Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Oh yeah that's still going on too

The high river situation we experienced last year is still happening and may be yet another one of those new normals you always hear about.
The vulnerabilities of current water management practices on the Mississippi River were readily apparent in water year 2019, when the unprecedented amount of water had a variety of effects, including stressing ecosystems and contributing to shipping accidents and disruptions. The water level was still elevated in July 2019 when Hurricane Barry moved into the Gulf and threatened to compound the situation with storm surge, which could have been catastrophic. The high water has continued into this year. In fact, as of 28 February, the Mississippi River had already exceeded the critical 4.6-meter monitoring threshold on 21 days in water year 2020, compared with 16 days by the same date in water year 2019. Since 1990, there have been only five water years (1991, 2005, 2016, 2019, and 2020) with more than 1 day above the 4.6-meter stage by 28 February. And with extremely high antecedent soil moisture and abnormally high snowpack throughout the Missouri River Basin this year, along with record precipitation regionally, the expectation is for yet more flooding along the lower Mississippi.
They're already planning to open the Bonnet Carre this week perhaps.  Please do not gather in large groups to watch.
In anticipation of the spillway opening, St. Charles Parish announced that because of the coronavirus physical distance restrictions, the Wetland Watchers Park and three spillway boat launches will be closed at noon Thursday. The opening itself will not be open to the public, and no access will be provided to the viewing site, officials said.

Oh yeah that's still going on

Well we were gonna blow it up. Then we were gonna take it apart. Then we were gonna blow it up again. Then the world went all to shit so we're back to arguing now.
The demolition of the Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans is once again in limbo, with the city and the developers behind the project at loggerheads over how to bring down the partially-collapsed structure that has remained virtually untouched for five months.

City officials and 1031 Canal Street Development, the firm led by developer Mohan Kailas that was building the project, are each pushing different contractors and different methods of knocking down what remains of the 18-story building and retrieving the bodies of two workers that are still buried in the rubble.
The insurer says it's too expensive to implode so the developer wants to go back to piece-by-piece demo. The city wants to do the implosion and make the developer pay for it. It's not clear what the end game strategy is now.  The thinking had been the developers want the whole lot plus adjacent buildings they own cleared away because that would make the block more attractive for resale. 

But now, who knows.  Who knows what any land is worth right now, anyway.

Literally spreading the virus to own the libs

My understanding is this pastor has continued to hold large church services in defiance of the quarantine orders because he wants to trigger one of those "religious free speech" lawsuits. So, you know, the death cult energy is strong theses days.  Anyway, we're told, that's why the police have been slow to act. But enough is enough.
Tony Spell, the Central pastor who has defied government orders to limit crowds to 50 people or fewer, said he met with law enforcement officials Tuesday morning and had “his rights read and been fingerprinted” for an as yet unspecified charge.

A spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office said Central Police Chief Roger Corcoran was expected to take actions Tuesday in connection with Spell.
Of course it's also not a great idea to be arresting anybody right now for any reason.  If Mr. Spell wants to go home can call his lawyers that's fine as long as he stops jamming hundreds of people into a big room for a while.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Don't get too used to it

For those of us who have been wondering for a while now what it would take to convince RTA to try going fare-free. We now know the answer is a global pandemic.
Public transit systems in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish are waiving fares for riders beginning Sunday due to continued coronavirus concerns in Louisiana, officials said.

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority announced Friday it will no longer charge for bus, streetcar and ferry services. But, it is also reducing the number of routes it will service.
It would be great if someone suggested we try and keep this going permanently but we know that isn't going to happen. What is going to happen when/if things ever return to "normal" is we are going to start hearing from wealthy people in charge of things that many of our nice ideas about public goods and services "just aren't possible anymore" because of the broken economy.  We began 2020 pushing for free college and healthcare but we will end it being told we can't even afford buses anymore.

Hey thank goodness we saved the airlines, though.

Oh no not the brand

This week the governor made the Convention Center available for use as a field hospital as the city continues to overflow with COVID patients. The plan is to ramp up capacity there to as many as 3,000 beds. The supplies necessary to accomplish this are still running short.  Supposedly this is a situation that should be made easier by the President's (rather late) disaster declaration but you never know what might happen if he doesn't feel adequately "appreciated."  Fortunately, he seems to think our governor is a "very good" boy. For now, anyway.

The board members, on the other hand, seem to have concerns.
For the Convention Center board, the idea brought back some bad memories from after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system, when the building was used as a shelter of last resort.

“We all see the convention center as the last resort,” Rodrigue said. “We know what it meant to try to come back from tragic images and what it meant for the brand of tourism in New Orleans after Katrina.”
How did "the brand" do after Katrina?  Fifteen years later, how was the tourism business doing in New Orleans?  Pretty well, right?  Too well, maybe.  Mardi Gras 2020 may seem centuries in the past right now but it was only a few weeks ago that the main topic in town was figuring out what went wrong with this year's celebration fraught as it was with tragedy and mishap.  Just as the virus panic was about to ramp up in New Orleans, The Lens published this Carnival retrospective by Jules Bentley. It's a shame the plague caused our attention to veer away so quickly because Jules's point, that over-tourism is killing us and our most cherished event, is something we should have had more time to talk about. This excerpt supplies the heart of his argument.
Mardi Gras brought New Orleans 700,000 visitors in 2006. It’s at least doubled since then. Multiple news organizations cite 1.4 million as the number of yearly Mardi Gras tourists these last few years, though it’s not clear to me where (or when) that figure originated. Since AirBnB hollowing out the city has made so many more tourist accommodations available, I’d expect the number has grown significantly past that.

The New Orleans tourism industry is thriving. It’s determined to keep attracting more tourists here; to succeed it must endlessly expand. Unfettered growth is the raison d’être of this powerful and heavily taxpayer-subsidized culture-extraction industry, the cause championed in its glossy promotional publications and schemed on in its secretive boards and colloquies.

Our city’s beautiful old streets are no wider than they ever were — certainly not to any degree commensurate with the growth of the masses filling them for Mardi Gras. As the yearly influx doubles and redoubles, the ancient, creaking infrastructure of New Orleans bows, groans and begins to give way.

Jamming 1.5 million humans into the same party space that struggled to accommodate half a million in 1970 is, put simply, unsafe. Like the workers killed in the Hard Rock Hotel, this year’s Carnival deaths can be viewed as not anomalous or exceptional but natural, built-in byproducts of an insatiable tourism industry that’s rendered our so-called city leaders handmaidens to its greed. The sloppy rush and corner-cutting on the deadly hotel was itself likely driven — though we’ll never know precisely to what proportion — by its profiteering developers’ declared desire to have it open by Carnival season.

Any so-called solutions that promise safer parade routes must admit and address this reality: New Orleans cannot physically accommodate our rate of tourist growth.
Prominent among those "secretive boards and colloquies" referred to above is the Convention Center leadership. While Jules is arguing that it is their brand in particular that is killing us, they are still resistant to helping save lives during the virus crisis because that might hurt the brand.
Board member Stephen Caputo asked it might be better for the Convention Center to put up some sort of incentive for hotels to take on the burden instead.

