Vote often

So you can vote early this week if you are an early voting person. I'm not one but I don't have a good reason for that. I vote on Election Day because that feels more like we're participating in something. It's like going out to see a parade or a football game. It's a big event and we're all doing it together. That's what democracy is all about, right?  Besides, we all know the best politics is the big loud superficial spectacle kind. At least that is how I feel about it.  Anyway, it looks like more and more people are different from me. The first day of early voting Saturday set records for turnout.

There is a very long ballot this time because it is a statewide legislative election. People might want to do a little reading up in advance. If that's you then there are a few places I can recommend.

1) Pick up an Antigravity Magazine at your local corner store or coffee shop. The "Harm Reduction" guide there is very good and funny and helpful. It's not online yet but probably will be tomorrow. If you're looking for the physical copy, probably the Gambit will be on the rack beside it. Leave that where it is.  All of their recommendations are absolute trash this year. I don't know how much of that to attribute to the continuing Geroges-ization of all local media (It's getting real bad! Remind me to say more about this later) or just the fact that Gambit endorsements have always been kind of bad.  This seems worse than usual, though.

2) The PAR guide to the amendments is always useful. It doesn't take sides (I am voting no on all four but you may disagree) but it gives detailed arguments for and against each one.

3) And finally there is this one which I think I linked to already but here it is again. It says here, 

More than 20 DSA members contributed to the research, writing, editing, and design of this project, among us service industry workers, social workers, secretaries, educators, attorneys, students, and professional organizers. Collectively we have brought our experience and knowledge about the way government systems and elected representatives affect our lives in material ways. 

That sounds like a lot of work. Probably should at least give it the courtesy of a glance-over.. even if the serious political reporters don't have the time

The ring must be destroyed

I was charmed as hell to hear Jonathan Schwarz's guest appearance last week on Citations Needed for a couple of reasons. For starters, he said the show was "the best political podcast in America," which is exactly the thing I've been saying over and over for a while to anybody I think might need to hear it.

That episode is specifically about former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power's new memoir, "The Education Of An Idealist." (spoiler. it's not good.)  But more generally it is about the hypocrisies and atrocities baked into U.S. imperial power. And, even more generally it is about the question of power and what to do with it.  People like Samantha Power believe.. or at least they explain themselves by asking us to believe.. that the best way to make a difference in the world is to wedge oneself into the places where power is wielded. Become a small part of the problem in the order to make the problem slightly less bad. Because, of course, you, the power seeking individual have only the best of intentions.

Which brings up the second thing I enjoyed about Schwarz on this show. At about minute 22 or so, Schwarz makes an incredibly nerdy and simple seeming Tolkien reference. I don't even know if I have to reproduce it here. I'm sure it's obvious enough but, okay I'll transcribe a bit. 

I don't know if you remember... if you guys have read Lord of the Rings. There's a section towards the end when Sam, like, has to pick up the ring and carry it, right?  And, in Lord of the Rings it talks about how Sam like everyone who picks up the ring become obsessed with it....  And so there's just a section of the book where it talks about how, like he begins having these wild fantasies.. and he saw Samwise The Strong.. you know Samantha Power goes by Sam.... "Samwise The Strong, hero of the age striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call" and so.. that's a really interesting passage about how like power doesn't just... like power the concept, not the person doesn't just play on our worst instincts, it also plays on our best instincts. It's like you know he only had to put on the ring and claim it for his own and all this could be.  And it would have been very interesting for her (Power, in her book) to talk about that. About how, like, "yes, I am tempted by power"... "because I would like to do good in the world and I know how dangerous a temptation that is and exactly how that can lead you to extremely dark places." 

But, of course, she hasn't learned that lesson.  Just the same way the entire US foreign policy establishment has not and cannot learn a lesson like that and continue to exist.  Anyway, the reason I wanted to share all of that is because I've been reading and following Schwarz a long time. So I know that if you've been reading or following Schwarz a long time, you'll know that this LOTR bit is not something he just pulled out of the air. This has actually been his take on Sam Power for over a decade.

And it's something I appreciated hearing referenced again here because it's also more or less my take on power and politics in general. This week, as the Louisiana statewide elections move into the early voting period, I've had people ask me a few times who I recommend they vote for.  As always, I tell these people not to vote for anybody. But I'm happy to help them find lists of people to vote against.  Because for poor and working class people like us, politics is not a means toward seizing or wielding power. Power can only derive from and sustain inequality. Wealth, in fact, is power. It concentrates in the hands of the few and acts to deprive the many.  The purpose of politics for us is not to take power for ourselves but to resist it.  The ring must always be destroyed. 

I think people understand on a basic level that politics is corrupt horseshit. But I wonder if they understand how fundamental that is. When I say politics is corrupt horseshit I mean, yes, your candidate, your people, whatever particular organization of professional activists you happen to attach to or agree with... even the ones you very much want to see win... guess what.. also riddled with corrupt horseshit.  It is important to always have this in mind. And sometimes we might forget a little bit so it's a good idea to constantly reassess everything just to make sure we recognize how and where the corrupt horseshit is configured lately and think about where it might move next.

I've been wondering lately what is going to happen after 2020 when no one's super neat theory about "how to win at politics" turns out to have been true and we end up being ruled according to whatever disgusting accident is most acceptable to the money again.  I imagine there could be a lot of disillusioned people by then.  I hope they don't get too discouraged, though.  I'm doing my best to try to head that off now but I'm not sure I know how.  I'm a Saints fan from way back before the Payton/Brees era.  I know how to get up every day ready to lose again. I'd like to help everybody else be ready too.  Because hopelessness is no excuse to give up.

This week the Democrats appear to be finally ready to impeach the President.  This is something they should have done a long time ago, of course. We've written about that a few times. See here, for example. There's a good chance it will not end well. The outlook is even worse now than it could have been because they have waited so long and chosen a less than optimal reason to move. But now that they are at this point they should still do the thing. The fact that doing the thing is going to end badly is no excuse not do the thing anyway. Who cares what McConnell does to jam it up. Who even cares if they actually manage to remove Trump. The "win/lose" outcome is beside the point. 

The "game," as our bloodless pundits are fond of describing politics, is rigged such that only the rich and the powerful can win. Most so-called "bipartisan solutions" are just deals that pave the way for rich and powerful people on "both sides" to win a little something at everyone else's expense. There are ways for rich and powerful Democrats to "win" this scenario even by losing which is what Pelosi et al have been playing at so far by delaying for as long as they have. They might still get away with not having done much.  At the end of the day they are still rich and in power, same as ever.

But they should still do the impeachment, and we should still encourage them to do it. The President is a criminal, has always been a criminal on innumerable counts both large and small. Maybe we can get them to impeach him. It's far less than the full accounting he deserves but he does deserve at least this. All the other questions about conviction or pardon or political backlash are unimportant. Just do the thing because it's what should be done. Because, for us, winning is not the point. All that matters is what side you are on. Don't ever choose a side because it can win. The ring must be destroyed.

Feed them all to Ochsner

Eventually there will just be one hospital.

In a move that would result in the largest health system in the Gulf South, Lafayette General Health System announced Wednesday it is seeking a merger with Ochsner Health System.

The board of trustees of both health systems signed a letter of intent for the merger Wednesday morning, Lafayette General announced. Both organizations will now enter into a period of due diligence and seek required regulatory approvals, which could take several months.

Why does this keep happening? The answer is classic disaster capitalism.

