Actually they don't CARE about us at all

I know Gilbert Montaño is employing a kind of corporate-politcal-speak here intended to persuade upper level pricks into not being quite as prickish as they want to be.  But it still sounds naive as a public statement.

Louisiana as a whole received about $1.8 billion from the stimulus, $800 million of which is supposed to be passed on to local governments.

Montaño suggested there could be changes to that program in the future and that he didn’t think the intention was to leave out cities like New Orleans, which has a population of about 391,000.

“I don’t think the framers (of the CARES Act) thought New Orleans would fall below the threshold,” he said. “Place like New Orleans, Atlanta, I don’t think were anticipated to fall into the smaller city category.”

Actually the framers of the CARES Act (Republicans in the US Senate) mean for every state and every city to fall into crisis mode. The cascading disaster can only benefit the wealthiest Americans who Congress exists to serve in the first place.  There's no shaming them away from this purpose.  The President is already articulating their political rationale.

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump expressed reluctance to use a new stimulus bill to aid the states hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis. “I think Congress is inclined to do a lot of things but I don’t think they’re inclined to do bailouts,” he said.

He went on to say the states shouldn't get cash in part because they have Democratic leaders. “It’s not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help — they’re run by Democrats in every case,” Trump said.

That sounds like absolute nonsense. Every state needs help regardless of who is in charge right now. It makes more sense when you understand that the Republicans in every state want to dismantle and sell off public services and infrastructure. The COVID caucus of Republican hardliners in the Louisiana legislature are already moving austerity budget measures intended to accelerate that process.

The purpose is to leverage the pandemic into a shock doctrine scenario that will force states and cities to lay off their workforce, sell off their assets, and privatize what remains of their public services by handing them over to for-profit entities. It's already happening in New York.

NEWS: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt will chair a commission that re-imagines how New York operates, @NYGovCuomo announced.

Schmidt says he will focus on Telehealth, remote learning and expanding broadband access. pic.twitter.com/NM7Pw7fMrZ

— Jimmy Vielkind (@JimmyVielkind) May 6, 2020

And, unless something is done, it's likely to happen in New Orleans as well, under Montaño's direction.  

One possibility that’s being considered to increase those savings is offering incentives to city workers for retiring early, he said. The details of that plan are still being worked out and would depend in part on how much the city would need to pay out for unused time-off, he said.

The city could also save between $10 million and $12 million this year from reduced overtime costs from public safety workers, largely due to the cancellation of festivals and other major events, Montaño said.

The bosses won the pandemic.  They've got hardline Republicans in Washington and Baton Rouge to smash what remains of your dwindling public services and infrastructure. And they'll have neo-liberal Democrats in your cities to "partner" with the private profiteers who will scavenge and hoard the broken pieces. Despite Montaño's attempt to appeal to a better nature, this is what the "framers of the CARES Act" intended.  A few weeks ago, the mayor described the situation at a press conference. The CARES Act, she said, "doesn’t make me feel like we’re cared about if that’s all that’s going to come down from the federal government to the city of New Orleans.”  I think that's probably the most accurate take on all of this.