“This is our community and I think we’re all feeling it and want to help as much as we can,” Caputo said. “And I think we’re trying to temper that with our obligation to the center for its long term financial success, recognizing that if they show images of the Convention Center being turned into a hospital, it would hurt our brand.”
As the situation moves forward, it's important that we remember how this works.  We should be familiar enough having seen it before. The size of the recovery effort will be determined in Washington.  But the shape of our "recovery" is determined by decisions made by people like Rodrigue and Caputo as they carve out the shares. We already know what their priority will be.

We probably shouldn't allow people like that to choose what happens to the rest of us.  But there's little reason to be optimistic. Our track record isn't great, anyway.  On the other hand, maybe some of us have learned a few things from experience
The Convention Center has been discussed as a potential shelter during other hurricanes that have threatened New Orleans but Honoré said those discussions never went anywhere because of opposition from its board, a quasi-independent body. In the current crisis he said he believed the governor likely had to forge ahead over the board's opposition.

Convention Center officials and board members have declined repeated requests for comment about the possibility of using the facility as a field hospital.

There’s an attitude with this convention center board that we will not use the convention center to save our own people and they can go to hell,” Honoré said.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Clusters

We keep seeing the word "cluster" used to describe multiple cases of COVID 19 positives discovered in one spot.  So far the state has identified six so-called clusters of cases in nursing homes where many individuals live together in more less confined close quarters.  This might be the last we learn about them.
A cluster is identified as two or more cases that appear to be connected.

But, the state said, it will no longer identify the facilities: "With the involvement of hospitals and multiple providers and the growth in cases of nursing home residents, the Department of Health will no longer be reporting where positive cases have been identified," the Department of Health said in a statement.
But the conditions that make them likely aren't too difficult to predict.  Which is why it's a good idea to take preventative measures while we can
In New Orleans, the public defenders’ motion was sweeping in its breadth. The agency called for the release of anyone in the jail whose age or poor health puts them at greater risk, all inmates held on misdemeanor charges, almost all inmates held on nonviolent charges, all inmates who are being detained on suspected parole violations and anyone within 30 days of finishing their sentence.

The request to release aged and sickly inmates would apply even to defendants awaiting trial on violent felony crimes.
Cannizzaro's statement in this article is set in sympathetic language but he still doesn't sound agreeable to helping.  Last week he sounded like he would be fine just locking up all the COVID cases in town like some sort of leper colony.  So maybe this is an improvement.

The bill is, perhaps, even worse than not great

They gave Mnuchin the power to unilaterally override the already meager restrictions on what happens to the corporate bailout money.
Final text of the bill has not been released, but according to a legislative draft, the new law would establish a $4.5 trillion corporate bailout fund overseen by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, with few substantive constraints. The bill permits bailed out companies to lay off up to 10% of their workforce over the next six months, with no restrictions thereafter. Mnuchin would have authority to waive any upside for the public in its new investments, and the bill’s restrictions on stock buybacks at bailed-out firms are too temporary to be significant. Bailed out companies could even pay dividends to their shareholders.
Meanwhile the people suffering the most from the "service-led recession," the service industry, cash only, or paycheck to paycheck workers being laid off with little prospect for work in the forseeable future, could have to wait as long as 4 months to receive their relief payment.

Meanwhile anyone filing for unemployment under the terms of the new bill should know Republican Senators are ashamed of you.
A handful of Republican senators on Wednesday threatened to delay the $2 trillion coronavirus spending bill over a proposed increase to unemployment insurance.

In a statement, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that the bill could provide a "strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work" because some people could theoretically make more by being unemployed.
To begin with, this is not true. BUT, for the health and safety of the entire country,  it definitely should be true! No one is going to be safe from the virus until the spread is isolated or a vaccine is developed.  And because a vaccine is likely still over a year away, we have to stop the spread.  Since the only way to stop the spread is to keep as many people as possible from going to work then we'd better do everything we can to make sure they do not feel overly "incentivized" to do that.  Paying people to stay at home should be the top priority right now.  But the psychotic President wants to send everyone back to work by Easter so... well here we are.

The bill is not great

The $2 trillion "Phase 3" Congressional relief bill looks to be ready for passage.
The legislation, which is expected to be enacted within days, is the biggest fiscal stimulus package in modern American history, aimed at delivering critical financial support to businesses forced to shut their doors and relief to American families and hospitals.
Yay! A thing is happening! Unfortunately, the details of this  "biggest fiscal stimulus package in modern American history," at least as reported in this article indicate that it will probably not be enough.

The $1500 one time cash payments to individuals means tested to phase out after $75000 in household income is not nearly enough. It leaves hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people with no assurance of income through the crisis.  There are some silver linings in the bill such as expanded unemployment benefits, including a provision that unemployed workers, yes, even tipped and "gig" workers be paid 100% of their salary (up to $75,000.)  It would still be more efficient to distribute emergency aid directly to everyone.  For most people the assistance they receive will be a partial stop-gap, not a solution and certainly not enough to "stimulate" a sagging economy through increased demand. 

$150 billion in aid to state and local government is also not enough.  Every state and every city budget is completely busted right now. The feds will have to throw in at least 5 times that amount just to avoid hundreds of localized fiscal catastrophes. Our city and state, dependent as they are on oil and tourism revenues are particularly vulnerable so I'd like to know more about how this relief is meant to be distributed as well.

The bill also includes $350 billion in forgivable loans to small business also does not seem like enough. The loans are conditioned on maintaining employees on payroll but, again, this is nowhere near as effective as just giving people money directly, which is what should be happening. Small businesses are going to find themselves with revenue crunches and this taking on new debt (even if most of it is forgivable) isn't going to cover them.

Then there are the corporate bailout funds.  The article says this will be overseen by an inspector general and a panel of investigators. It also says there is a one year ban on stock buybacks which seems easy enough for the big money lawyers to work around and they will definitely work around it. Also I don't see anything about the government taking an equity stake in anything. We should be buying out most of these companies instead of bailing them out. Much of this money will be stolen.

This is not a great bill but it will likely be passed and enacted by Thursday at the latest

On to Phase 4...

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

And on the third day... we all died

The Republican party is running a death cult
Even as nations from Britain to India declare nationwide economic lockdowns, President Trump said he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” less than three weeks away, a goal that top health professionals have called far too quick.

“I think it’s possible, why not?” he said with a shrug.
The purpose of this is to maintain the general terror under which most workers regularly are forced to accept oppressive or dangerous conditions for minimal pay and benefits.  It's what makes the world go round.

Adding:  How we square this timeline with reality in any way is beyond anyone's reason.
As the number of coronavirus cases in Louisiana continues to surge, Gov. John Bel Edwards warned federal officials the New Orleans area is on track to run out of its ability to deliver health care by April 4.