There's a perpetual ebb and flow in Louisiana where Bobby Jindal type grifters wreck the state budget followed by John Bel type bi-partisan dads who stabilize things by institutionalizing the damage to basic services.  First the disaster, then the normalization of its destruction.   Following along in the wake of these shocks is Ochsner which appears to be on pace to eat every hospital in the state.  By the time it arrives on the scene, though, it looks to everyone like a savior. 

The move was partially prompted by a "wake up call" after last year's state budget situation. A reduction in state funding forced Lafayette General to consider reducing services at University Hospitals and Clinics, to include possible closure of the hospital.

Lafayette General operates University Hospitals and Clinics as part of a public-private partnership that stopped it from being closed in 2012. Callecod said the merger will allow LGH to negotiate with the state for funding from a much stronger position.

"We very much as a system are at the whim of the legislature, and so certainly we do everything we can to make folks understand the great work we do there, but the reality is that this merger will allow us to be in a better position with the state as we're having those conversations because of Ochsner's reach throughout the state," Callecod said

Who is this a good deal for?

I have a long history of being not very smart which is why I spend so much time typing stupid questions out on the internet.  So apologies for this one, but why does this read to me like a pretty sweet deal for Freeport?  I'm missing the point, I guess.

Lawyers representing coastal Louisiana parishes have negotiated their first settlement with one of the oil and gas companies accused in court of damaging the state’s coast, a potentially ground-breaking move in the effort to find funds for coastal restoration.

Hey that sounds pretty good.  Not great, though. It's just one company estimated to represent about 4 percent of drilling activity over the past century or so in Louisiana. (The story includes a helpful graphic clarifying that 4 percent still comes out to over 2,000 wells so let's not diminish Freeport's impact that much.)  The Advocate sees this as a good sign, though. As in, this $100 million is "only a fraction" of what we can expect to realize as other firms follow Freeport's lead and settle up.

Assuming Freeport's contribution is proportionately typical, that's potentially $2.5 billion if my math is good which is always a big if.  The 2017 version of the state's coastal restoration/mitigation master plan is expected to cost $50 billion if fully funded. Soooo, again, if we can trust my math, this means, the oil and gas industry, by a long stretch the first and greatest cause of coastal loss in Louisiana both in terms of physical damage and in terms of sea level rise brought on by global warming, will be on the hook for about 5 percent of the cost of dealing with that catastrophe.  Yay?

And that's if we assume every firm decides to pay up.  That's far from a given, if their lobbyists' statements are any indication.

Two of the state's most powerful energy lobbyists, the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, denounced the deal, calling it a win for trial lawyers and their plans "to shake down Louisiana oil and gas companies for legally conducting production activities" that followed the rules laid out by state and federal regulators over decades.

"This misguided effort to go back in time and rewrite history amounts to an all-out legal attack on the entire regulatory framework through which oil and gas operations have been conducted for nearly a century," the two lobbying groups said in a joint statement. "Regardless of how one company may choose to handle their case, LOGA, LMOGA and our members remain confident these claims will not stand up in federal court."

Well they sound really upset.  What about this assertion that the Freeport has been the victim of a "shake down"?  Remind us what they've agreed to again. 

As part of the deal, Freeport would make an upfront payment of $15 million upon formally signing the settlement, would pay an additional $4.25 million each in 2023 and 2024, conditioned on the creation of a special fund by the Legislature to receive the money, and would contribute up to $76.5 million more “subject to contemporaneous reimbursements from the proceeds of the prior sales of environmental credits,” according to Hayes.

Carmouche estimated that Freeport would disburse the money over 22 years.

So the only part of this that's real is $15 million. Five years from now there might be another $8.5 million if the Legislature does some things.  After that, we're off to the secondary market to sell our environmental credits. What this means. Or at least what I think it means is Freeport gets to pay over 75 percent of its fine to the state by selling "pay to pollute" licenses to other companies in the market to do that.  That doesn't sound like a particularly punitive burden on Freeport at all. I'm not even sure they won't make money on the deal in the long run.

All we do is build nice things for rich people

That Opportunity Zone is creating some real opportunities, let me tell you.

The historic Whitney National Bank building on St. Charles Avenue in the Central Business District has been sold to developers Mike Wampold and Lenny Lemoine, who plan to bring in a high-end boutique hotel to occupy most of the space after renovation.

The 108-year-old, 14-story building that had once been the tallest in New Orleans, was occupied by Whitney Bank until early this year. Whitney merged with Gulfport Mississippi-based Hancock in 2011, and in January the bank's 600 employees decamped to the nearby 51-story Hancock Whitney Center on Poydras Street, a modern skyscraper that is currently the city's tallest.

Let's see here... we're gonna Ctrl-F and look for "affordable housing" and.. .no, not there, no... oh wait what is this? 

Wampold said the partners have been talking to several groups that might operate the planned boutique hotel. "I think whoever we get in there will be the kind of hotel that would draw the clientele that this location should command," he said. "It would be a cool and hip kind of group."

Hmm no that's not it. Man there has to be something, though, because we have just gone through a whole discussion about the housing crisis and the proliferation of STRs and the fact that the hoteliers are hogging all the high ground and all.. oh dear. 

The tower covers four of the buildings and the developers expect to convert the remaining three into condominiums or some kind of timeshare or shorter-stay accommodation.

That's right I remember. City Council just recently passed a rule that allows more timeshares in the CBD. They sure did!  And didn't they just write into the new STR rules a thing where commercial/mixed use zones can just load up with as many as they want? Yep they sure did that too!  
Well okay, so our elected leaders have shaped the regulatory framework in a way that invites the development of more and more nice things for rich people to the detriment of everything and everyone else. At least we aren't just out and out subsidizing this activity.. .oh wait... oh dammit.

Gensler and local architect John C. Williams have been hired as the design team to draw up plans to present to the Historic District Landmarks Commission and other bodies that will have to sign off on the project in order for it to be eligible for the tax credits that make it work financially. The owners plan to keep most of the internal features of the building, including its brass, wood and marble features, as well as its vintage Westinghouse elevators.

The new owners also expect to bring in outside investors at some point, Wampold said, to take advantage of the Opportunity Zone capital gains tax breaks that are available for the building, despite its prime downtown location.

Are we actually trying to learn how to do Mardi Gras again?

There are some signs lately that sensible ideas are afoot.  Last week we learned that the Krewe of Alla would be moving from the overloaded first Sunday over to the first Friday after Oshun and Cleopatra.  That makes a lot of sense for a couple of reasons, the first being the fact that the long Sunday is too long. The second reason is Alla isn't all that great a parade.  I mean, it's fine and all but it probably plays better on the first night when people aren't expecting to be impressed as much.

I'd go in for the regular harangue here about Alla belong back in its own dang neighborhood on the West Bank anyway. But I don't want to ruin the vibe created by this.

More than 100 members of the Krewe of Nefertiti paraded as a subkrewe of the Krewe of Freret in 2019, but the group will present its own full Carnival parade in New Orleans East Feb. 9, 2020.

The krewe expects to have more than 200 riders on more than 15 floats, says krewe captain Zenia Smith. Its route will go from Bullard Avenue and Lake Forest Boulevard to Read Boulevard and end at Joe Brown Park.

"Lots of kids from the area have marched in parades in Uptown and on the West Bank," Smith says. "This will give a lot of families the chance to see the kids in a parade in their neighborhood."

That's pretty great. Although it says here they're rolling on Feb 9 which puts it a week early in the schedule. This would be the day after Krewe Du Vieux.  Either way it's great to get parades back out in the neighborhoods. But one of the reasons we've been asking for that is so that people who might otherwise overcrowd the Uptown route have somewhere else to go.  Putting Nefertiti on its own unique date doesn't help with that.  Maybe next time, though.

