition, based on what Hornblower saw during each yard’s construction process, to see who would build the additional boats.

In 2017, Horizon made the first delivery to New York’s NYC Ferry Service, with Metal Shark making its first delivery right behind it. But the aggressive schedule proved too much for Horizon, logging far more labor hours than it had anticipated, helping plunge the shipyard into a financial quagmire that eventually led to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in October 2017. Meanwhile, the ferry service was an almost immediate success and Metal Shark was given additional contracts to build more boats for the service. 

So after driving Horizon into bankruptcy by undercutting it and delivering a faulty product in the process, Metal Shark went on to buy Horizon out in 2018. Really living up the "shark" part of the name, I guess.

But there is more. In October, RTA board member Al Herrara was forced to resign after it came out that a business he owns entered into a deal to sell parts to Metal Shark. 

Herrera billed Metal Shark of Jeanerette $8,500 for pipe fittings, pipe flanges and other materials his Kenner company, Best Bolt & Nut Corp., provided for the new ferries in November and December 2017, invoices obtained by The Advocate on Wednesday show.

The Bolt and Nut deal is a clear ethics violation. As a parting shot, though, Herrara went on to claim "whistleblower" status accusing RTA leadership of "questionable bidding and billing practices" although it isn't clear what he was referring to specifically.  Whether any of this contributed to the construction delay is anybody's guess.

After that the relationship between RTA and Metal Shark experienced some strain. RTA began charging the contractor $1,000 per day in late fees.  In November we learned that the boats would be delayed again due to "corrosion problems."  Metal Shark then began to push back against RTA with somewhat non-specific complaints about the terminals these ferries are supposed to be serving.  A month later, the Advocate found that a consultant hired by RTA had reported Metal Shark's work appeared "rushed" and "not very organized."

"Metal Shark appears to lack direction in coordinating final outfitting and finish work of the vessel," Barry Geraci of the Shearer Group said in a June report about the first catamaran the RTA's contractor designed and built.

By March of this year, however, everything seemed like it was back on track pending a few contractual details and.. something about a "rescue net."  

The dispute between the RTA and Metal Shark centered on whether the new ferries should include an attachable rescue boat or use a rescue net to retrieve passengers who fall overboard.

That story says the parties eventually agreed on "a crane-like device coupled with a rescue harness" to fish people out of the Mississippi so, if you are planning to ride the new ferries, maybe stay away from the railings. Anyway, we were told at this point that the new boats might be ready in time for Jazzfest. They weren't. But, no doubt they'll be along soon.

And now that the Metal Shark saga appears to be ending, what better person to run RTA than the sort of but not really Transdev guy who paid them $750,000 to "rush" the job in the first place? I don't like to bet on these things because I am shit at predictions. But if Transdev has better than even odds at re-upping with RTA in September then it's probably also fair to say Mark Major has better than even odds of getting the CEO nod tomorrow as well.

Update:  They went with this guy.

Next BIG announcement is hiring a new CEO—The Executive Committee recommends and the Board Approves Alex Wiggins from Los Angeles #RTABoardMtg A little more background on Mr Wiggins and the other candidates https://t.co/NmIczGP6Ig

— Ride New Orleans (@RideNewOrleans) May 28, 2019

  

 The Advocate has a paragraph of his CV here.

Wiggins, 52, joined the Los Angeles transit system as executive director of security in 2015, after more than 20 years in transportation jobs. He has worked for transit systems in Denver, Chicago and Oceanside, California, serving as chief administrative officer and deputy executive director, among other roles.

Let's spend a few seconds googling and see what we come up with real quick.


Wiggins's title in L.A. is Chief of Security and Law Enforcement.  The position was created in 2015.

In the newly established position, Wiggins manages the agency's internal security operations, along with its $100 million contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Part of his job involves maintaining Metro’s security standards. But he also focuses on ensuring that the agency’s surveillance systems, fare enforcement technology and communications systems work together efficiently.

In addition, Wiggins aims to increase L.A. Metro’s law enforcement visibility throughout its entire network.

"Fare enforcement" sounds super friendly.  So does the prospect of passing through a body scanner every day just to get to work.

In addition to the Thruvision scanners, the agency is also planning to purchase other body scanners – which resemble white television cameras on tripods – that have the ability to move around and hone in on specific people and angles, Wiggins said.

"We really want to be effective and we need the ability to have a fixed field of view, but we also need to be able to move that field of view as necessary," Wiggins said. "Deploying these technologies together gives us that accuracy and minimizes any delays."

Now we're not saying this means Wiggins is going to go full-on police state managing the buses and what not.  But we should note he does have some experience in that area.

A veteran of the U.S. Army Military Police, he joined Metro's executive team after more than two decades of security-related experience, including a stint training a new police force in Iraq through DynCorp International.

DynCorp is an internationally notorious mercenary paramilitary security force. Famous the world over for operating in such human rights quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, and post-Katrina New Orleans.  On the plus side, this means our new RTA head could very well have experience getting people to work on time.

