Monday, August 31, 2020

Worst person of 2020?

Seems like a lofty title. The competition would be stiff. Pros only, please. Probably if you are a mayor of something, you've already got a leg up on it.  But it would be hard to beat Josh Guillory at this point

Instead of hurricane damage, Lafayette has faced the "serious, local security threat" of protesters, according to Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Josh Guillory's administration.

Cydra Wingerter, Guillory's chief administrative officer, sent a Saturday email to those involved in disaster response, urging them to "take a pause on any action to establish shelters at this time."

Hundreds of thousands of people without electricity or water right now.  But... "security threat." Brilliant. 

Joe says your complaint doesn't count

Appeal thrown out on a technicality. Oh well, we tried.  

In addition to just being flat out wrong, Biden, here, is giving every right wing troll asking, "when will Joe disavow.." all week exactly what they want. It will not stop them from asking that. It will not stop them from continuing to throw up videos of things on fire and saying, "Joe Biden's America" over and over.  

It will further alienate the Democratic Party from the poor and working class people it claims to represent. It says to all the people getting gassed and punched and shot by cops all summer for expressing their grievance against racism and police violence that Joe Biden doesn't think it technically counts as a protest.   Okay. Thanks for that. 

Anyway, you may have heard, the country is not having the greatest year. In addition to all the racist police murders (kind of a long standing baseline feature, anyway) there are millions out of work, a deadly virus burning through the population, wildfires, hurricanes... Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? The people in the streets are the victims of these compound disasters. They are asking for justice. They are asking for help.  They are receiving a lecture about how the are doing it wrong.

I'm not a big fancy well paid political strategy guy, so I don't know. But that doesn't really strike me as a winner. 

Not going anywhere for a while?

Wow after all those years of watching the city build streetcars even though we kept trying to tell them they are glorified theme park rides for tourists, the city is cutting back on streetcars because... there aren't any tourists.

Since the pandemic triggered restrictions on businesses in early March, the Regional Transit Authority's iconic streetcars have seen a 90% decline from normal ridership levels. The RTA already has most of its system running on the less-frequent Saturday schedule in response, but the streetcars — which once provided millions of dollars in fares when they were filled with tourists — are now costing the agency much more to run per passenger.

As a fix, the RTA is considering running the streetcars less often. While the schedule now has an eight-minute wait between streetcars on Saturdays, the RTA could increase that to a 15-minute wait or longer.

"It's just time for us to take a hard look at what that service level should be, but still maintaining adequate social distancing," said RTA chief executive Alex Wiggins during a meeting of the RTA board this week. "Right now eight minutes between streetcars is just too much service."

Because fewer streetcars would likely make keeping distance more difficult aboard any one in particular, they probably wouldn't want to cut it back too far.  But do we really think the current bar is 8 minutes?  Because, no. Also we need to talk more about this fee-based system for public services and why we need to move away from that altogether. But that's for another time.

What's really fun about this is many of us have spent the better part of 15 years since Katrina arguing that the city devoted nearly all of its attentions to "rebuilding" a city that serves tourists while neglecting the needs of those of us who actually live here.  The streetcar projects have been a perfect example of this.  In the case of the Rampart cars, the explicitly stated goal was less about transit than it was "economic development."  But whenever the issue was raised in these terms, it was always met with denials. RTA has even been accused of re-configuring bus lines specifically to force more commuters onto the Loyola streetcar line in order to demonstrate its usefulness.  These are your streetcars, we built them for you. What would ever make you think they were just a tourist amusement?

Cut to today and we're cutting streetcar service because there aren't enough tourists anymore.  Oh well. The good news is, all these tourists who aren't here will be less frustrated figuring out how to get down to the pedestrian only French Quarter now that they can't ride or drive there. 

Another option might be for the non-tourists to consider soon will be to not take the boat.  Coming in September. We mean it this time. 

After more than two years of delays, failed inspections and fingerpointing, New Orleans’ public transportation authority has announced that one of its new ferry boats will begin carrying passengers across the river next month.

It’s the first time since 2018 that the Regional Transit Authority has given a hard deadline for a ferry's completion, after contractors and managers have repeatedly blown previous deadlines assigned to the $10 million vessels.