Faithless assessors

Erroll Williams says his office has a great deal of discrepancy to determine whether or not large industrial concerns like Folgers need to pay their "fair share" (to use the current term of art.)  City Council is trying to nudge him a bit on this and he's nudging back.

The resolution was announced last week, the day after The Lens published a report about potential defects in Orleans Parish Assessor Erroll Williams’ process for tracking the exemptions. There are at least two properties — owned by Folgers and worth a combined $40 million — that were exempted by the assessor in 2018 and 2019, even though the exemptions expired in 2017. A request to renew the exemptions was denied by the state last year and again in February, but Williams did not take action to confirm that the exemptions were invalid until August, after more than a month of questions from Councilwoman Helena Moreno.

The resolution also calls for Williams to formally develop and adopt a written policy to monitor the industrial tax exemptions. And it asks for an annual report from the assessor on “all tax incentive policies, procedures, projects, and exemption status.”

Moreno said that the council can’t force Williams to comply because his office is a state-created agency and he is an independent elected official.

“This resolution merely urges the assessor to comply,” Moreno said at the meeting. “He is not part of a city agency therefore we can’t force him to do this, but were hoping just out of respect for the public he’ll comply.”

While Williams said he may honor some of the requests, he said he would not comply with the request for a written policy for tracking the tax exemptions.

“They’re not going to get that,” he said. “That’s none of their business. That’s an internal policy.”

Meanwhile, Williams is telling us via a message posted at his website, that questions of whether or not property taxes that affect individual homeowners and renters are completely out of his hands. Williams writes,

The only way your property taxes will increase is if any of the taxing authorities which levy property taxes (millages) raise their tax rates before the end of this calendar year. The taxing authorities CANNOT raise your property taxes unless they hold a public hearing and pass an increase with a 2/3 majority vote. Some of these taxing authorities have already scheduled public meetings to consider this increase but have not specified how they will use these additional funds.

Be aware: ALL these agencies must by law advertise the dates, times and places of meetings to consider a proposed property tax increase (or millage roll forward).

This statement is not exactly true. It is true that the various taxing authorities are required to automatically roll back their millage rate such that they remain revenue neutral or roll the rate forward by a public vote to capture the windfall created this year when Williams's office drastically increased property assessments all over town. However, even if a board decides not to roll forward, this doesn't necessarily mean each individual property's tax bill remains the same. You may find yourself paying more in taxes solely because your assessment increased as long as the overall revenue collected is static.

In other words, while the roll forwards will certainly make the problem worse, taxes are going up regardless because Erroll Williams has observed the overheated, speculative real estate currently driving New Orleanians out of their homes and written it into the tax rolls. He says that he doesn't have any choice but that isn't what he says about his prerogative to protect tax exemptions illegally extended to mega-corporations. It seems the question of what the assessor does or does not have the power to do depends mostly on who benefits from his actions. If this is the case, maybe we need an assessor who makes different choices about whom to serve.

Several years ago, a group of middle class reformers launched an agit-prop campaign to consolidate New Orleans's seven assessors offices into one.  The idea was to run a slate of candidates on something called an "I.Q." ticket.  The I.Q. stood for "I Quit" which was precisely what each of the candidates proposed to do should they capture the offices the group deemed unnecessary.  It didn't quite work out that way but the goal of consolidating the assessors offices was eventually implemented.

Imagine if a candidate ran for assessor now promising not to jack up property assessments so long as that action only accelerates the already out of control process of gentrification and displacement. Call it the Faithless Assessor campaign. Could that get any traction, you think?  Anyway, if anybody wants to give this a try my fee is one million dollars.

I believe in Teddy

Prove me wrong

I've had my head buried in Louisiana elections minutiae all week so I barely even have any idea what day it is.  But I do know this.  Football is wacky and it's always better when the season has an interesting dramatic arc to follow.  Drew Brees is going to spend six or seven weeks praying his thumb back together. In the meantime the guy who came back from having his leg severed to become America's number one locker room dancing sensation is here to keep everything from falling apart.  That's fun. Let's watch that.

They're gonna make him a bionic thumb

The latest and most advanced surgical procedure that will be used to repair Drew Brees's thumb ligament is, basically, duct tape.

Brees stayed in Los Angeles to meet with renowned hand surgeon Dr. Steve Shin, who performed UCL surgery on baseball player Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels in 2017.

If the UCL is the problem with Brees' thumb, the ligament will likely be repaired by drilling a hole through the bone and tying a suture to the ligament to stabilize it.

Dr. Shin is known for augmenting that procedure with extra suture tape, which helps provide extra stability.

That's very exciting. They say the athletes who get the tape job usually end up recovering faster. Which puts Brees back with the team in 6-8 weeks. There's an outside chance, given the week 9 bye and everything, that he could play November 10 against the Falcons. A tour of division opponents follows that date so it's something to shoot for.  Another idea would be to try and pray the pain away.  Does Drew know anybody who could help with that?

So, anyway, don't despair.  Now we have a dramatic arc to follow this season beyond just bitching about the stupid refs all the time. Not that that isn't fun too. Look how fun that was on opening night.



But, yeah, it's time for new things to happen.  Also, as usual, I meant to write something to kick off the season but missed that deadline.  Varg and I tried to make up for it on the fake radio show which, by the way, we're putting out on YouTube too now in case people prefer to consume their #content there. 

Fair Sham

During last week's CNN climate forum, Elizabeth Warren hit a home run. Warren was asked about the Trump administration's decision to reverse Obama era efficiency standards for light bulbs. Her answer brought out a point that Democrats, even the "good Democrats" often fail to make about where the true onus for effective climate action lies.

“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Warren, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said during CNN’s Town Hall forum on climate change. “Look, there are a lot of ways that we try to change our energy consumption and our pollution, and God bless all of those ways. Some of it is with lightbulbs, some of it is on straws, some of it, dang, is on cheeseburgers.”

“That’s what they want us to talk about,” Warren said, before noting that, in her estimation, the fossil fuel industry wanted to cast the climate fight as “your problem.” She continued: “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws and around your cheeseburgers, when 70% of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”

The industries Warren mentioned are the oil industry, the electric power industry and the building industry, according to The New York Times.

In other words we aren't going to solve a problem caused by institutional corruption and  mismanagement by shaming the individual victims of that mismanagement into submission.  We're not going to reduce carbon emissions by drinking out of paper straws. Anyone who tells you differently is not really on your side. 

Similarly, in New Orleans, we aren't going to relieve decades worth of decay and negligence visited on our drainage system by shaming people into picking up their trash. But for some reason, LaToya Cantrell can't help but to do just that at every opportunity. Even, here, where the topic is really more about expanding the Department of Public Works, she can't help but get in a dig.

Officials outlined more on how they plan to spend money from the "fair share" deal. The money will help the Department of Public Works hire 42 extra employees and fund more tasks being brought in house. They'll bring in five more maintenance inspectors and 28 new pieces of equipment, including vac trucks, pothole patchers, dump trucks, excavators, pickup trucks and trailers.

"We are owning our responsibilities and seamlessly working together," Cantrell said. "It's a shared responsibility. We're not being reactive because we're doing the work every single day and have been doing it every single day since I've been in office."

Cantrell ask citizens to do their part by cleaning up the city and dumping trash appropriately. Someone recently dumped three boats on Martin Luther King Avenue.

"You can't make it up," Cantrell said. "It's present. It's there."

What does a boat left in the street have to do with causing people to need... boats in the street every time it rains?  I really have no idea.  But it's obviously evidence that we've done something wrong.