While labor trafficking is clearly a human rights issue, McCahon is quick to point out that recruitment fees are also procurement fraud. Under the current contract, Dyncorp and Fluor pay Ecolog to bring them a specified number of workers. The contractors assume responsibility for transporting and housing their workers and are reimbursed by the government for the associated costs. “So if a subcontractor brings over 8,000 workers, and each worker comes with a $2,500 recruitment fee, that’s a $20 million black money kickback,” explained McCahon. “This is the largest contract fraud in the history of reconstruction.” The Army reimburses Dyncorp and Fluor for all of their allowable costs, plus 3 to 6 percent of their costs as profit—so the higher the costs, the higher the profit.

Upperdate: Looks like Transdev is back in. 

The RTA’s board of commissioners unanimously awarded the contract to Transdev at a meeting Tuesday, following recommendations from a separate selection committee and an outside consultant’s study that urged a structural overhaul of the agency’s leadership. Having also handled financial and policy planning decisions since 2008, Transdev going forward will only oversee operational aspects of the RTA.

I thought they might wait to announce that until after the reorganization was a done deal. But here we are.

Uppestdate:  I forgot to mention one more Metal Shark fact. Yes, Bobby Jindal's LED helped them get state subsidies. Why wouldn't they?

In May 2012, Gov. Jindal dedicated a previous expansion of Metal Shark's facilities in Jeanerette, after the company won a $192 million U.S. Coast Guard contract in November 2011 to build the Response Boat-Small, a watercraft adopted by the Coast Guard to broaden its homeland security mission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The company is also building other boat classes for the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, local law enforcement agencies and foreign agencies.

The state began working with Metal Shark Boats on the current expansion project in November 2012 and will provide the company with a $750,000 Economic Development Loan Program award, along with the services of LED FastStart®, the nation's top-rated state workforce development program. Metal Shark also is expected to utilize the state's Industrial Tax Exemption and Quality Jobs programs. Construction will begin later this year and hiring for Metal Shark's new jobs is under way.

Is the rent too damn high?

I wish somebody would tell me because there is just no way to know for sure.

Still, in cities like New Orleans where job opportunities haven’t kept pace with rapidly rising housing prices, advocates are worried that recent gains may be reversed.

Before Katrina, half of all apartments in the city used to rent for less than $500. Now, it’s difficult to find anything under $1,000. At the same time median household income in New Orleans has fallen from $39,000 in 1999 to $37,000 in 2017 when adjusted for inflation, according to a February report by The Data Center.

The same report found that, between 2004 and 2017, median gross rent — rent plus utilities — rose from $742 to $962 in New Orleans, a 30 percent increase after adjusting for inflation.

That's actually contextual background in a story about homelessness in New Orleans.  Earlier this month the City Council passed an ordinance requiring a more aggressive regime for clearing out encampments under the overpasses.

If the new ordinance becomes law, the city would theoretically institute more regular cleanings and would have to post notices 24 hours in advance of any cleaning. The ordinance also mandates store-and-release practices for people’s possessions, to address complaints that camps were basically clear-cut by city sanitation workers, who cut up tents and threw them into garbage trucks along with people’s other meager possessions.

UNITY’s advocacy committee thought the law missed the mark. “The ordinance would increase the amount of time and attention spent on removing homeless people’s possessions and moving homeless people around, neither of which will reduce homelessness,” they wrote in a letter to the council.

“People are already so stressed living on the street. They are so stressed,” said Nan Roman, who heads up the National Alliance to End Homelessness and supports the idea of a clean camp environment. Still, she opposed the new ordinance because it seemed too focused on “moving people around.”

This doesn't seem like it's going to help anybody find a home any faster.  It helps councilmembers appear responsive to people emailing them complaints about having to look at tents when they drive downtown, though.  The mayor's office has tried to push back on it. That's to their credit.  There had even been some talk of a veto at one point but I'm not sure that would stick.

Anyway, it's tough to keep up with the bills around here. If they don't save me a spot under the bridge I might have to start working on a new fallback.

Paying attention

This is a pretty good Grace column about the way the political ground has shifted under John Bel with regard to abortion. There's a problem, though, with the opening paragraph where it is implied that those criticizing the Govenror for preparing to sign an abortion ban now "weren't paying attention" to his views when they voted for him in 2015.

The wider world, and even some Louisianans who weren’t paying attention, seem to just be discovering a basic truth about Gov. John Bel Edwards. Yes, he’s a Democrat — a real, true-believing, progressively minded one. And yes, he opposes legal abortion.

I don't think that's what has been going on. It's perfectly acceptable for voters who have been "paying attention" to make choices based on the relative merits of the options available even if that choice isn't a total reflection of a each voter's priorities and values. In fact most voters who pay even a little bit of attention will find most office seekers are repugnant individuals anyway.  Elections are mostly about figuring out which candidates to vote against. Votes, like retweets, are not actually endorsements.