Edwards made the projection in a letter sent to the White House Monday, seeking a Major Disaster Declaration and federal aid to help Louisiana, which has one of the highest rates of coronavirus infections per capita in the U.S.

"With our current rate of new virus cases, our hospital current capacity to successfully treat infected patients will be exceeded," Edwards wrote. "For the New Orleans area, the current projections of hospitalizations significantly exceed capacity beginning on April 4, 2020."
Easter Sunday is April 12.

Anyway, if you succeed at not catching the virus, make sure you buckle your seat belt. Don't run with scissors or anything like that.  Be safe.

Like trying to get blood from a pelican

Here is what decades of allowing the business lobby in Baton Rouge to write the laws and procedures for distributing unemployment benefits gets you.
The $216 paid in Louisiana is the 49th lowest amount in the country. Only Mississippi, at $214 per week, pays less. But Louisiana’s rate is actually lower when average wages are factored in, because wages in Louisiana tend to be higher.

Only 11% of unemployed workers actually receive unemployment insurance because of restrictions on who qualifies and perhaps because of the low amount they would receive. The 11% rate ranks Louisiana as 46th in the country.

“That’s a system that’s barely functioning,” Michael Leachman, senior director of state fiscal research for the CBPP, said in an interview. “Louisiana’s unemployment system is one of the weakest in the country, if not the weakest.”
Anyone who has had to deal with this miserly system will also tell you applicants must confront a confusing website where they must answer a series of intrusive questions meant to intimidate and shame them for having to request even this meager amount of assistance.  There is very little in person help available. Often people without internet access have to wait in line for computer time at a public library.  Those are all closed right now because of the virus.

Is the system "broken?" Well it is if you think it is supposed to help people. But really this is a prod meant to keep workers intimidated and compliant. And as we are seeing this week, some people think this is a necessary function,  even in the midst of a pandemic.

Every single thing is on fire

Not a great time to be without a fire department.
On Monday, 54 firefighters tested positive or received contact tracing notification that they have interacted with someone that has the virus. New Orleans Fire Department union president Aaron Mischler did not say how many have actually been diagnosed with COVID-19, but he did say at least four fire stations are without a sufficient amount of firefighters.
Kind of ironic when you recall the fire department wasn't allowed to participate in Mardi Gras this year which is when a lot of people suspect the "community spread" really started to happen.



Failed aristocrats

Without looking it up, let's see if we can name the wealthiest individuals in Louisiana. There's  Gayle Benson, Joe Cannizaro, Phyllis Taylor, Eddie Rispone. Probably Lane Grigsby is in there somewhere. Who else? Jim Bernhard? I can't think of a name right now. I'm sure it will come to me... 
The economic impacts of coronavirus have hit Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper. In a company wide email, The Advocate Publisher and President Judi Terzotis announced that all salaried employees and full-time hourly staff would be reduced to working four days a week, resulting in a twenty percent pay cut. The email also announced that “a number of our staffers will be temporarily furloughed.”

“Our world has turned upside down,” the email said. “It is a shame that a terrible economy requires these moves at the same time our importance to the community has risen. More people are reading our journalism, online and in print, than ever before.”
Seems like at this particular moment when the world is on fire and we are ruled by corrupt sociopaths and our city is a major epicenter of the crisis, you wouldn't want to go laying off reporters and cutting back on news production.  Unless, I guess, if you are one of the sociopaths.

I mean it certainly seems like people want to read about that stuff.  According to Kovacs and Terzotis, they do, anyway. 
Louisianians need accurate and unbiased coverage more than ever, and they are turning to us as never before. Online traffic on nola.com and theadvocate.com is running three to four times above normal.

The pace of new digital subscriptions has more than doubled in March, even though we are making our coronavirus coverage available free of charge as a public service.

Of course we know the news business isn't about selling the news to readers.  It's about selling the readers to advertisers.  And selling the readers to advertisers isn't as profitable as it used to be.  It's especially bad during this moment. But the current moment is extraordinary and, depending on what happens in Washington, it remains to be seen how bad and how lasting its effects will be. In the meantime, maybe the patrician overseer of the operation could throw in a little extra to help weather the storm. But that's not how any of this works.

We shouldn't be at the mercy of patricians like Georges.  Not in times like these or any other. 

Monday, March 23, 2020

"Lockdown"

Things are about to get a little bit weird.

Commander's Palace take out

At 5pm today, the governor's state wide "stay at home" order goes into effect. This is intended to get a handle on the virus's terrifying rate of spread in Louisiana which is projected to overwhelm health care capacity within the next week or so. While it's imperative that people do their best to stay put, it's worth noting that, once again, the actual rules the governor has put in place are not a significant change from the mayor's order on Friday. What this means, in practice, is that even as the public is advised to stay at home, many people, servers and kitchen staff at restaurants offering "take out" for example, are still at the mercy of their employers. Come to work under dubious circumstances or face the prospect of losing your job. Until (unless) Congress takes significant action to mitigate these fears, that is not going to change.

The problem is the Congress, especially the Republicans there, have no interest in relieving the pressure on people, even in the midst of a crisis. This thing where people have no choice but to put themselves and others in danger for the sake of a boss's or a landlord's profits, is a core feature of capitalism.  The Republican Senators playing a sinister game of chicken this morning over a federal relief package know this. In fact they are counting on it.
Hours after Senate Democrats blocked movement on a massive stimulus package Sunday evening, injecting fresh uncertainty over whether and when lawmakers will reach a bipartisan deal to deliver relief amid the devastating coronavirus pandemic, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ramped up the pressure on Democrats.

Taking to the Senate floor late Sunday night, he announced another procedural vote on the package timed for 9:45 a.m. Monday — minutes after the stock market opens — but it was blocked by Democrats who don't want to be forced to take the vote.
 
"I think there's a good chance we'll have an agreement. But we don't need artificial deadlines. We will get this done. We will come in at noon and hopefully we will have an agreement by then," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who made the objection, said on the Senate floor.
 
McConnell blasted Schumer's move as reckless and warned the markets will now be open for three hours before they can get some certainty a stimulus bill will pass the Senate.
 
A vote in the Senate is now expected at 1 p.m.

McConnell's bill issues billions of dollars in bailout money to major corporations while restricting and stigmatizing the badly needed relief to Americans currently agonizing over the Hobson's choice of reporting to work in a dangerous pandemic or suffering job losses and evictions. Today his strategy is to use the crashing stock market as a "ticking time bomb" to force the Democrats into going along with his bailout plan. They should not fall for it.  There are tools the federal government has at its disposal  that allow it to send direct relief to people immediately. Rep. Waters outlined several of them last week.  Rep. Tlaib has submitted a bill that takes advantage of the Fed's power to send cash payments to people. But there are other actions the Congress can take to protect people which they should be moving on.  Above all the Senate must stop McConnell's cruel bill.  Signs are the Democrats (even the bad ones) are rallying to do that this morning.  Let's see how well they hold together.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans we will have to just sit tight and hope, and above all, stay home if possible. Trust me, if you go out, there's not much of anything to do. A short bike ride yesterday afternoon (while practicing strict "social distancing") confirms this. Aside from grocery stores and the occasional "take out" window, there isn't anything to see or do.