It's notable, also, that Cantrell's hostility toward the citizenry appears here in a story about her so-called "fair share" deal with the hospitality industry.  She's very proud of her grand bargain. She's so proud, in fact, that #FairShare has already transcended its original meaning to become a catch-all mantra applicable to whatever the mayor happens to be talking about at the time.  A new gambit at extracting patronage dollars out of the French Market is about “...getting our fair share, based on what’s coming back to the city, and these are assets we control.” A scheme to skim fees off of other governmental agencies for tax collection services is apparently about getting a "fair share."  The city raised the fees it charges to Bayou Boogaloo saying they also need to pay a "fair share."  LaToya's PAC is using it as the title of a fundraising campaign.  The city's and the mayor's official Twitter feeds frequently tag random messages about anything and nothing with #FairShare.  It's basically LaToya's #MAGA now.  More to the point, Cantrell's muddled, scattershot use of the phrase now indicates she never grasped its value in the first place.

The original context was the structural inequality of the tourism industry in New Orleans. An obscene portion of the wealth generated by tourism accrues to a cohort of owners and oligarchs while the majority of workers who make that wealth possible struggle for low wages, poor benefits and minimal job security. Moreover, the tax revenue collected off the backs of these workers feeds directly back into systems and institutions meant to further line the pockets of the very same oligarchs. A "fair share" of that revenue should be used to support the city's working class. It should build affordable housing. It should fund better schools, better transit, better city services. It should help the city build and maintain the basic infrastructure that makes life possible here without further burdening its poorest and most vulnerable people. 

So does Cantrell's "fair share" deal actually do any of that?  Not really. The city does receive the temporary windfall of a one-time payment plus a share of one or two new revenue streams (depending on future developments.) But the new money is grossly insufficient to the need.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s hard-fought “fair share” infrastructure deal could provide more than $20 million a year for the struggling Sewerage and Water Board over the next decade. But that doesn’t come close to meeting the $3 billion in funding required by the Sewerage and Water Board’s 10-Year Capital Improvement Plan.

That was revealed by Cantrell administration officials on Monday at the first meeting of the City Council’s Ad Valorem and Special Dedicated Revenue Committee. The committee aims to take a bird’s eye view of the city’s finances and release a public report in early 2020. 

“Oh wow, so every year, you’re hundreds of millions of dollars short leading up to 2028?” Councilwoman Helena Moreno asked at the meeting.

Sure, $3 billion over 10 years is a tall order. In a better world, every city in America would have ample support from a federally funded and guided Green New Deal initiative to repair crumbling infrastructure and stem the tide against the threat of climate change.  But until we get there we have to depend on our local leadership to do the best they can. The #FairShare isn't the best we can do in New Orleans.

In fact, it was never intended to be. The closest description of what it actually was intended to do came from Stephanie Grace all the way back in June. Her key observation at that time was that all of the recurring revenues generated by the deal do not come from the tourism industry giving up any of its accustomed share. Instead they come from new taxes on the "man behind the tree." 

The latest evidence that it always helps to have some metaphorical man behind some imagined tree is the deal to send more money to New Orleans to help rebuild its aging infrastructure, which has apparently cleared all remaining hurdles in the state Legislature. Despite a period of tense, on-again, off-again negotiations among New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Gov. John Bel Edwards, legislative leaders and representatives of the tourism industry, all sides emerged with much of what they wanted.

"All sides" got what they wanted.  True! But that requires some explanation of which "sides" wanted what. Let's look at how the spoils are divided.

Number one on the list was the Convention Center wanted to build their publicly funded but privately profitable hotel. Check. Walt Leger got that for them.

House Bill 617, passed by the Senate on a 33-0 vote on Sunday, authorizes the Convention Center to build and own the $550 million, 1,200-room hotel proposed for the upriver end of the giant exhibition hall. The bill also clears the way for the Convention Center to develop other vacant land it owns next to the site.

Number two was the tourism cabal wanted less public scrutiny over the marketing and convention brokering agencies they control.  Check.  The technically public New Orleans Tourism Marking Corp will be folded into the technically private (but publicly funded) New Orleans and Company.  The city's "infrastructure fund" gets a cut NOTMC's corpse.  But the lion's #FairShare of that still goes to the NO and Co.

About $5.5 million of the Marketing Corp.’s budget, which comes from a nightly fee charged on hotel rooms, would be redirected to the city’s infrastructure fund as part of the overall deal. Other money the group receives, including $2 million a year from Harrah’s Casino and its hotel and $7.8 million from a self-assessment by hotels in the city, would go to New Orleans and Co.

The key difference, though, is that these operations will be more fully privatized under the new regime.  The city had a direct oversight role with NOTMC.  The new entity says it will "invite" them to sit in on the back bench at some of their meetings.

Oversight of the combined organizations is another detail being worked out. In an internal company email sent Wednesday and shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, Perry said New Orleans and Co. intends to invite the two City Council district members and a rotating at-large member to serve on an “ex-office” basis with New Orleans & Co. Perry later clarified that his group is still working out the details for a formal City Council presence on the board, but his plan is to invite council members to serve on a leisure marketing committee run by Romig.

Number three was the city wanted to pull in more recurring revenue from local hotel/motel taxes. This, more than anything, was the core of the "fair share" argument. And they did sort of get what they wanted.  But the trick is in how they got it. What the city is getting is a completely new tax based on a revival of a so-called "lost penny" that hadn't been collected since 1966.  In other words, the tourism agencies aren't "sharing" their previous take at all.  The "man behind the tree" is.

Number four was various parties for various reasons wanted a new tax on Short Term Rentals.  The hotel industry wanted it in order to equalize the tax paid on STRs with that applied to hotel rooms.  The STR industry, while not happy about being taxed, is happier on balance with becoming a critical revenue generating industry the city will be reluctant to crack down on in the future. The city, again, just wants to get paid.  And they will. Maybe. The new tax still has to be approved by voters on the November ballot this year.  Also the city is having difficulty projecting just how much revenue it's going to actually see from it.  One thing we do know is whatever amount the tax does eventually produce, we still have to "fair share" 25 percent of it back to NO and Co. So, congratulations on that as well. 

Number five on the wish list was the Convention Center wanted to ret-con its legally questionable collection of a tax originally intended to pay for its Phase IV construction. Over the years, that money has become a kind of slush fund the city's elite have used to pass money around among themselves for their own pet projects and those of their cronies.  So, yeah, in exchange for a paltry $50 million one time payment, they get to keep doing that now.   Already, they've got big plans. 

New Orleans tourism officials' plans for a massive entertainment district on empty land upriver from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center are back on the table.

The Convention Center's board, which finally won approval in June to build a 1,200-room hotel on part of the land after lengthy political wrangling, has asked interested firms to submit ideas by Oct. 4 for how to develop the 20 acres adjacent to the hotel site.

In its request for new master plan proposals, the Convention Center said it "expects the development to be reflective of the unique culture and history of New Orleans and include elements not commonly found in other parts of the nation."

They're putting out for bids on a shiny new entertainment district to go with their hotel. It will be built on some of the highest ground in the city convenient to downtown. Ideal for building affordable housing, maybe.  But that would only happen if the city were serious about giving its workers a "fair share" of the benefit their labor actually produces. LaToya Cantrell's fair sham deal was never really supposed to do that.


The mayor herself even admitted the fair sham isn't going to be enough last week when city officials laid out their plans for some of the money they know they will have on hand.  The deal left far too much money and power in the hands of the tourism cabal. So, naturally, she is asking you to make up the difference.