Grace's better observation is that the Governor's abortion position is no longer some matter of convenience for him. At least, morally speaking, it isn't. Because Republicans have loaded the courts with right wing freaks (like Brett Kavanaugh, obviously, but also, somewhat ironically, Wendy Vitter) John Bel's decision isn't just some matter of electoral triangulation. The Governor, as well as his scandalously disappointing liberal defenders, would have us believe there's nothing John Bel could do here even if he wanted to.  Not only is he following through on his own beliefs, they argue, he's also just pragmatically following the will of the voters.   

Governor Edwards said he’s confident most of Louisiana’s voters feel the same.

“People of Louisiana are overwhelmingly pro-life, and this is conversation that we’ve been having here for many, many years,” he said. “It’s not any different.”

But this year, it is different.  The "fetal heartbeat' bill John Bel is preparing to sign is an extremist measure.  If the right wing courts were to allow it to be enforced, it will  have horrendous real life consequences for real life Louisiana women.  The most frequently cited poll of Louisiana voters is this 2016 LSU survey.  55% of respondents agreed that abortion should be illegal either in all (26%) or most (29%) cases.

That's a majority but it isn't an "overwhelming" majority. And within that majority, even, there are a sizeable number of persuadable respondents willing to consider circumstances under which abortion should be legal.  The circumstance we're faced with now is the threat that an extreme and dangerous law could be ratified and enforced precipitating a horrific and completely preventable public health crisis. It's reasonable, then, to expect our proud "moderate" of a Governor to veto such a law without incurring catastrophic political damage.  Some damage, maybe, but certainly a fight worth having. At least it is if the Governor is at all interested in protecting the health care and basic human right to personal autonomy of Louisianians who had little choice but to vote for him in 2015 anyway.  But why would we expect that he's been paying attention to them?

Tiered reentry

After this week, the city is turning off the school zone cameras for the summer. (Yay!)  The trick, though is figuring out when they turn them back on. Because our school system is so badly balkanized with charters, nobody really knows when that is going to happen.

“Because there is no singular Orleans Parish School Board calendar for the 2019-20 school year, all of the individual school calendars will be gathered and a determination made for the Citywide date that school zone cameras will become operational in August," the mayor’s office announced.

"The start date will be selected later this summer. Though school zone cameras will not be operational as traffic control devices over the summer, law enforcement will have access to video from the cameras as needed.”‬

LOL the cops are still watching you.  Good of them to throw that in. When the start date is
"selected" will it be announced?  There isn't a great track record with regard to that.

It shouldn't be this hard

Given the amount of yelling and screaming that had to be overcome to permit this development in Bywater, it really should have been worth more than this.

The planned development process also limits the number of units the developer, the Texas-based ITEX Group, can build. The company and the Housing Authority of New Orleans, which owns the land on Royal Street, were seeking mixed-use zoning, which would have allowed up to 189 residential units. The underlying zoning approved Thursday would cap units at 146.

The proposal before the council calls for 136 units. HANO and ITEX have said they would subsidize 90 affordable apartments by offering 46 market-rate units.

That's barely even the beginning of a dent in the affordable housing shortage.  And the only way to finance it is by allowing the developer to sell 46 "market-rate" (likely high end) apartments. Yes, it builds some affordable housing. But we shouldn't be required to build nice things for rich people just to be able to do that.

And still the yuppies in the heavily gentrified neighborhood showed up to bitch and moan.  Unfortunately this is the "only game in town."

Another project supporter, affordable housing advocate Breonne DeDecker, said the council should consider that resources for affordable housing is extremely scarce.

“This is the only game we have in town. We will not get this fixed until there’s a huge lift at the federal level," DeDecker, program manager at the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, said.

But the only game is still rigged. 

Morganza

Just a few weeks ago they said they weren't going to have to open it.  Turns out maybe the river is deciding for them.

Boyett said that current river forecasts project the river overtopping the structure in two weeks, and that water at that height would render the spillway unusable. The Corps would prefer to open it a few days earlier to allow a controlled release. That would entail filling the basin with a foot of water per day for two or three days to give wildlife a chance to escape.

They really really do not want to have to open Morganza.  It flows through land that people have gotten used to using for farming, hunting camps, and even transient homes in some places. It's serious when they decide to do this. And this year's river flood is as serious as it's ever been.

The Mississippi River has set flood records this year. Rainy conditions across the country have dumped gallons upon gallons of water into tributaries that feed into the Mississippi, which has been in flood stage at Baton Rouge since early January. The persistent high water has broken the record set in 1927 for most days in flood stage at the capital city. Though hemmed in by the levees, the river is forecast to remain in flood stage well into summer.

Summer flooding isn't unheard of but usually the river doesn't stay so high that late into the year.  Hurricane Season is right around the corner. At least that's expected to be "near normal." Of course, that's plenty bad enough.

Go along to get along

Cedric Richmond is not exactly what you would call a risk taker.