The ferryboat RTA 2 should be repaired and ready by Sept. 18, officials said at a transit board meeting earlier this week. Then, Metal Shark, the Jeanerette company building the boats, is expected to resolve leftover issues with its twin, RTA 1. Though officials said the second job should wrap quickly, the agency did not provide a timeline for completion in that case.

Only one boat is ready.  The good news there is since these boats don't carry cars, and we already know there are no tourists, and nobody has a job to get to downtown anymore anyway, they probably won't need the second boat any time soon.


 

Thursday, August 27, 2020

The first of the month is coming back around

You know, there is one every month. What's this one gonna be like?

Just over one million Americans filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week, the latest sign that the economy is losing momentum just as federal aid to the unemployed has been pulled away.

Weekly claims briefly dipped below the one million mark early this month, offering a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy job market. But filings jumped to 1.1 million the next week, and stayed above one million last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.

“It’s devastating how stubbornly high initial claims are,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the employment site ZipRecruiter. “There are still huge numbers of layoffs taking place.”

The state of Louisiana began issuing the first of its now greatly reduced unemployment benefits payments.  Thanks to Donald Trump, that money now pulls money away from FEMA just as Louisiana begins recovering from a Cat 4 hurricane strike. 

Also no one has a job or any money.  Rent is still due, though.

Nobody wants this big pile of money

Last week, City Council passed a non-binding resolution instructing the Criminal District Court to stop collecting conviction and bail fees from defendants and to return money to people from whom they've already collected these fees.  Supposedly, the idea is to discourage the courts from hoovering up unnecessary money from the poor and indigent who make up the vast majority of people wrung through our brutal criminal justice system. But there are problems.

To begin with, at least some of these fees (the bail fees) are mandated by state law which supersedes the council's authority so at least some of this money has to be collected. The courts are already in a state of limbo regarding that money since a different state law passed this year instructs them to hand it over to the city.  The new law is intended to eliminate a perverse incentive whereby the courts use these fees to fund their own operations. As a result of a 2018 lawsuit ruling that forbids the judges from keeping the funds, they've been collecting in a separate escrow account. 

Anyway that's as good a job as I can do summarizing the Lens's article.  The point is, because we haven't yet managed to ban cash bail altogether, there is a tub full of money that the courts aren't allowed to keep but the city council asserts that it does not want.  

OR maybe they do want it. 

At a City Council Criminal Justice Committee meeting last week, prior to the passage of the resolution, Councilwoman Helena Moreno wondered what would happen with the money judges do not have discretion over collecting. 

“So let’s say that the judges say, OK, the city isn’t going to collect, so it’s not worth imposing some of these additional fines and fees,” Moreno said. “But for those that through state law — statutorily — they have to, and it ends up in the escrow account, what do we do with the money in the escrow account?”

Will Snowden, executive director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, said that money from mandatory fees would go to the city, as is prescribed by state law. 

“This resolution can’t address those mandatory fines that the judges are required to assess on an individual. I know specifically, the bail fee is not something they have discretion in not imposing. That’s a fee that is assigned to every bail that is already set. So my understanding is those funds going into the escrow account — those bail fees — that escrow account will go on to the city as it is currently prescribed.”

“So then it would be up to [the annual city budget passed by the council] on how we use the escrow account, is that right?” Moreno asked.

The subsequent discussion between Moreno and Kristin Palmer there suggests the council could return the money to individuals themselves.  Something tells me that's going to be more easily said than done. 

Something else tells me, it won't be what they choose anyway.

Chemical fire

 Yikes

A large chemical fire has sent a dangerous cloud over Lake Charles, hours after the eye of Hurricane Laura passed directly over the city.

Gov. John Bel Edwards says the fire was burning Thursday morning just outside the city, and he’s advising storm survivors to shelter in place.

Edwards tweeted that people “in the Westlake/Moss Bluff/Sulphur area” should close their windows and doors and turn off their air conditioning units.

The National Hurricane Center says Laura remains a hurricane, sustaining top winds of 75 mph more than 170 miles after landfall.

Sounds comfy 

Update: Fire is coming from a facility called BioLab Inc

According to state permits, the facility can produce 115 million lbs. per year of trichloroisocyanuric acid and disodium isocyanurate. Trichloroisocyanuric acid is often produced in a white granulated or powder form and can have a heavy "chlorine" smell. When heated, the material can release toxic chlorine fumes and nitrogen oxides, according to PubChem, an open database from the National Institutes of Health.