But she said it will take far more than the "fair share" deal’s millions to fix all the roads, canals and pipes that have crumbled during years of deferred maintenance and that are being further battered by the effects of climate change. She said that’s precisely why voters should pull the lever for a trio of infrastructure funding initiatives on Nov. 16. 

Part of what voters will consider is tied in with the fair share deal: a tax on short-term rentals whose proceeds will help to fund city infrastructure.  The other initiatives include a 3-mill tax to pay for repairs and maintenance of infrastructure, a $500 million package of infrastructure bonds and another $10 million in bonds for maintenance work.

When they do get down to fixing the canals and pipes, however they pay for it, let's hope they get it right this time.  The last big drainage project only just recently wrapped up. And already people are raising questions about that one.

The SELA improvements all stem from widespread flooding on May 8, 1995. The resulting $3.1 billion in insurance claims set a record at the time for an unnamed storm event, and the federal flood insurance program had to foot the bill for repairs.

So, Congress responded by authorizing $1.5 billion in drainage improvements over the next 20 years, with the idea that improving the infrastructure would prevent rising flood-repair costs in the future. The Uptown culverts were among the last pieces of that puzzle.

But after this summer’s floods, there are questions about whether those improvements have had unintended consequences for New Orleans’ antiquated drainage system.

When the Corps completed the SELA culverts, they were turned over to the Sewerage & Water Board. The board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, doesn’t believe the increased capacity in the SELA culverts would have any negative impact on surrounding drainage, but he said he’s hired an outside engineering firm to analyze the flow and determine if it’s causing any bottlenecks.

A couple of independent engineers quoted in that story think maybe the SELA work is making the flooding worse. Sewerage and Water Board is skeptical but they say they'll check it out.  Last year we read in The Lens that the new culverts are "large enough to accommodate three city buses side-by-side."At the time that seemed like a colorful description but, really, who knows what might be down there. 

Whatever they find, though, it's important to understand, the mayor is not going to ask the city's ruling classes to pay to dig it out.  According to her version of events, they are paying their fair share.  So, obviously, we must be the problem now.

Joey Wagner, the Corps’ senior project manager for the SELA projects, bristled when WWL-TV asked what he would tell Bossier and others who think the construction has contributed to recent flooding.

“Like the mayor says, move your cars to the neutral ground," he said. "We all know there are certain areas of the city that are going to flood. And it’s going to continue to flood until the system is totally overhauled.”

And Mayor LaToya Cantrell backed up Wagner at a news conference last week: “Until the city, until we start dealing with our local issues relative to infrastructure, then we will not see the system working as intended.”

She focused her ire on the large amounts of debris New Orleanians regularly dump into the drainage system, and then blamed the intensifying rainfall.

To quote Senator Warren again, come on, give me a break.

Just impeach the MFer already

There is still plenty time left for them to do it. They obviously don't want to do it but that only underscores their own selfish cowardice. But we talked about this already a few months ago.

Clearly, Donald Trump is out to crush the Rispone campaign

Prominent Republican donor and fundraiser Lane Grigsby has some kind of IRS problem on his hands.

The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Cajun Industries founder and Chairman Emeritus Lane Grigsby and his wife for more than $750,000 for an income tax refund the government says the Grisbys were not entitled to receive.

According to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, the refund was issued for the 2013 tax year and was based on more than $1.34 million in research and development tax credits Cajun claimed for the year.

Grigsby is a close associate of Gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone. In fact, you might say he's been with the Rispone campaign from the beginning. 

Rispone said he entered the race after not being able to sleep at night. A devout Catholic, he believes God was waking up to tell him to run against Edwards. He and Grigsby had a tough time finding someone to take on Edwards. Grigsby said they had been approaching potential candidates for two years, and they couldn’t find someone they considered a worthy challenger. So Rispone decided to run himself.

Turns out the Lord works in mysterious ways, though.  If it really is He who inspired Eddie to run in the first place, then why strike at his closest friend and ally at this critical moment? Unless, of course, the test issues not from God but perhaps instead from The Enemy. 

Grigsby suggests the IRS is overreaching and that he may be targeted because of his outspoken, conservative political views, noting that other partners in his business also received the R&D credits for 2013 and haven’t gotten any push back for it.

“It’s typical of the way our government abuses its citizens,” he says. “I know the IRS has been used against other conservative people. I know other people who got this same credit and theirs was allowed. Why was mine stopped? Why me? Maybe because I do raise my mouth a little too loud.”

I dunno, Lane, maybe those of us called to do the Lord's work might think to go about it with a little more humility.  In any case are we sure we want to be out here implying that the Trump Administration is under the influence of Satanic forces.  We're not saying you're necessarily off track in that case, but it does seem like a radical departure from the campaign strategy thus far.

Today, in #Bothsides at the Daily Georges

This afternoon the front page of the Daily Georges website is highlighting a letter writer aruging in favor of Drew Brees's constiutional right to wittingly associate his professional marketing persona with a despicable hate group. Go find it if you want to read it.  It figures that the letter writer specifically praises the Advocate's decision to print a dishonest opinion piece about the subject by resident toad Dan Fagan earilier in the week.

We went over this the other day, but just to reiterate, the problem we have with their decision to publish Dan Fagan is not that he writes opinions we do not like. The problem is he writes bullshit opinions constructed from deliberate lies about the subject of his opining. Giving him a platform on the editorial page, in turn, sets the boundaries of subsequent discusssion to encompass his bullshit as an acceptable premise.  This generates more letters and opinions based on that bullshit which the paper is then only too happy to print and highlight on their web page thus reifying the bullshit further.

None of this is an accident. It is a deliberate editorial choice which reveals the preferred inclination of the paper's management which is clearly quite favorable toward bullshit.

For example, last week, this happened.

Congratulations to the Daily Georges on 1) running a syndicated Rich Lowry column downplaying "hysteria" over climate change and then 2) printing two different reaction letters in order to "bothsides" the hell out of climate change pic.twitter.com/3x33rpDkaW

— skooks (@skooks) September 7, 2019

Bullshit. It's just one side of an irresolvable "civil" debate.

John Bel's race to lose

Hey look, poll numbers!

A new poll in the Louisiana governor’s race contains good news for Gov. John Bel Edwards and one of his Republican challengers, U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham.

Edwards, a Democrat, received 47% of the vote versus 24% for Abraham and 16% for businessman Eddie Rispone, the other Republican candidate, in the survey taken by Bernie Pinsonat, a Baton Rouge-based pollster, for undisclosed private clients.

The news is good for Edwards because it showed he likely would have won the election had it been held when the survey was conducted, Sept. 3-6, Pinsonat said, once the undecided votes are redistributed.

Propelling Edwards was his 54% positive rating versus a 42% not positive rating, the poll found.

Edwards will win the Oct. 12 primary outright if he receives more than 50% of the vote.

It also says here that Verne Kennedy's adjusted numbers put JBE over the top last month as well.  Nobody should be too shocked by this. The Republicans are barely even bothering to run a campaign against him.  Their A-list candidates all decided to sit out. The guys who are in it don't seem to be doing much hustling.  And behind the scenes, at least half of their donor base seems perfectly happy with the conservative Democrat in office now. He already does most of what they want, anyway. And that's all the more likely to continue when the Republicans expand their legislative majorities this fall.

Of course there's still a chance Edwards doesn't quite make it over the 50% hump. In that case, we're likely to see a much more aggressive push behind whichever Tweedle lands in the runoff with him. But, generally speaking, if the "accidental Governor" ends up losing, it will only be by accident. 