With a field of at least 23 presidential candidates to choose from, many of the Democratic Party faithful are waiting for a round or two of Darwinism to kick in before declaring their undying love and unequivocal support.

Not Congressman Cedric Richmond. He’s for Joe Biden.

The New Orleans Democrat began promoting a Biden run as far back as 2016, in the ashes of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump. And when the former vice president finally got off the fence in late April, Richmond was among the first to endorse him.

It's the safe play for an organization man like Cedric. Biden is the brand the company is running under first. If the brand succeeds, it opens a lot of opportunities for Cedric. If it falters, no big deal.  The finance and pharma core of the Democratic Party establishment will just pick another standard bearer from among the twenty something clones in the field who aren't Bernie or Warren. Cedric will move along with them. No one will criticize him for having picked a dud candidate as long as it was the right dud candidate at the appropriate time. The important thing is to stay with the herd. That's how you make it in the world.

The boil order decade

No word on whether or not this will actually be one.  Maye S&WB will retcon it eventually.

The man for our times

Someday it will all make sense to historians.  There really isn't any person more perfectly suited to have been President during this golden age of grifting.

As Trump is the apotheosis of rank materialism and revanchist nationalism in the political arena, Uber is Silicon Valley’s greatest and most absurd offering to the American public, filling a need we never knew we had with a business model that is nothing short of fantasy. Uber’s power lies in the promise it proffers to multibillion-dollar venture capital firms, a carnival bark that translates into making the unsustainable somehow sustainable. Deeply discounted car rides can turn a profit someday, somehow, because people will like them enough. Make us bigger so we can grow. We won’t let you down because this time is different. This is the nature of capitalism on Uber: the dream doesn’t end when you wake up.

For most of its existence, politicians—Democratic and Republican alike—celebrated Uber’s expansion. To resist such a company was to be perceived as a luddite, against tech and progress and what makes this an allegedly great nation. Jeb Bush, when he was briefly a presidential front-runner, turned Uber into a campaign prop, and Democrats in cities across America welcomed what they believed to be any politician’s fetish object: a thing that makes jobs. Uber had jobs, lots of them, never mind the pay. There wasn’t much critical thinking about the economics and morality of ride-hail apps at this juncture. Coincidentally or not, this was before 2016. Times were simpler. Reality TV hosts could run for president, but they couldn’t win.

The slave trade in Louisiana

Let's see we've got public health services outsourced to a non-profit with political connections. We've a bunch of money in public contracts.  All the usual elements are here.   

The drug rehab Cenikor, recently hit with allegations it made patients work at private companies with no pay, has become an increasingly accepted alternative to jail in recent years all while public officials and state agencies have supported the organization.

Ethics Board records show more than a dozen elected officials – from legislators, like Baton Rouge Rep. Pat Smith, to local officials, like Livingston Sheriff Jason Ard and Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III – helped the nonprofit raise money at fundraisers.

In February, Gov. John Bel Edwards was honored as Cenikor’s “elected official of the year” for helping to combat drug abuse at Cenikor Foundation’s Voices for Recovery fundraiser. James LeBlanc, the state’s top prison official, was tapped as "community partner of the year."

Soo many people paid this non-profit to supply them with unpaid labor from exploited rehab patients.

An investigation by Reveal from the Center of Investigative Reporting and resulting lawsuits show the organization sent patients to work at the Exxon refinery, LSU dining hall and Ambrosia bakery, along with a host of other businesses. Several former patients even said they were sent to work at The Advocate.

Cenikor allegedly kept the wages leaving the patients unpaid – a scheme one lawsuit dubbed “indentured servitude” – potentially violating labor laws.

More than a dozen former patients claim in lawsuits they were sent to Cenikor by judges and court systems. Court officials, however, contend that judges typically don’t specify to which facility defendants must go in lieu of jail time, but Cenikor was one often used.

Kudos to the Advocate, at least, for telling on itself. But really shouldn't everybody here know better at this point?  

Well that seems bad

Is that bad?

The last time the Mississippi River was this high for this long, it prompted the federal government to build the modern levee system.

The river has been in flood stage for months, and on Tuesday, will hit 136 days in flood stage at Baton Rouge, breaking the record set in 1927.

What's more, the river is still in major flood stage and rising, though held in place by the levees. Meteorologists say they expect it will stay in flood stage "well into summer."

They say this year is the most rainwater the river has had to drain ever, or at least since they started measuring 124 years ago. So far, so good, they nervously hope out loud. But there are some items in this story that get your attention. 

The typical formula the Corps uses to predict flood stage doesn't even apply because the water has been so high for so long, Mississippi Valley Watershed Chief Joey Windham said.

Nevertheless, south Louisiana's levees are holding, said Col. Michael Clancy, of the Corps. His New Orleans District has noted more than 200 points of concern, including more serious issues with erosion near Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and a sand boil in Pointe Coupee Parish.

This is a long time for those levees to hold a sustained flood. There is a danger they could erode in spots as the water recedes.  Seepage happens every year but it is something they have to monitor.