The front door is boarded up at Ms. Mae's.  There is speculation this is because nobody even knows if it locks. 

Ms Mae's

Other famously 24 hour operations like Igor's here are also shuttered.

Igor's

The French Quarter is a virtual ghost town of boarded up windows and empty streets all under an eerie silence.

Kingfish

Napoleon House

St. Peter Street side

Maison Bourbon

The people you are most likely to encounter are police and the city's numerous unhoused population who also are in dire need of protection.  The mayor says here that she has a plan for that.  Hopefully it is a good one.  No one should ever be left to live out on the streets in this absurdly wealthy country.  This shouldn't even be a problem but well, like a lot of things.....

Anyway, for those of you who can stay at home, stay at home. Leave the streets to the "crazy rats" for now.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Every state is busted

Whenever we get around to reconvening the legislature, the agenda is going to look a lot different than it did when everybody showed up a few weeks ago.
Now, mainly through phone conferences, budget architects are trying to figure out what to do about the $32 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year that they are constitutionally required to balance with available revenues or state government comes to a screeching halt on July 1.

The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C. think tank, said Thursday that Louisiana was one of the least prepared to weather the coronavirus impact because the state’s income is heavily dependent on taxes from now falling energy production and with services weakened by years of budget cuts.
With sales tax collections and oil revenues plummeting, it's tempting to go into an immediate panic. But there is some cushion. The state maintains an emergency reserve fund (known commonly as the "rainy day fund") that currently holds $409 million and the previous year's surplus is over $500 million.

But the bigger issue to keep in mind is this isn't just something that happened to Louisiana. It's happening to every state and local government in the country. There is going to have to be massive unprecedented aid to states from the federal govenrment.  We just don't know how big that will be yet.
“It’s not all doom and gloom. We’re going to get some federal dollars out of this,” said state Sen. Bodi White, the Central Republican in charge of the Finance Committee that considers the budget after it is approved by the Louisiana House. The question remains how much will the federal government send, what strings are attached and who on the state level can decide how the money is used.

White is also concerned about dollars reaching local governments, which have been paying police overtime during the crisis, among other expenses. Parish and municipal governments rely more on sales taxes than locals in other state do.
The legislature is *supposedly* going back to work on the 31st.  But whenever they do, it's important that their actions protect people from the effects of the crisis and not use it as an excuse to further gut the state's capacity to do good.  We'll learn more about the size and shape of the federal relief this week. But it's important to remember that, precisely because every state is in a similar situation now, the burden of relief will not fall solely on our state's lawmakers to solve.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Go to the youtubes

It's Saturday night at home again.  There's not much most of us can do about anything at the moment. Find something to read or watch.  Hey how about this.

Here is Huey delivering a radio address in 1935. He begins by going after FDR for not moving fast enough or radically enough while poking fun at him for hanging out on the Astors' yacht with the British royal family. Then he moves on to describe the worsening state of wealth inequality while criticizing various media entities who he points out have either had to eat their words on the subject or whose editorialists are often lying about the facts as reported in their own publications. Next he goes on to describe the tenets of the Share Our Wealth program. No one too rich, no one too poor. Everyone is entitled to a free education. Retirees over 60 should live in comfort. Veterans should be supported. (He's a bit off on the "debt" rhetoric.  Just mint the damn coin.)  Finally he lays a series of bible verses on us in support of all of the above.

Anyway it's good stuff if you want to spend half an hour in yesterday's calamity in order to take your mind off today's for a bit. Or maybe it's just a way to refocus.

Needless to say, this is not how you "go big"

Every single thing is on fire.  We have to choose, right now, whether we are going to fight the fire on behalf of every single person or if we are going to allow predators move about and swallow up the vulnerable during the chaos.  Mitch McConnell is a predator.
The 247-page McConnell CARES Act puts the leader’s imprint on opening talks with Democrats in Congress as lawmakers prepare to work through the weekend to fast-track perhaps the most urgent legislative undertaking since the 2008 financial crisis.

The negotiations are certain to encounter difficulties ahead, despite the pressure on Washington to act. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow will meet behind closed doors with Senate leaders. Democrats say the Republican plan does not go far enough and some Senate Republicans object to certain provisions.

“We are beginning to review Senator McConnell’s proposal and on first reading, it is not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers,” said a joint statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
"McConnell CARES" They keep trying to tell us irony is dead but it's still very much our leading cultural product.  Just look at this shit.
Under the plan, the government would provide households an early tax rebate worth up to $1,200 for an individual or $2,400 for a married couple, with an extra $500 for each of their children. (So far, so good). The payments will be based on a household’s 2018 tax return, or if it didn’t submit one, their 2019 filing.

But the checks will shrink for both low and high earners. Americans with little to no tax liability (aka, poor folks) will only receive a minimum payment of $600, unless they earned less than $2,500, in which case they get zilch. Low-wage workers who don’t have a federal tax return for 2018 or 2019—adults generally aren’t required to file one they if earn less than the standard deduction—also won’t qualify for the early rebate. (They could still get it next year if they file taxes for 2020, but by that time it will be a bit late.) Meanwhile, the payments phase down for workers who make more than $75,000 and drop to zero for those making $99,000 and above (double those numbers for joint filers).
This is absolutely brutal. Friday, the state of Louisiana announced it received 47,000 new unemployment claims this week. A one time $1200 check helps absolutely none of these people. The nascent depression is said to be a "service-led" event. It is hitting waiters, cooks, bartenders hotel workers, performers, and so-called "gig economy" and informal cash economy workers first. The great majority of these workers are not eligible for severance or sick leave so they do not benefit from the emergency leave measures prioritized in congress earlier in the week.  Likely most of these people will fall within the "little to no tax liability" category which means they get even less direct aid than the targeted "middle class" recipients. In the midst of a crisis that is falling hardest on the poorest Americans, this is a bill that further punishes the poor.

Who will protect them?  We'd love to sit here and tell you the Democrats can do this. We know they've been advised by Rep. Maxine Waters as to how they should proceed.   The Waters memo (it's a policy memo and not yet incorporated into a bill) proposes substantial direct aid to individuals ($2,000 per month) with bailouts for state and local governments, Americans with student debt and the homeless.  McConnell wants to give poor and working class Americans almost nothing while handing multi-billion dollar bailouts to airlines and oil companies.