I'm still waiting for that Epstein crossover moment

I'm still very behind on a lot of things I wanted to put on the blog this week. Probably won't get caught up for a while. But this is one for that if-I-don't-write-it-down-I'm-gonna-forget-about-it category. So here it goes.

Among the latest characters to pop up in the FNBC saga is real estate shark Gary Gibbs. (No, he is not the ex Saints defensive coordinator by that same name. Yes, I checked.) His case is one of several instances revealed so far where the bank appears to have been shoveling out new bad loans in order to cover old bad loans in the expectation that some external event might come about to turn everything around.

Regulators from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a notice filed last week that Robert Brad Calloway, a former loan officer and chief credit officer at First NBC Bank, submitted false or misleading documentation in order to make a series of loans to Diamondhead, Mississippi-based businessman Gary R. Gibbs that totaled $123 million at the time of the New Orleans bank's collapse.

The filing says that Calloway, along with First NBC'S former CEO, Ashton Ryan, got the loans to Gibbs approved when they knew he didn't have the necessary collateral, and that they also knew the money was being used by Gibbs to cover payments on existing loans instead of for Gibbs' business expenses, as was represented to the bank's loan committee.

In Gibbs's case one such external event may have been his successful conning of a former business associate's widow out of her inheritance. She has filed a civil suit seeking to recover those assets which, thanks to FNBC's collapse, now may technically belong to a vulture capital firm. 

In her civil case, Heisler is trying to keep assets that include a $2 million brokerage account, a shopping center in Metairie and a building at 844 Baronne St. from being seized by Girod LoanCo, the debt investor that bought a large portion of the First NBC loans sold by regulators last year, including the notes Heisler signed.

Girod LoanCo is a specially created company that is ultimately owned by TPG Capital, a $100 billion private investment firm co-founded by billionaire James Coulter.

Coulter, by the way, has been turning New Orleans's disasters into "opportunities" for some time now.  Here he is in 2010 dishing out advice to the 'treps at Idea Village.

Coulter told the crowd Friday  morning that there are three types of entrepreneurs: the natural, the coin flipper, and the rest of us.

The natural entrepreneur has the natural gift of gab and persuasion, which helps him find success in business. The coin-flipper is successful purely out of luck, while the rest-of-us are hard-workers.

It's not clear which entrepreneur type Coulter is supposed to be here.  If we're going by the way he describes himself to Forbes, we'd have to say he's the right-place-at-the-right-time-with-the-right-barrel-of-cash type.

I married a woman from New Orleans, so I had family here. Post-Katrina I had a number of friends call me up and say they wanted to do something to help the community – not just Habitat for Humanity or Red Cross, we’ve done that, but what can we do for the community. So we raised some money from one email and said to some friends: find some good places to put it.

One of the questions was how do you create something sustainable? And if you look at jobs here it’s likely that one of the real job creation engines will be entrepreneurship because it’s a place where people want to live.

Not so sure about that "job creation engine" of entrepreneurship in retrospect.  Unless the job we're talking about is grifter.  Post-Katrina New Orleans has been a ripe environment for those. They do like to call themselves "entrepreneurs," though. I think we've covered that a fair amount.   Maybe that's the type Coulter is.  That's more or less how this reads, anyway.

I think it takes an entire ecosystem, and to that end it has to attract entrepreneurs, and that’s about a lot of people under 30. I think the renaissance going on in education with TFA people coming into town provides a natural fuel for the city.

So the first thing you have to do is have the entrepreneurs, and the second thing is you have to have a funding system to help them. Now you see investors coming into town and investors that you didn’t know were in town showing up. The third is you have to create an infrastructure of support – the chamber of commerce and government really make it easy for entrepreneurship here. And lastly there needs to be a confidence that it can get done here. That’s part of what we’re seeing in that community that’s important – it’s exhibiting that confidence.

Coulter is the type of entrepreneur who was able to"create an infrastructure of support" within business and government circles by exhibiting a lot of confidence in order to turn the "fuel" provided by things like school charterization into a "renaissance."  Got it.  Anyway, now he owns a bunch of assets that got sucked up in the collapse of the bank that financed many of the post-K con jobs you read about.  Good for him.

I wonder how many more of these stories and characters we will read about before the FNBC case is over. I do hope someone is researching the book. If done well something like that has the potential to connect a lot of interesting threads in this city. I promise I really was just joking the other day when I suggested that maybe somewhere in the pile of politically connected non-profits, start-ups, and university projects that exert so much influence on what happens in New Orleans, somebody might have some Epstein money laying around.  But, you know, maybe that's not all that far fetched....

Anyone surprised Walter Isaacson called Joi Ito's book "brilliant and provocative"?

— Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) September 7, 2019

Your God-given right to record videos for hate groups

Why does the Advocate publish Dan Fagan? Their management constantly makes a big deal out of the need for us all to arrive at a more respectful civil discourse. But then they turn right around and hand over editorial space to Fagan's inflammatory disingenuous clickbait taeks. I really don't understand. The only explanation I can come up with is Fagan's product comports with somebody in charge over there's definition of decency.

Which means somebody in charge over there thinks it's perfectly within the bounds of decent, respectful, civil discourse to say that a well known hate group famous for promoting psychological torture and funding politicians who believe there is such a thing as "legitimate rape" is merely "advocating for the preservation of family values."

Brees did seem to waffle some on his association with Focus on the Family, claiming he was unaware of the religious group’s stand on gay issues.

 “I was not aware of any of the things they said about them lobbying for anti-gay (causes)… any type of messaging or inequality or any type of hate-type related stuff. I was not aware of that at all,” Brees said.

 But Focus on the Family is much like most Christian organizations advocating for the preservation of family values. Does Brees consider defending traditional marriage as “hate-type related stuff?”

Focus On The Family is not like "most Christian organizations." It is a politically active anti-gay hate group founded by a psychopath. Dan Fagan clearly knows this and yet chooses to tell us a blatant lie about it. And the Advocate then chooses to legitimize Fagan's deliberate lie by publishing it on its very civil and respectful op-ed page. Why would they do that?

Drew Brees ought to have known all of this as well although, as Lauren Theisen writes here,  the possibility that he did not is at least plausible.

I can’t see inside Brees’s head and don’t know what his beliefs are—given that he’s a rich, straight man who’s spent nearly two decades fanatically focused on playing pro football at a legendary level, I’d wager he might not even know what conversion therapy is. But his explanation has to do better than this. The video doesn’t mention Focus On The Family at all, let alone disavow them, and speaks in only the vaguest possible terms about the specific criticism Brees received. At best, the statement makes clear that Drew Brees will not directly attack any gay person for their sexuality, but whether or not he believes they should have full rights is still up for debate.

“I’m not sure why the negativity spread, or why people have tried to rope me into certain negativity,” Brees says in the video, most annoyingly. I know he’s hard at work preparing for the Texans, but literally five minutes on the internet, tops, would answer that question. He really doesn’t even have to do it himself! Just find someone who’ll tell him, “Hey, that video was produced by people who want to oppress gay people. Back away from it now.” Drew, if you’re reading, I’m telling you it right now.

For whatever reason, though, Brees, who makes an estimated $16 million a year renting out his carefully managed public persona for brands, doesn't always subject his partners to the most strict vetting process. Witness his association with cult like multi-level marketing schemes like Advocare, his support for an attempt by Tom Benson and Ron Forman to privatize and profit off of publicly accessible park space at The Fly, and his involvement in a diamond counterfeiting deal over the summer to name a few. We might expect that someone with this much money at stake in choosing the right business associates should pay a little more attention to what their business is all about.  But Brees is enough of a weirdo football nerd that it we can't be too surprised if it turns out he doesn't make time for all that.