The article also talks about disruptions in agriculture and construction along the river while it remains in flood. Apparently this doesn't affect the Bourbon Street work scheduled to re-start this week. Back in March, the river stage had prompted a halt to that project. I wonder what is different now. 

Golden age of grifting

The new opportunity zone rules are deliberately designed to spawn thousands of ineffectual and unaccountable tax shelters.

While the scheme is attracting investors, some observers worry that it won't do much for the really depressed neighborhoods that were supposed to be the focus of the policy. They fear a disproportionate amount of OZ investment will be directed at real estate and not toward higher-risk, job-creating investments in the neediest zones.

If the policy goal is to inflate the price of real estate in the targeted neighborhoods with no tangible benefit to anyone but the "investors" parking money there, then this is the way to do it. Expect a land rush.

Cullan Maumus, an executive with the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund, a private-sector property developer in New Orleans, said his firm has been getting 50 to 100 inquiries from potential investors every day since the regulations were clarified.

The boil order (and street flooding) decade

We'd say last weekend was pretty wild but we're used to it.  A lot of rain in the space of a few hours, the streets all flood. Water gets in houses and businesses and cars. Would you believe this whole sack of crawfish just came floating by our front door?



Well, okay, we made that part up.  But we would believe it.  Just another mid spring Sunday in the City That Floods.

For all her efforts to rebrand New Orleans as the “City of Yes,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell may have actually stumbled on a more fitting slogan for the area less than two weeks into her term.

“We are a city that floods,” the recently inaugurated mayor said after a May 18 storm drenched the region last year.

Nailed it. Hashtag CityThatFloods.

"When we take on too much water at any given time, we will have street flooding," the mayor tweeted out then. "We have to be prepared."

For residents, that means hustling to get vehicles to higher ground, lashing trash bins and lawn furniture to something solid and hoping that the turbines, pumps and their operators are all fully engaged at the Sewerage & Water Board.

Yeah, I remember that one. It's been an eventful year in office for Mayor Cantrell. The, "hey, it's a city that floods" bit seemed like so much unintentional comedy at the time. It got less funny, though, as the year went on and the mayor's pattern of blaming residents for the bad things that happened to them came more and more into evidence.  Sewerage and Water Board's billing software is an unholy mess but the real problem is you guys are deadbeats.  We fiddled with the traffic cameras without telling anybody but the real problem is y'all have a "laissez-faire approach" to life here in the Big Easy. There's been a brief spike in violent crime but the real problem is, y'all are bad parents.

Last Sunday morning a pumping station lost power during a heavy thunderstorm. What were the real reasons for that? Well let's go through the usual theories to see if we can come up with something.  We'd say it was because some employees fell asleep but that's who we blamed it on last time.  We've also already played the runaway truck card.

We could say it was some sort of wayward animal. We've already used up squirrel, also raccoons, more than once, I think. There was one very famous cat. There's no shortage of mischievous critters crawling about New Orleans, but even so, we're running out of suspects.

It seems we've landed on lightning strike as the main culprit for the Mother's Day flood. But it's odd that it would strike five times. At the end of the day the real problem is most likely to be our negative attitude.

But there's been little to disabuse us of our fatalism in recent years. SWB's leadership aren't even trying. They even brought a graphic to this City Council presentation listing the 28 boil orders we've experienced since 2010.  That can be a real downer.  But the punchline is they can't even get that right.  McBride actually took the time to fact check the "28 boil orders."  It turns out some of SWB's tally include some pressure drop incidents during 2011 that never resulted in boil orders. But their count also omits three actual boil orders while getting some dates and details wrong on some of the others.  In the end McBride still counts 27 total boil orders.  The 2010s are indisputably the Boil Order Decade.  What does it say that the agency responsible for issuing those boil orders can't even count them?  Is there a similar count of major street flooding events since the August 2017 flood?  Mother's Day was at least the third since then that compares.

Maybe we can answer that later. But for now what's really important is that we did, in fact, have all those crawfish last weekend. And maybe they didn't quite float up to the door with the flood. But we went ahead with the boil order anyway so as not to take any chances.



As it turned out, this was more than we had enough people to handle.  Which is how we ended up with enough left over to make a crawfish bisque.



This is a rare thing for a couple of reasons. One reason is there usually isn't enough leftover to work with. Also the process takes a little time and there usually isn't enough of that either. This is normally something I talk about wanting to do throughout crawfish season but never get around to.  It's not very difficult. And, beside the crawfish and the time, it doesn't take much of anything special.  Here's the method.

First, peel your crawfish.

As you do this, obviously, you'll reserve your tail meat and whatever fat comes off with it in a container. It's hard to say how much you'll need. You're starting with some undetermined quantity of leftover boiled crawfish in the first place. I think we ended up with maybe 5 or 6 pounds altogether. I didn't even use it all. There's still some in my freezer now.