But so far the Democrats haven't moved on Waters' proposals. Instead they've been doing everything they can to help pull the process in McConnell's direction. In fact, the first voice raised in favor of limiting and "means testing" cash payments to workers wasn't McConnell's. It was Nancy Pelosi's.
In technical economic jargon, Pelosi wants to "means test" cash aid in response to coronavirus: Don't give the checks to everyone, but target them to the poorest people, by at least scaling up the checks for people further down the income ladder, or most likely phasing them out completely for Americans above a certain income threshold. Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, fleshed this point out further in a tweet: "The Speaker believes we should look at refundable tax credits, expanded [unemployment insurance] and direct payments — but MUST be targeted."

Means testing may seem reasonable. But it's actually not a great idea even in the best of times. And in a crisis situation like the social and economic lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus, direct and universal cash aid is one of the best single policy responses available. The fact that Pelosi had the chance to lead this charge a week ago and demurred, insisting on means testing as a condition, is blinkered and insane, on both the politics and the policy merits.
There are obvious positions the Democrats can take to claim the moral high ground. The Waters memo outlines some of it.  I think also everyone should listen to this interview with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and economist Stephanie Kelton this week about the scope of what's happening and what the scale of the response should be. Here is AOC answering a question about whether the Democratic response has been sufficient.
MH: No, I was gonna say, Congresswoman, do you sign on to all of that? And also a follow up. Katie Porter, your fellow freshman Democrat from California came out in the Atlantic yesterday and said she disagrees with Speaker Pelosi is focused on “refundable tax credits” over direct cash payments. She says that’s too slow. Do you agree with Katie Porter? Is the Pelosi/Schumer way just too slow given how fast the economy is going downwards right now?

AOC: Yes, I completely agree. I sit with Katie Porter on the Financial Services Committee and she’s absolutely right. And I agree with Professor Kelton. I think one thing that’s important to underscore when Professor Kelton is talking about well, we want to look, last time we only have one bite at this apple, there won’t be appetite. We have to examine why there wasn’t political appetite to do more in 2008. And the reason for that was because there was a package that was entirely designed to favor corporations, to bail out Wall Street that was more concerned with stock prices than wages and the health of Wall Street than the actual healthcare system. And that’s why there wasn’t political appetite to do more because we passed out billions of dollars and then the CEOs came in flying in on their private jets, asking for more. And so that was the core of why Americans rejected doing more after the first package.

Now is a very different time. If we focus our package on immediate bailouts for everyday people, making sure that we’re issuing things like mortgage and rent and student loan debt moratoriums, making sure that we’re getting cash into people’s hands, ensuring the fact that if they have to go to the hospital, coronavirus related or not because as we know this can trigger a series of other health issues, that you will be financially okay. And that is the number one thing that we need to do right now. We need to be introducing stabilizers to working families. And Katie Porter is absolutely right on the point of tax credits. You know, I think sometimes with all due respect to my colleagues, we get into this, you know, there’s a lot of like this 90s wonkery going on where if we do a backdoor tax credit, oh, that’s a clever way of helping people. But it doesn’t address the core issue, which is that people are experiencing a shock right now. We need to get checks into people’s hands. If you’re concerned about it being means-based, tax it on the other end. Get everyone a check right now. And then if you want to make sure that the millionaire’s don’t get 1,000 bucks, do an extra, you know, tax them on the other end of that and make sure that they can’t wriggle out of that.
People are in trouble. Just give people money.  "How do we pay for it?" STFU! Here is Rep. Rashida Tlaib's plan to mint trillion dollar coins to pay for it.  We can shoot the money cannon at people to help them out right now. This is what needs to happen.

To see why, one need look no further than New Orleans' City Hall where Friday afternoon Mayor Cantrell appeared once again to lecture New Orleanians on their failure to adequately observe social distancing directives.  Unfortunately, the mayor's message, no matter how loud she makes it, continues to be mixed.
In a fiery press conference Friday, Mayor LaToya Cantrell issued her strongest demands to date that residents stay home and shut down non-essential businesses to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus in the city, where cases have grown to more than 300 since March 9.

Cantrell doubled-down on restrictions the city put in place earlier this week with a "stay at home mandate." But despite her forceful rhetoric, the mandate does not include any significant new restrictions on businesses or residents and aligns with what other communities are doing around the country.
Coronavirus is dangerous. Every day we learn more about how dangerous it can be, even to those who may not have considered themselves part of the "at risk" population.  But, really, there is only one population of humanity. If any part of it is "at risk" then we all are. That's the whole point behind the "flatten the curve" idea in the first place.  Everyone has to have everyone else's back. Which is why, in order to ensure that workers stay home to protect the vulnerable, we have to assure them they will be taken care of too.

But Cantrell, and the tourism business owners who advise her, know only how to use a crisis to intimidate their employees into submission.  As long as people are afraid they have no choice but to go to work they are going to leave the house and go to work. If you give people no support, if you give them no money, if you give them no reason to expect that they will have a job when the crisis ends unless they keep putting themselves at risk, if, in fact, you subsidize their bosses for staying open right now, then you have no right to get on TV and scream at people for not "staying home" like they're supposed to.  

The only way to protect workers from this kind of avarice is to give them money and security. Except no one in the Democratic leadership is working to make it happen.  Instead their reflex is to retreat into "90s wonkery" as AOC puts it. Some of this is because they, too, are corrupt defenders of criminal capitalism.  But, from a pure public messaging standpoint, the problem is the Democrats have no idea what is happening anymore. They are fighting shadows of what the Republican political message used to be.

This is what people are talking about when they say Trump has "outflanked" the Democrats to their left. The actual Republican legislation may be as cruel and as slanted toward the wealthy as ever. But on TV, in the place where the political perception happens, the public face of their party isn't denigrating "welfare queens" anymore. He's promising to "GO BIG" with checks for everybody. Democratic leaders should counter by embracing the suggestion of members of their own party that we GO EVEN MORE BIGLY with checks for everyone every month until the crisis has ended and we've built a better more stable social safety net altogether. Instead they are proposing means tests and worrying about the deficit. All of which is why despite Trump's utter denial and bungling of the crisis that has endangered countless lives, polls are now showing that Americans approve of the way he's handling it. By failing to "go big" for real, Democrats are losing to the worst con-man in history at the worst possible moment and they have only themselves to blame.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

30,000 unemployment claims

Is that a lot? In a week, I mean.  Seems like a lot.


 

The maximum weekly benefit is $247. Maybe we can all go work for Winn-Dixie now.

Hot spots

The rate of coronavirus spread in New Orleans has greatly outpaced the spread in much larger cities like New York and San Francisco where the crisis appears to be centered in national reporting.  Because we are the hottest of all spots, I wonder if, even in the midst of a global crisis, are we experiencing something that looks and feels... even worse than what everyone else is.