That's hardly an excuse, of course.  Big Easy Magazine traces Brees's relationship with Focus on the Family at least as far back as 2010.  Certainly some basic awareness should have soaked through at some point. Maybe he really does support the hate part of the hate group's agenda after all.  Indeed even the "Bring Your Bible To School Day" event he promotes in the video is, at best, an iffy propaganda stunt aimed at undermining church/state separation by stoking the radical right's victimization complex.  That's certainly the angle Fagan takes in his bad faith (groan) defense of Brees from persecution at the hands of (checks notes) a small New Orleans based website.*

But the rules are different now. Are Christian groups no longer allowed to take positions on controversial social issues? Are organizations whose beliefs are Bible-based now off-limits for celebrities like Brees? Is this the new standard? The fact Brees had to defend, quantify and clarify his association with Focus on the Family speaks volumes. It should concern us.

Actually, no, none of this "should concern us."  The fact that the Advocate thinks so little of its readers that it would present such obvious bullshit as just one end of the ordinary spectrum of honest political argument might, however.

*Speaking of persecution complexes, maybe the folks over at Big Easy Mag can sit back and take a few breaths.  The way they've reacted via social media and subsequent commentary to the inevitable criticism that comes with publishing a critical story about a local icon seems a little out of proportion. On the other hand, maybe if the other various corporate outlets such as the several owned by the Georges Media virtual monopoly weren't #bothsidesing the issue to death, they wouldn't feel so out on a limb.

Business as usual

John Bel Edwards is likely to be reelected because he "embraces" the petrochemical industry and because the Republicans aren't really trying to beat him. They are trying to win supermajorities in the legislature, though. And they will at least come close to doing that.  There are very serious consequences for Louisiana in both of those outcomes.

But we keep reading that this is a "policy barren" campaign where no one bothers to even go outside and talk to anybody.  This means either that the money power dominates the state to such a degreee now that politics is entirely irrelevant or that there is a tremendous power vacuum waiting to be exploited. Not sure which is worse.

They love that ITEP

This is from a Louisiana House of Representatives candidates' forum in Zachary.  The area is still reeling from the loss of 600 jobs when a paper mill in Port Hudson closed this year. Naturally, the preferred solution among legislative candidates is bigger faster tax breaks for big business.

“It not only affects people’s lives and families, but it affects the school systems, the income that they were relying on,” said (Bradley) Behrnes, 38, who lives in Slaughter and is a regional director for Louisiana Workforce LLC, which contracts with sheriff’s offices to provide educational programs for inmates.

Behrnes said he’ll look into undoing recent changes to the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, that give local governing bodies a say in whether to grant tax breaks. “We’ve become an unpredictable place,” which deters companies, he said.

In all likelihood, Republicans are going to strengthen their majorities in the legislature this fall. Can't wait to see what the agenda looks like then. 

Also what a strange way to describe Louisiana Workforce LLC. You wouldn't know it from that article, but it is the state's largest prison labor operator. Here's how they make their money.

Work-release also has been a major boon for those who run the programs — a group that includes many Louisiana sheriffs and a handful of private contractors. The report says operators took in approximately $55 million in revenue in the most recent year studied, the bulk of it coming from the 64 percent share of inmate wages that the overseers are allowed to keep. Operators also made $4.1 million from selling snacks and other items to inmates.

This also provides us some insight into why Behrnes is so eager to offer tax subsidies to employers.  That's basically what fuels his customer base. 

Employers who hire work-release participants also are winners: Not only do they get tax breaks for hiring offenders, but they don’t have to offer them as many benefits as regular employees, the report notes. Moreover, offenders are typically punctual and reliable.

And that's how we're gonna put this economically depressed district "back to work"

You didn't not build that

While we're pleased as hell for the people of St. James Parish to learn that Wanhua has withdrawn its application to build a gigantic poison gas factory in Convent.  At the same time, though, maybe the kids should not get carried away with themselves.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade and other community and environmental groups that had fought the project trumpeted Wanhua's decision to withdraw its land use request as a victory, calling it "David Beats Goliath."

In a joint statement, they claimed Wanhua capitulated to the pressure and that  litigation from the groups had slowed the project's approval enough to allow it to be subject to more thorough scrutiny and become more vulnerable to economic variables.

The groups also promised to continue fighting other projects planned near the largely lower income, black communities in the parish's northern end.

"My great-great-great-great grandmother came out of slavery and bought my family's land," said Barbara Washington, a Convent resident who is part of the community group Rise St. James. "Our hard work has paid off. We will not stop 'til all those industries who want to come in here change their plans. We are tired of being sick. We refuse to be sick anymore."

I can pretty much guarantee this international chemical manufacturer did not alter its global production strategy because it was afraid of a couple of local non-profits and a pro-bono law clinic.  These entities move in completely separate dimensions from the rabble they indifferently exploit and crush just in the course of daily business.

Wanhua claims that uncertainty over US/China tariffs is affecting its costs. There's room to dispute just how serious they are about that. But it's far more plausible at least as a factor in their decision making process.  As the matter stands now, they're still planning a "scaled down" plant somewhere else in Louisiana.. possibly in St. James Parish, even. It wouldn't be surprising at all to learn they're negotiating with John Bel Edwards for a new package of tax incentives to make that happen.

In the meantime, that's one fewer poison gas factories. That's good.  At least it means the new poison gas factory next door will have to find a different customer, anyway.

The down-scaling would have cut capital investment significantly but would have avoided the use of potent chemicals that had drawn opposition from community and environmental groups. The shift, however, also meant the company would no longer need a supply of chlorine, which Wanhua had planned to get from future neighbor, Occidental Chemical Corporation.

OxyChem was also offering Wanhua the land for the proposed complex and that offer dried up after Wanhua's change in scale and the loss of potential chlorine sales, Roussel said. OxyChem has declined comment on the matter.

We built it, they came, then they left

Here's a very good Les East feature on the long history of the minor league baseball franchise once known as the New Orleans Zephyrs and currently formerly known as the Baby Cakes.  Coincidentally, I found this in an old drawer the other day.



That wasn't "Opening night" or anything but it was from the inaugural season at what we used to call Zephyr Field.  It has been strange to read in the months since it was announced that the team would be moving to Wichita that the "state-of-the-art" baseball stadium on Airline that lured the team to New Orleans in the first place was now hopelessly out of date.  I'll admit that I have as much trouble getting out to that elbow of Metairie as Les says the folks there have coming into New Orleans.  I  actually saw more Zephyrs games during the four years they played at UNO than I did during the two decades they spent way out in Jefferson Parish.  So it's just not possible for me to remember the stadium out there as anything other than a shiny new luxury.

The stadium name was unofficially changed to “The Shrine on Airline,” a nickname given to the building by the team’s first public address announcer, Derrick Grubbs, when Zephyr Field opened. The stadium was a nice $20 million state-funded project that became a “shrine” when the local owners decided to pump in a few million dollars of their own money to upgrade it.

They read that a swimming pool was being planned for the Arizona Diamondbacks’ new stadium and they beat them to the punch by adding a pool and two hot tubs beyond the right-field wall. Then they planned a berm in center field that would naturally be called “The Levee.” They discovered that the original plans called for The Levee to be 10 feet lower than Monkey Hill, the spot in Audubon Zoo generally accepted as the highest point in South Louisiana. Once they realized how close they were to eclipsing Monkey Hill, Leger said, “we had another drink and said, ‘let’s go.’”