As you are peeling, you will want to reserve some of the claw shells and some of the tail shells in one pile. Use these to make a stock. Just throw them in a pot with some water and bring it to a boil. You can add onion and celery if you want.  Let it simmer a while and then strain.

Meanwhile the heads go in their own pile. Use a butter knife (or maybe a thumb you don't mind scratching up pretty good) to dig out all the guts so you are left with a pile of hollow carapaces.  Set that aside for a minute.

Next, make the stuffing.

Chop yourself up some onion, celery, bell pepper, garlic, maybe some parsley, as finely as possible. Saute in butter. Grab about... oh I dunno... maybe half a pound to three quarters of a pound of the tail meat and mince that up real fine as well. Add the meat to the vegetables in the pan.  You can season this with a little Tony's or just salt and pepper or crab boil or whatever. But if your crawfish boil was well seasoned already you probably won't need much. As that cooks, add about a cup of bread crumbs to thicken it up.  Next, beat two eggs, temper them with a bit of the stock, and add this to the pan as well. Stir until you get the consistency of, well, stuffing.

Stuff the heads

Each crawfish head should take a spoonful of stuffing.  How many do you need? I don't know just keep going until you run out of either heads or stuffing. I counted 34 by the time these went into the oven.



They go in a 350 degree oven for 15 or 20 minutes. However long it takes to brown a little bit.



Meanwhile you still have to make the bisque.

For that you're gonna need to make a roux. You guys know how to do that. It doesn't have to be very dark.  Just a medium blonde is fine. That gets more onion, celery, bell pepper, and garlic. I also put in a can of tomato paste. It was pretty thick.

Once the vegetables cook down a bit you can start adding your stock. You're going to want a mildly thick soup. The seasoning isn't complicated. Salt, pepper, red pepper, Tony's, crab boil, whatever you have and however much you like. I think I added some thyme.

Add, roughly, a pound or a pound and a half of the crawfish tail meat you peeled earlier and bring to a simmer.  I also added some green onion and squeezed in a lemon.  After simmering for a while, go ahead and add the stuffed heads to the pot. It looks like this.



Some people want you to take the "faces" off of the crawfish heads before you stuff them but that's no fun as far as I'm concerned. Look at those guys floating around in there. It's adorable. Serve over rice, of course.



If you took the time to stuff a lot of heads this is where that work is rewarded. Everybody gets more in every bowl. You don't want your guests jealously tallying up the heads and concluding they haven't gotten their "fair share." Ideally there will be so many everyone will lose count. Much like we have with our boil orders.

Zion is already a disaster/hero

I have to admit I do not understand the world of Pelicans media very well.  The circle of local reporters and bloggers who follow the team tend toward a Benson boosterism of such magnitude that one can never fully trust the consensus there.  Maybe that isn't always true but it is usually at the back of my mind when I'm sifting through takes.  On the other hand, national sports media seem to have an anti-New Orleans agenda at work. I think this is probably just the usual large market bias but, for whatever reason, it's much more pronounced on the NBA beat than it is with the NFL. 

Anyway neither side strikes me as particularly reliable. Gayle is either an evil madwoman or the franchise's savior.  Zion Williamson is either under a moral obligation to reject the draft altogether and go to New York or he is extremely "excited" to "accept the things he cannot change" even though phrasing it that way definitely makes it sound like a burden.   Who knows what to believe?  

My guess is Zion will be the greatest thing to happen to the Pelicans since Anthony Davis was the greatest thing to happen to the Pelicans since Chris Paul was that too.  Meanwhile Fletcher Mackel can tell us about 500 different ways the Pels can trade him.  Until they finally do. 

The law does not require you to carry John Bel to term

There are many many ways in which our current governor sucks. We list them here regularly.  Also we voted for him against David Vitter. Apparently there are people who are older than 13 who see some kind of contradiction in this. Voting for the least bad candidate on the ballot during a given election does not enlist you in that candidate's administration.  The least bad candidate is still going to do bad things. You aren't under any obligation to accept those things. 

Conversely, it's also fine to vote the least bad person again if he/she continues to be the least bad person on your ballot. This still doesn't enlist you in that person's campaign communications team so feel free to speak up when the least bad person does the bad things. The Governor's contact information is here, by the way.

Now we're getting into the Harry Potter character names

The essence of the FNBC scandal is about the way New Orleans's social and political elites leverage their status to launder various government grants, tax incentives, and charitable donations through non-profit entities, real estate transactions, and public-private  partnerships in order to pass money around among themselves and their friends. We are governed by a syndicate of wealthy criminals. During the critical post-Katrina "recovery" period, FNBC was their bank of choice.

The collapse of the bank exposes a lot of these people. Here is one whose actual name, believe it or not, is Charity.

Charity is the third person to be charged in the case, in which the bank, founded by high-profile New Orleans financier Ashton Ryan, was seized by regulators in the spring of 2017, leaving the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund on the hook for $1 billion. It was the biggest U.S. bank failure since the 2008-2010 financial crisis.