The facility was categorized under federal standards as a major source of hazardous air pollutants.

Chlorine gas can cause blisters and a burning sensation in the eyes, nose and throat. Nausea, vomiting, shortness of breathe and headache are symptoms of heavy exposure. The gas is also heavier than air and tends to linger along the ground.

The complex also has storage tanks the hold diesel fuel, another potential fuel source for the fire, permit records show.

 

 

All's well that ends well if you own a well

There were some 1400 oil wells in the path of Hurricane Laura's storm surge.  Plus multiple chemical pipelines. Plus the offshore rigs, plus the LNG terminals. What happens if all that stuff gets blowed up?  Well, there is precedent.

Hurricane Katrina struck a similar trove of coastal oil and gas infrastructure in 2005. A Category 3 storm, Katrina made landfall with less force than Laura but managed to damage an estimated 100 drilling platforms, 400 pipelines and caused about 540 spills in Louisiana waters. Added up, the spills likely released roughly 11 million gallons – the same amount as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Fifteen years later, no environmental damage assessments have been completed and no companies were fined.

Wind vs rain vs surge

 The 15th anniversary of Katrina is two days from now.  Many folks who learned a lot about how disaster insurance works (or doesn't) at that time, will tell you why this might be important

Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday morning said early reports show wind did the most damage from Hurricane Laura, with storm surge falling short of projections, but the governor warned the hurricane did “extensive” damage that is ongoing as it continues to move toward Shreveport.

The governor said the National Guard had not yet been able to take helicopters to survey damage and that a “full assessment” was not yet available as of Thursday morning.

It's early but that is potentially good news.  This says also that the surge may have been only half as high as the predicted "unsurvivable" worst case scenario.  

Of course there are other hazards.



RNC Night 3

That was supposed to be the night where they scare everybody about the radical islamo-mexican-BLM-antifa terror that was coming to drag them away in the night.  Instead they let Mike Pence talk for 45 minutes.  Nobody wants to see that.  Not even Republican voters. I still have no idea who any of this is for.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Hold on to your butts

 Absolute terror.

Officials implored those who hadn’t left to do so in a final Wednesday morning briefing before the storm’s arrival, warning of unprecedented storm surge and punishing winds similar to and possibly even more damaging than those of 2005’s Rita.

"We expect catastrophic events from this storm,” said Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter. “Let me say: I hope I’m wrong. I hope this is not a Rita- like scenario. But the expectation and forecast is for this to be a catastrophic event."

The 7 PM advisory says Laura has 150 mph winds and can push a storm surge of 20 ft. It is potentially the "most powerful storm to ever hit Louisiana"  The chemical infrastructure situated in its path is worth billions of dollars and accounts for a large share of national fuel production.  Even more critically, though, it could make for a massive environmental disaster in the wake of a storm like this. 

Coming onshore within hours.  




 

Blow that bubble

 Somebody's got to.

The NBA has announced that all three playoff games Wednesday will be postponed and rescheduled. The decision comes after the Milwaukee Bucks players did not take the court for Game 5 of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic, which was supposed to tip off at 4 p.m. ET. The protest comes in response to the shooting of an unarmed black man named Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday. Shortly after the Bucks made a statement by not playing, the Rockets and Thunder decided to also not play today, as well as the Lakers and Trail Blazers. 

Some basketball players just did more politics in one day than either of the major parties have done in a week and a half of TV infomercial production.

Hmmmmm

 Something extra-fishy going on here.  Not sure what just yet but something. 

State Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge, said Wednesday he is dropping his bid to chair the state Democratic Party so he can focus on national politics.

James was the frontrunner for the post after winning the endorsement of Gov. John Bel Edwards.


Unsurvivable

 That sounds bad. I don't like it. 

Southwest Louisiana was bracing for a catastrophic Category 4 Hurricane Laura that was expected to lay waste to large swaths of the region, bringing unheard-of levels of storm surge for south Louisiana of as much as 20 feet.

Gov. John Bel Edwards and forecasters implored residents of the area to flee as the storm prepared to make landfall. Officials said it will bring “unsurvivable” storm surge and wind gusts of 170 mph that was expected to leave most of Cameron Parish underwater.