Every state and local government is in an austerity trap

Some of that is because state houses are full of reactionary conservatives and city halls are steeped in public-private neoliberal ideology. But there is also a major structural factor that makes all of that seem sort of rational.
The problem is that unlike the federal government, nearly all state and local governments face balanced budget rules for their current activities, with most needing to pass bond referenda for specific projects in order to borrow money.  So when the revenues fall short, which they shortly will start to do for all these state governments, they will face the choice of cutting spending and laying off workers or raising taxes on populations facing sharply reduced incomes and employment.  The sooner the federal government recognizes this and starts to do something, the better, although probably for now natonal politicians are hoping this will all be over before too much damage happens to the local governments, to the extent they are thinking about this at all, which I doubt.
In a crisis this forces local officials to make drastic decisions that threaten their own workforce and cripple their future capacity to serve the public.  A lot of them feel like they're doing the right or only thing. But that's because they're working with a limited concept of normal operations.  These are not normal times.  It is time to imagine a much better world with a wider range of possibilities.

Maxine Waters is trying to do that.
Waters' proposal, described in a memo to House Democrats, calls for direct cash payments — larger and longer lasting than in other proposals — and suspension of nearly all consumer and small business debt payments, supported by reimbursements to creditors through the Federal Reserve.

It calls for billions of dollars in grants to small businesses, boosting emergency homelessness assistance funds by billions, cutting all federal student loans by $10,000, and pumping $100 billion into public housing to kickstart the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic passes.

Waters, D-Calif., is calling for $2,000 a month in cash payments to most adults, and $1,000 a month for each child, for the duration of the pandemic. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has floated a $500 billion direct cash injection, but as a one-time offer, not the continuing monthly payments Waters proposes.
The Waters memo.. you can read it here... should be the standard by which all policy response is measured. It enumerates relief efforts that put people first. It offers real support to the scores of laid off. Instead of the narrow focus on sick leave or means-tested tax credits for middle class workers or massive bailouts for corporate criminals, the Waters memo considers the whole economy of part-time workers, gig workers and people who depend on informal cash only arrangements.

It also recognizes the dire situation that local governments find themselves in and offers immediate help.  These provisions would stand up cities that are already starting to furlough workers and cut services.
20.Support State, Territory, and Local Government Financing. This provision would authorize a program that requires the Federal Reserve to support state, territory, and local debt issuance in response to the coronavirus outbreak given the critical role these governments are playing.

21.Waive Matching Requirements for Municipal Governments. This provision would waive the requirement that state, territory or local governments first obtain matching funds prior to receiving certain federal grants.
There are provisions in the Waters plan beyond this that empower cities to rebuild their economies through small business aid and housing grants.  Everything is on fire right now. The Waters plan not only moves immediately to douse those fires it shows us the fastest and most equitable route to recovery.  It needs to happen and it needs to happen like yesterday. Call your congresspeople today and tell them that.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Speaking your debts into oblivion

Today the Governor suspended all evictions and foreclosures in the state of Louisiana.
BATON ROUGE — Gov. John Bel Edwards suspended foreclosures and evictions Wednesday as two more coronavirus deaths were reported and cases spiked to more than 250 as Louisiana emerges as a national hotspot for infections.

Edwards said he was issuing his "most urgent plea" yet to follow practices to stem the spread of the disease like social distancing, sanitizing and avoiding large groups of people.

"We have two weeks to minimize the spread," Edwards said. "We don't want to look like Italy in two weeks (where the pandemic has crippled the country)."

But Edwards warned: "Things are going to get much worse before they get better" because of an increase in testing. "You are going to see the number of cases jump dramatically over the next 48 to 72 hours."
Oh yeah, also the virus news is bad.  But I'm more interested in this foreclosure suspension right now.  Earlier in the week, we saw the city small claims courts announce they weren't going to hear any eviction cases until the end of April. (We'll see about that when we get there.)  I suppose the Governor's order could confirm and extend that action as well.  What does the order actually say? Is it just a verbal decree?

On the foreclosure side, there are several points at which he could intervene. He could order a halt to court proceedings or he could shut down the sheriffs' repo sales or both.  Also how long is the order in place? Hopefully it goes past just next month. If you have an FHA loan, you are protected for 60 days now.  But that also will probably have to be extended. If they're going to bring the hammer right back down on people as soon as they can, they may as well wait until they get their $2000 first.

Busted

The legislature isn't working right now.  That's probably a good thing. I mean, it's usually a good thing when that bunch doesn't have to get together but in this case it's especially so because they would all be freaking out over the budget.
Economists assumed oil prices would average $59 a barrel when compiling the state’s revenue forecast, but state leaders are expected to meet early next month to adopt a new revenue forecast that will determine how much money lawmakers and Gov. John Bel Edwards have to spend. The price of oil has dropped by nearly half ahead of that meeting, trading in the low $30s a barrel in recent days.

For every $1 drop in the price of oil, Albrecht said, Louisiana loses about $11 million to $12 million in direct tax revenues.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean they  will have lost $330 million just like that.  For one thing the revenue estimate is based on the expected price of oil over the course of the entire year. So if the price rebounds later, it could average out to be a negligible difference. 

Of course, that story was from a week ago.  Today we have another look and...
The American oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate dropped 24 percent to just over $21 a barrel, the lowest price since 2003. 

The global Brent benchmark fell to just above $25 a barrel, a level just below January 2016. Oil prices are more than 60 percent below where they were at the beginning of the year.
Aaanyway... just tell the legislators to sit tight for now.  Coming back in to work too soon could be even more dangerous than it already is.

Leon's death camps

Cannizzaro wants to keep everybody locked up in unsafe conditions..... you know.. for safety.
As the Orleans Parish Public Defenders office attempts to get as many people out of jail as possible amid the spread of the new coronavirus, prosecutors with the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office are arguing against bond reductions for some defendants, arguing in part that they will pose a “threat to the community” through the spread of the virus if released.

Dispatch from the doom: Every single thing is on fire

Where to even begin today?

Let's try here.
With the coronavirus crisis having already affected large swaths of American culture and the economy, there's no real reason to think that the world's largest retailer will be spared. Amazon is facing pressure from three different sides: Increased demand from consumers, the very real potential of coronavirus spreading through a warehouse, and supply chain interruptions.

Ports that receive goods from overseas have seen major slowdowns as the Chinese stall manufacturing. While Trump’s European travel ban does not currently include trade, imports from Europe could come to a halt if things change as they already are overnight. Already, Amazon is seeing shortages of basic supplies like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes.
Every single thing in the world is on fire now and it's only beginning to sink in.  The American luxury consumer life runs on extracting maximum value out of poor people on a global scale while ignoring the misery imposed by that system.  The pandemic interrupts all of this.  It has a power that workers have long been deprived of. The power to shut it all down.  Perhaps you are tempted to think this is an "opportunity" to build a better world. It isn't. The virus, having no agenda beyond self replication, hasn't stopped the world to make demands. Like all preceding disasters of the 21st Century, this one only promises to bring new hardships.