The charges brought Friday allege that Charity used front companies and conspired with "Bank President A" -- which, it is clear from previous charges brought in the case, is Ryan -- to submit false documents to obtain loans that totaled $18 million by the time the bank collapsed in April 2017.

Actually I remember this guy. One of the scams he was involved in had to do with Mitch Landrieu's use of "Fresh Food Retailer" grants ostensibly aimed at alleviating so called "food deserts" but in reality became a conduit for funneling money to corporate entities like Whole Foods or to hustlers like this Charity person. The Advocate links back to a Lens article about Charity and Landrieu's FFRI scam but apparently doesn't read it since they seem to think the strip mall in question is located in New Orleans East. [UPDATE: Turns out the US Attorney's office doesn't know where the mall is]

Or maybe they don't want to implicate any of the Landrieu people until they have to. And that's the interesting thing about this story. The FNBC failure could turn over a lot of rocks. But it's also likely the media is interested in looking under as few of those as possible.

Bare minimum

Another shot at undoing our very bad state pre-emption law against locally set minimum wages just whizzed right by today.  Nothing to do now but sit around and wait for the Governor's preferred $9.00 bill to also fail. By the looks of things, that should happen sometime on Monday.

In the endgame now?

At City Hall this morning they're getting set for what is likely the penultimate council hearing on short term rental regulations.  At least for this phase. The franchise can always be rebooted and probably will. There will be plenty of loose ends to pick up on;  lawsuits, enforcement issues, spot-zoning creep, it's all baked into the set of rules currently on the table.

The current chapter has been a long time in development. To get a sense of it,  I tried to find the earliest mention of Airbnb on the Yellow Blog.  That's not a perfect barometer, especially now that I've gotten so lax about my note taking. I've been writing about gentrification on this blog since before Katrina.  Anyway, here's a post from 2013 that mentions Airbnb in San Francisco. But that was really just a link to a story about the "sharing economy" in general.  The oldest post here about New Orleans that I specifically tagged "Airbnb" was this one from 2014. 

The point is, it's been a long time coming to get us to this point where our electeds might start taking substantive action to rein the problem in.  Kristin Palmer is pleased with the work "some of" them have done.

”I’ve been pleased with the attention to the different aspects of short-term rentals and how engaged some of the council members have been,” said Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who has led the charge on the issue since taking office last year. “A lot of the stuff that’s coming out now is actually more restrictive than what we originally envisioned.”

And, as we said at the top, this isn't quite the last episode.  Today is about revising and approving the Planning Commission's recommendations. They still have to come back in a few months to pass an ordinance.  A copy of today's proposed amendments is attached to this NOLA.com article. Mostly these deal with tweaks to what is and isn't allowed in residential zones and whether or not those rules can be overridden by city council through conditional use permission.  It looks like they're leaving the question of affordable housing set asides in larger commercial developments for later.

Further complicating matters is Jimmy Harris's HB 43, up for consideration in a State Senate committee today, coincidentally.  This is the part of the tourism Grand Bargain that imposes a new 6.75% sales tax on STRs in New Orleans and gives a portion of the revenue to Sewerage and Water Board. Why not all?  A quarter of it goes to New Orleans and Co. for some reason. It's an indication of what a rotten deal LaToya has struck with the tourism cabal. But that's a subject for another post.  The problematic nature of tying vital infrastructure funding to the success of an industry that displaces residents should be obvious. The pro-STR lobby is already trying to exploit that, in fact. According to Palmer, that isn't going to fly. But time will tell.

The architect of the proposed regulations, Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, was critical of the letter, describing it as a “weak attempt to try to split the (Cantrell) administration and the council and make STRs a wedge." But she acknowledged the legislation is going to cause issues with raising more money for affordable housing.

The mayor, meanwhile, remains curiously on the sideline. As a councilperson her record on this issue has been neutral-to-not very good.  At some point she's going to have to weigh in. 

In the meantime, stage lights are going up at City Council. Enjoy the show today.

Remind me to write down all the ways in which the Cantrell adminstration has embraced a police state mentality

There's a lot of items to catalog there.  More than I've got time to run through right now.  Here's another one to throw on the pile, though.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - “We’re doing everything that we should be doing and committing ourselves to doing even more,” Mayor Latoya Cantrell said.

With a juvenile crime problem across New Orleans, Mayor Cantrell said her administration is taking proactive steps to curb that crime, includes working with the Covenant House when it comes to curfew violations.

Jim Kelly is the Executive Director of the Covenant House and said the city will soon begin aggressively enforcing curfew for anyone 16 years old or younger.

“So, they came to us and said to us, we really want to enforce curfew. Can you guys help us? Well, that’s why we exist,” Kelly said.

Curfew starts at 9 p.m. and ends at 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. through 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Of course, LaToya loves enforcing curfew.   It was just last week that she and NOPD Chief Shaun Ferguson and Mayor Cantrell spent the better part of a  press conference talking about how crappy New Orleanians are at being parents.