The stadium quickly became more than the home to a minor-league team. The stadium was the site of high school state championships and most recently LSU’s annual Wally Pontiff Jr. Classic, named in honor of the late Tigers star that grew up in Metairie. LSU and Tulane played before record crowds in an historic NCAA super regional in 2000 as the Green Wave’s best team ever beat Bertman’s final Tigers team for a spot in the College World Series.  The stadium was the site of the 1999 Triple-A All-Star Game, which set the tone for liberal expansion of the venue’s resume’ for big events.

Minor-league soccer had modest success and non-sporting events were held in the stadium as well. It was the site of a Presidential address by George W. Bush in April of 2001 and less than six months later a vigil in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The shrine routinely hosted post-game concerts and was even turned into a haunted house leading up to Halloween for a couple of falls.

So all types of people were drawn to the stadium for a variety of events.

“This is the entertainment focal point for Jefferson Parish,” Maestri said.

It had a dang swimming pool and everything, man.  But now it's garbage, apparently. Anyway there's a lot more Les's article.  Seems like it should get more circulation. The baseball team was only here for a quarter of a century.  Surely somebody noticed.

Well this will not lead to anything good

LABI is starting up a "judicial transparency" project.Which is to say, they are ramping up the pressure to for a more "business friendly" court system.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry is also adding pressure on the system, and the group revealed details Thursday about its newly created judicial program. LABI plans to evaluate judges based on categories like the length of time it takes them to clear dockets, their professionalism and more.

Just something to file away for the future. 

Edwin Edwards is high on life

Still alive. Not on drugs. Got it.

Former Gov. Edwin Edwards is "looking good" and expects to be released from the hospital Wednesday, said Leo Honeycutt, who was by his bedside.

Edwards was hospitalized Tuesday morning but was doing well and cracking jokes by evening.

After doctors visited Edwards Wednesday morning, Honeycutt said, "Looking good to be released today." Honeycutt wrote in 2009 the authorized biography, "Edwin Edwards Governor of Louisiana."

"He's in great spirits, lucid, laughing (not drug induced)," Honeycutt said.

Kathleen Blanco, on the other hand.... 

"Von Kurnatowski’s sudden death leaves many issues unresolved, many questions unanswered"

Ya think?

In the public health department

Let's see what day was this?  It was a long weekend and I have no idea what I did with most of it.  Was it Friday?  I think it was Friday.  Anyway I went to see Tim Faust speak at Garden District Book Shop.  The book he's promoting is called Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next.  I'm sure it's very good. I did buy a copy but it's at the bottom of a pile quite similar to if not worse than this one from the middle of the summer. I'll get there eventually.  If you've seen, read or heard any of Faust's work advocating for a better health care system than the nightmare we live and die at the hands of today, then, well, this talk was very much like that.

In his talk, Faust says the US is "the most dangerous place to be sick the most dangerous place to be poor, the most dangerous place to be black or brown, the most dangerous place to be disabled, the most dangerous place to be queer..." There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between poverty and illness. The so-called "health-wealth gap" in the United States adds up to a 20 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest. All of these states of precariousness are direct reflections of an unjust health system. 

By that, he means the US health care delivery apparatus is fraught with such waste and unfair distribution that the negative health outcomes compound upon each other. "In the US all prices are fake," says Faust. The costs of primary and preventative care are grossly inflated as large corporate providers force smaller health clinics out of business in order to charge hospital rates for everything. And, of course, insurance companies can only profit by denying patients care when they need it. 

Unjust wealth allocation leads to unequal health outcomes in all sorts of ways.  Faust travels all over the country talking to people about health care and gave a few examples. In Houston the prisons have become warehouses for people with untreated mental illness. In Memphis environmental racism has led to a situation where black children die at 20 times the rate of white children.  When Indiana Governor Mike Pence inhibited needle exchange programs during the height of an opioid crisis, it  resulted in "one of the biggest HIV outbreaks in decades."  These are all essentially questions of resource allocation.

The day after I saw Faust talk, I read in the Advocate that the state has finally responded to public pressure at least to the point of agreeing to study the effect of the Denka neoprene plant on cancer rates in St. John Parish. As we know, the State of Louisiana subsidizes the proliferation of plants like Denka to the tune of billions of dollars each year.  Poor Louisianians are subsidizing the profits of the petrochemical industry with their very bodies.

The US spends over $3.6 trillion annually on health care. According to Faust at least 1/3 of that is "waste." It would cost approximately 10 percent less to implement a single payer system. And the savings can be applied to giving people better housing, better transit, better food access, a fairer criminal justice system etc. all of which support better health outcomes.  So the fight for health justice really is at the center of a struggle for a radical societal overhaul.  Efforts to combat the problem at the margins via schemes like Obamacare or Medicaid as we know it are not good enough. It is in Faust's words a question of giving people "insurance or emancipation."

Which is why the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare that John Bel Edwards' reelection campaign touts as a major accomplishment doesn't get us where we want to go. In Louisiana, Medicaid is privatized. And the MCO contracts, in addition to just being inefficient means of shoveling money to for-profit insurers and providers, amount to one of the biggest slices of political patronage a Governor can hand out. This year, the dispute over those contracts has left over half a million Medicaid patients in a wholly unnecessary state of uncertainty just as the start of open enrollment for next year looms. 


Finally, Faust fielded a few skeptical questions from audience members about whether or not a single payer system would garner support from doctors, some of whom, at least, might find certain aspects of their practices less profitable. But, while that isn't really true for most doctors,  the question did remind me that a professional association of Louisiana doctors has endorsed Ralph Abraham for Governor.

The Louisiana Medical PAC hasn't issued an endorsement in the most recent governor's races, but jumped at the chance to endorse one of their own.

“It’s been a number of years since we decided to take a position in the governor’s race, but we have one of our own running,"  Dr. Robert Bass, chairman of the PAC, said in a statement. "We believe that physicians supporting physicians is important, and when you have a candidate like Dr. Abraham, it’s very easy to make this decision.

"Dr. Abraham has a wealth of knowledge that is critical to helping Louisiana improve healthcare outcomes."

That's interesting. As it happens, this week the Bayou Brief provides us with an example of one health outcome Dr. Abraham has used his "wealth of knowledge" to bring about.

“Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths,” states the CDC. “Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017. A staggering 67.8% of all drug overdose deaths are due to opioids, and while nationwide these numbers have declined, Louisiana is one of a handful of states in which deaths from opioid overdoses have increased.

During the past year, overdose deaths went up by 4.7% in Louisiana.

“Louisiana also ranks among the top 10 states with the most opioid prescriptions written per capita, according to its state’s lawsuit against 17 companies, including Purdue Pharma,” according to a report published yesterday by APG Wisconsin. “Since 2007, the state has spent at least $677 million ‘for treatment of opioid use and dependence.’”

During the seven-year timeframe, Abraham’s pharmacy in Winnsboro doubled the number of opioids it dispensed to patients; opioid prescriptions filled at his pharmacy in Mangham, which is located near his former medical clinic, surged a staggering 67%.

In Mangham (2017 population: 638), Abraham’s pharmacy supplied enough opioid medication to provide every man, woman, and child 6.1 doses every year (or 43 pills in total) for seven consecutive years; his pharmacy in Winnsboro (2017 population: 4,652) could have provided every resident 4.4 doses per year (or 31 in total). (Note: Annual doses per person were based on Census estimates, not the most recent American Community Survey).

If a single payer system focused on health justice for all means a less profitable pill pushing scheme for Dr. Feelgood that's just something we are going to have risk.