Right now the entire economy is seized up.  This seizure is different even from the 2008 financial meltdown where a speculative market based on creating fake value out of whole cloth could be propped back up by inserting trillions of newly printed fake dollars.  But to be clear what "propped back up" means, the fake dollars went right to the bankers who caused the problem in the first place and allowed scores of criminals to cash themselves out of their schemes while leaving ordinary Americans ruined for decades. So hurray for that.  The crisis we're looking at now is and will be... worse. The response to this needs to be immediate. It needs to be massive. And it needs to be directed to people and not to banks or corporations. Unsurprisingly it is taking American politics a very long time to figure this out.

A relief package in the House supposedly aimed at providing American workers with sick leave will, in fact, cover only about 20% of them. Tuesday morning we read that Nancy Pelosi, after scolding reporters about the importance of means testing things, has negotiated with the Trump Administration to further scale back the scope of bill. Kamala Harris is tweeting out a previous plan of hers to give *some* people virtually nothing.  The presumptive Democratic nominee for President said during a debate on Sunday that free health care is still a bad idea because countries that have it also have the virus. Democrats are so corrupted by their corporate donors and confounded by their own resigned ideology of better-things-aren't-possible have none of the tools necessary to deal with the problem realistically.  They can't even make hollow promises that capture anyone's attention anymore.

This makes them quite different from the huckster Donald Trump, unfortunately, who is all too happy to step in with Great Big Checks For Everybody.
WASHINGTON — President Trump called on Congress on Tuesday to quickly approve a sweeping economic stimulus package that would include sending checks directly to Americans within weeks, as large sections of the economy shut down in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We want to go big,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at the White House, adding that he had instructed Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, to introduce measures that would provide more immediate economic support over the payroll tax cut holiday that he had been promoting.
Thank goodness they've talked him out of the payroll tax thing... for now.  It's a terrible idea that a) won't help anybody who is not receiving a paycheck and b) is a direct stab at Social Security, Medicare and what remains of the federal social safety net that most of us are going to have to rely on now more than ever.  Ultimately we know the Republicans will come back for all of that. But right now they are outflanking the Democrats to the left which is something that should never happen in the midst of a worldwide crisis when there is also a national election pending.

Sure, we all know that Republicans are going to insist on ridiculous corporate bailouts for the airlines, for the oil industry, and for anyone who puts money in their, or especially Trump's, pocket. On Friday, Trump presided over a nightmare scene at the Rose Garden where he presented the CEOs of Walmart, CVS, Target as well as medical industrialists including, of all people, disgraced former Louisiana head of Health and Human Services Bruce Greenstein to talk about the "public-private partnerships" by which they all expect to get rich off of the pandemic disaster. Senate leader and greatest villain of the 21st Century, Mitch McConnell is saying it will take "significant and bold new steps" to pass the next relief bill. That doesn't necessarily bode well either.

In the meantime, there is an election to win. So Trump is going to send everyone a much needed relief check (it won't be enough but it will be welcome) and cruise to a win over the guy who has spent his whole career trying to cut your Social Security. The punchline is, afterward, Trump will then come back and cut your Social Security.  Because the "liberal" party is so helplessly moribund, the only direction for the country to go now is further into a populist fascism. Offer people some bread up front, turn the whole state over to the oligarchs next.

It didn't have to be like this. If only Democrats could have backed a campaign proposing a major overhaul of the entire US economy based on eliminating stifling debts, expanding social services like health care and mobilizing all resources to fight climate change. If only they didn't mobilize their entire corrupt party infrastructure to stop that from being their platform.  Unfortunately some people were mean to some well to do liberals on Twitter and so now this is what we get. Seems fair.

Hey speaking of oligarchs, meanwhile in New Orleans....
Mayor LaToya Cantrell's director of economic development, Jeff Schwartz, led a Monday morning conference call with about 40 leaders from business and economic development organizations, including the Business Council of New Orleans, New Orleans Business Alliance, GNO Inc., economic agencies from parishes in the metropolitan area, as well as the black, Hispanic and other chambers of commerce.

The problem in New Orleans, much like the problem in Washington, is the people who will have the ear of government leadership throughout and after the crisis are the ownership class. This is why, for example, the rules for keeping bars and restaurants open the mayor issued Sunday were written by the Louisiana Restaurant Association's lobbyists. Those rules were quickly obsoleted by the Governor's subsequent shutdown order. But it's clear where the local policy is being drawn up.

In the same way Trump's policy is directed by cronies like those assembled in the Rose Garden last week, Cantrell's is dictated by the "business and economic development organizations" like those listed above as well as the tourism promotion entity known as New Orleans and Company which, along with the Convention Center, pulls down something like $20 million dollars a year in public funds.

The tourism cabal has more than $200 million in surplus sitting around in a slush fund recently legitimized by Cantrell's #FairShare deal. Given the current state of the tourism market, they will be needing exactly zero of those dollars for any of their pet projects. It should all be spent on emergency relief for displaced hospitality workers.  Of course that isn't what's happening. Instead the interchangeable plutocrats who populate all of these organizations have set up "philanthropic" funds like this one run by the New Orleans Business Alliance. Its conditions are absurdly restrictive and its expected benefits are miserly. But all the right people get to manage it and cover themselves in glory in the process. They've thrown in $100,000 so far so congrats on that.

But it's not only a corrupt deference to ruling class influence that parallels Cantrell's emergency response with Trump's. She's also continues to emulate his authoritarian sneer in her rhetoric.  On Sunday, she took time out from her aggressive lecturing of everybody about the "social distancing" directives to also yell at the news media for... asking her questions in order to confirm information?



The context of that was never explained. It was bizarre to say the least.  The next day, she bristled at a reporter's perfectly reasonable question about whether or not NOPD should be throwing people in jail for non-violent offenses given the health hazards of crowding into confined spaces. The public defender's office has already asked them to cease such arrests in a letter this week. If you watch the presser you can hear the contempt in Cantrell's immediate response, "Uh no."  She then invited Police Chief Ferguson to give everyone a brief lecture about "law and order."

Today it was announced that future press conferences won't have any press at all. Instead the mayor will retreat to a bunker and send out a recorded message.




But that will be the case after one last hurrah today where Cantrell appeared, flanked by CAO Gilbert Montano and representatives of the NO & Co brain trust to announce that the tourism related businesses were getting a tax holiday.
Despite worries about the city’s bottom line, Cantrell announced on Tuesday that the city would waive all penalties for late sales tax payments from businesses for the next 60 days. That measure is intended to make sure businesses have the money on hand to keep paying their employees while state and city closures are in place during the height of the outbreak.
Cantrell, again in her now standard aggressively condescending tone, emphasized that these tax breaks, which, realistically, can only be expected to keep some businesses afloat for a few weeks at best, were being granted in the full knowledge that they will drastically alter the way the city operates for months and years into the future.
Decisions on how to cut government expenses could be made in the coming days, Cantrell said. That could include everything from cutting contracts or other expenses to furloughs or layoffs for city workers, she said.