“It is time to take ownership of your kids," New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said Thursday morning. "Be responsible for these kids. We as a department, we as a criminal justice system, we as a city government can not do this alone. We do need your help with this”

They need your help.  Meanwhile they will be helpful to you by arresting your children for the very serious crime of being outside. You might think having to deal with all the added stress and inconvenience of dealing with that makes the job of being a parent all the more difficult but, remember, it's for your protection... or it's for somebody's protection... maybe.  There's no evidence that juvenile curfews do anything at all to reduce crime.  Sorry there's no research on whether or not they affect "brazenness." But LaToya sounds like she has some opinions on that.

For potential victims, officials told them to call 911 and not engage.

“They’re armed, and this is serious," Cantrell said. "They are brazen, and they have no fear. Call 911, do not engage. Because we believe, based on what we’ve seen, it will not end in a manner that we want in this city. It will not end positively.”

At least she doesn't call them superpredators. Although, I did think, for a second, I was watching Joe Biden talking about the crime bill again.

President Bill Clinton in 1994 signed the crime bill into law with broad bipartisan support as violent crime rates peaked in the US in the early 1990s. Included in the law was the federal "three strikes" provision, mandating life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. 

"We have predators on our streets that society has in fact, in part because of its neglect, created," said Biden, then a fourth-term senator from Delaware so committed to the bill that he has referred to it over the years as "the Biden bill."

"They are beyond the pale many of those people, beyond the pale," Biden continued. "And it's a sad commentary on society. We have no choice but to take them out of society."

In the speech, Biden described a "cadre of young people, tens of thousands of them, born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing because they literally ... because they literally have not been socialized, they literally have not had an opportunity." He said, "we should focus on them now" because "if we don't, they will, or a portion of them, will become the predators 15 years from now."

The 1994 crime bill supercharged mass incarceration, greatly expanded the power of the American police state and penalized a generation of poor people, basically, for the conditions of their own poverty.  I thought we knew that already.  In fact, I thought so many people understand this now, as compared to in 1993, that this sort of rhetoric has become a political problem for Biden in the Democratic primary. It must not be much of a problem for Cantrell and her police chief, though because... geeze.

Anyway I'm still trying to decide if the bigger problem here has to do with Mayor Trump's authoritarian streak or if it's more about the petty corruption of involving a problematic religious non-profit in the enforcement scheme. Is Covenant House being paid for its role in this? If so, how much?

The landlords are the victim, see

This is a story about how the pro-Short Term Rental lobby is working to keep the City Council in check by threatening frivolous but expensive legal action.  

The lawsuit contends that these restrictions amount to a deprivation of the STR-owners' property and due process rights under the Louisiana and U.S. constitutions, as well as the city's constitution, the New Orleans Home Rule Charter.

Eric Bay, chairman of ANP, says that the point of the lawsuit is not to obtain damages but to try to persuade the City to make sure those STR operators who had legally-obtained licenses before last year's moratorium are "grandfathered" in and will be able to continue to operate legally. The lawsuit argues that the City's existing zoning rules - the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance - provide for this continuing use.
 

Why is Eric Bay still talking? I thought they fired him. No matter. If the point here is to be annoying then he is probably your guy.  Short term rental landlords have filed suits like this in other cities and failed.  There are multiple problems with ANP's reasoning not the least of which being that they are asking to be "grandfathered" into a regulatory status that is barely the age of a toddler.  Also it's just dumb.

Property rights law generally allows a pre-existing commercial use when there is a change in land use regulations, says John Lovett, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a property expert. "However, the licenses granted by the city already signaled to the property owners that their right to engage in whole home rentals was contingent on annual renewal of the licenses," and the new rules would return the situation to the status quo before the experiment with whole home rentals.

But they know this. A lawsuit like this isn't intended to win in court. It's meant to intimidate councilmembers just as they are taking up the issue next week. ANP has money to blow asserting its dominance while the council has to worry about the budgetary impact of legal defense. (Or at least they need to hear arguments based in such a concern.)

But ANP is really the little guy, here, see. Hell they are straight up woke, even. 

The ANP says that it represents the typical smaller operator in New Orleans and has not been opposed to new rules. In fact, Bay says, the ANP proposed even stricter rules in 2016 than the rules that were eventually adopted the following year.

The group says its membership demographics are 78% female and 50% minority, with many having invested in rental properties as part of their retirement plans.

"Our group is speaking up for those afraid to come forward and those whose voices have not been heard and whose legal rights are being threatened,” said Janice Burrell, ANP vice president and a retired computer science professor, who is African-American.

"As a minority female and New Orleans resident, we were promised a chance to build personal wealth, and share in our city’s hospitality industry under a legal taxable operating framework," she adds. "Through no cause of our own, this new set of guidelines seeks to take that opportunity away."

Sorry, everybody who has been fighting for affordable housing and against the conversion of neighborhoods into tourism villages for  the better part of a decade now. It turns out you are all the real racists. Maybe we are laughing at that but this is the political argument that has already won the day with your elected persons.