“We’re looking at how this will impact the city and our operations, we’re looking beyond not just the next six months but the next 12 months,” Cantrell said. “The impact to our bottom line will be significant and will be felt even a year from now.”
This is a deliberate structural change intended to affect the way the city operates in the years after the virus crisis has passed. By that time, the current crop of hospitality workers Cantrell falsely claims to care about will have been long fired and displaced.  But the ownership class will remain largely intact. And at that point they will be expected to support even fewer of the paltry services the city can offer residents on its current shoestring budget.  It's a classic austerity strategy written up by the very owners who will benefit from it.  "Shock Doctrine" seems like such a cliche at this point but, once again, here we are. No crisis ever goes to waste.

When asked by a reporter why, given the entire history of everything, why anyone should expect to trust that just handing over more money and power to the already rich and powerful with no accountability will work out well for everybody this one time, Cantrell was again characteristically curt. 
Asked about concerns that businesses would simply pocket the money, not turning it over to their workers or to the government, Cantrell said she choose to look at the situation from an optimistic perspective.

I’m not being negative at all and thinking that our businesses or employers will not do the right thing,” Cantrell said. “This is all with the expectation that they’ll do the right thing.”
In Cantrell's impossibly small conception of politics, if there is ever economic or class based conflict at all, it is forever subsumed by the greater imperative of personal deference. The worst offense is "being negative" enough to ask that authority be held to account.

The corona crisis is already a staggering calamity. But it's the authoritarian quality of our local and national governments that makes it uniquely dangerous. Every shock of the past twenty years has left the changed world a few degrees harsher in its wake. But this is the one that really feels as though it threatens to break us. It's already broken so much. 

No one can produce anything. No one can consume anything. The world economy is shuttered. The grifters are picking apart its bones. We are all holed up in isolation. The oceans are rising. The city of New Orleans is physically sinking into the sea. The system has glitched out. And our concluding communication, the clanging yawp of our death reflex is a stream of recommended local eateries spammed out from the social media of our office holders.


 

We can't sustain ourselves like this. Nobody has any money. Nobody has any answers. Stop asking the mayor for any. She will only yell at you.

Monday, March 16, 2020

Noblesse oblige

Oh look Gayle is helping.
New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson will be donating $1 million to create the Gayle Benson Community Assistance Fund in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the teams announced in a joint statement on Monday afternoon.

In addition to the $1 million, Benson is also starting the Arena Assistance Fund for those impacted by the NBA season's suspension. All wages for Pelicans' employees who work on gamedays will be guaranteed for all the remaining postponed games, the statement read.

Gayle was shamed into action with regard to Arena employees after a 19 year old basketball player who works for her made headlines by pledging to cover their salaries for a month. Her $1 million donation to the "community assistance fund" is, frankly, nothing.



It is, of course, meant to seed a larger amount to be collected and managed by the Greater New Orleans Foundation. And the gatekeepers of our city's philanthropy networks will have specific preferences as to how the money is distributed.
The beneficiaries of this fund will be nonprofits working to support those in the service and hospitality industry, among other nonprofit groups.
None of this is sufficient to meet the crisis at hand.  All this does is prop up the failed state of oligarchs and unaccountable non-profits that have subsumed the remnants of our privatized social safety net. All of that is going to have to be upended in favor of much more drastic wholesale action to reorient the entire world economy.

Or we could continue to do the bare minimum where our choices are bounded by the limits of what keeps the rich in power. Probably it will be that. 
WASHINGTON — President Trump told a group of governors on Monday morning that they should not wait for the federal government to fill the growing demand for respirators needed to treat people with coronavirus.

“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
As long as we reward Gayle Benson's noblesse oblige with fawning praise, that is the best we can hope for.

Cancel culture

Man oh man don't you wish you could, under much better circumstances than these, type the words, The Louisiana Legislature is Cancelled
The Louisiana Legislature is expected to vote Monday to suspend the Legislative session in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the latest in a series of dramatic measures taken by state leaders to slow a rising tide of cases in the state.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate planned to vote on a joint resolution to suspend the session, likely until either March 30th or 31st, multiple lawmakers said Monday.
This is, of course, the only appropriate course of action. Technically they are supposed to pass a budget by June 1. But as everyone is well aware by now, this Governor definitely knows where the Special Session button is.

If they get back soon enough, Mandie Landry's HB 419 should get priority. It would create a vote-by-mail option for all Louisiana voters which there should be adequate time to implement before the April 4 now June 20 elections

Friday, March 13, 2020

Cancel culture

2020 is the year the virus ate everybody's homework. No need to worry about those deadlines, folks. All of the things have been cancelled.

School is cancelled.

The festivals are cancelled.

Jail is cancelled.

Your water bill is cancelled.

The Farmer's Market is... still on

Even the election is cancelled.

The presidential primary elections in Louisiana slated for April will be delayed by two months, the latest in a series of dramatic steps government leaders have taken to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

Sec. of State Kyle Ardoin was set to announce the delay at 11:30 a.m. Friday, using a provision of state law that allows him to move any election in an emergency situation.

Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration confirmed the governor will grant the delay Friday. Christina Stephens, an Edwards spokeswoman, said it's an "extraordinary measure but one we feel is prudent."
So, you know, everybody chill. 

Orrr if you were ever interested in just up and declaring yourself President, this might be a good time for that as well.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

When did you decide this?

Jason Williams has decided that maybe we shouldn't turn downtown New Orleans into a great big police panopticon after all.
New Orleans City Councilman Jason Williams announced at a Wednesday meeting that he is pumping the brakes on a contract that would add 146 new public video cameras with audio capability until the council can craft and pass a comprehensive ordinance to regulate the use of surveillance technologies in New Orleans.

“It’s important that we be extremely concerned about the unintentional impacts that can come from a well meaning initiative,” he said. “The technology is moving so much faster than government and our regulations.”
It is important that we be extremely concerned about this.  Many of us have been extremely concerned for a very long time, in fact. When did Jason come aboard? 
Williams said that the election of President Donald Trump and the progression of surveillance around the world have changed his views.

“When we had those initial conversations, the President of the United States was Barack Obama,” he said during the meeting. “After that election and the awareness of the footage retrieval and data retrieval that might have been used in a way that the previous administration wouldn’t have used them. Changes in immigration policy have led to concerns for several council members.”
Hmmm... that's not great. Maybe consider that the power to violate everyone's expectation of privacy shouldn't exist regardless of who might use it for whatever.  It's an odd little quirk of government, I know, but the person holding any particular office does change, on occasion.   Jason knows this, right? I'm sure he must.  I mean...
Williams launched his official campaign for Orleans Parish District Attorney last week, setting himself up as a progressive District Attorney candidate focused on criminal justice reform. That election happens later this year.
Last week, Williams began the process of  "setting himself up as a progressive" DA candidate. This week he suddenly thinks surveillance isn't as great as he once thought.  Surely this is pure coincidence as well.