This is over 200 miles away from New Orleans but the wind this afternoon is already shaking things up a good deal more than anything associated with Marco did over the weekend.  There have only been three storms in recorded history to strike Louisiana as Cat 4 hurricanes.  Katrina, Rita, and Andrew had all grown to Cat 5 strength at certain points but were not, technically, packing that punch when they made landfall.  Still, all were historically damaging.  

There are a lot of vulnerable people in the path of this one. The President just spent $44 billion in FEMA funds on an inadequate stop gap fix for unemployment insurance.  Surely no one will complain.



RNC Night 2

Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future.  Also I am aware that I am not the intended audience for either party's convention infomercial.  But two nights into the RNC, and already they have me thinking Trump is going to lose.  

Again.

I am thinking that again, now. 

Not that I have any idea what will happen. Can't emphasize that enough. But these conventions give the impression that both parties are in competition to see who can be the most out of touch with the moment. The Democrats spent a week sitting in the dark and being sad. The Republicans are better lit but somehow still matching that energy. This shit is boorrring. 

The 2016 RNC was a non-stop barrage of blood and soil lunacy.  In 2020 they're presenting the meandering mumblings of various Trump family members interspersed with, like a parade of dead weight business guys.  

 


Nobody is tuning in to see that.  They are coming here to see some troops and cops scream about "antifa" and "radical Islam" and stuff.  And, no, it doesn't count if a coked up Trump son is saying it.  Trump voters want to own some libs about "#obamagate" or bray about the "hypocrisy" of  the Biden family's equivalent corruption.  They do not want to sit though Pam Bondi's droning on and on about any of that, though.  

This is extremely boring content and I have no idea who it is for. We know the Democratic convention was deliberately trying to appeal to Republicans.  According to this CBS poll that got a lot of attention this week, that might not have been the best idea. Only 5% of Republicans responding said they plan to vote for Biden now. 


 

No surprise to see the Democrats fail. But at least we know what they are up to.  What is this RNC trying to accomplish?  Monday night's closing speech by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott was a dopey talk about "shooting for the moon" to reach your American Dream or whatever.  Scott talked about how trickle down policies like Opportunity Zones and tax credits bring "private sector investment into distressed communities."  It was a speech a Democrat would give if he were trying and failing to attract Republican voters. We heard several at the DNC just like it.  Tuesday ended on Melania Trump, who CNN definitely grades on a curve, speaking (for 25 minutes!) empty aphorisms about "civility" and "sympathy" with no notion of how to actually go about helping anyone. This, again, would have fit right in on the DNC program.  

Why are they wasting their time with this? Why is either party? Nothing in any of this messaging connects to the material world that Americans are living in today.  170,000 + dead of an uncontrolled pandemic.  Millions unemployed with no relief in sight.  Almost nightly acts of violent suppression committed against calls for racial justice. Neither party is speaking to any of that. None of what they offer is for us.  Who is it for?

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

RNC opening night

Overall, not great. I mean that in the normal sense as in, some very bad people talked badly about bad things.  But I mean it also in the broken-brained political punditry sense as in, the bad people didn't put on a particularly compelling show likely to move voters.  At least, as far as I can tell they didn't.  I realize none of this is for my benefit. 

What even happened?  Let's see.. Don Jr.'s girlfriend yelled really loud at us.  Don Jr., himself, appeared to be crying the whole time. Steve Scalise and Nikki Haley spoke in fake southern accents for some reason.  Herschel Walker was there. So were Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones and Maryland congressional candidate Kim Klacik in order to make the, "Ha ha who is the real racist now?" joke over and over.  

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott was supposed to bring that theme home at the end but his speech sounded like it would have put the audience to sleep had there actually been one in the room. Although, it should be said, the Republicans' decision to stage their speakers as though they were addressing a full hall come off a little bit better than the Democrats' hodge podge of Zoom videos filmed from a series of half-lit elementary school rooms.  

As for the content, neither side has an edge.  The Democrats' message last week was, essentially, empathy.. but helplessness. Everyone's life is hard right now. It feels like it's getting harder. The Democrats get it. But they aren't necessarily promising to do anything about it. The Republicans are selling helplessness too.. but also resentment. While the Democrats feel really bad about the bad things that happen to the poor and vulnerable, Republicans show them open hostility.  Either approach amounts to a denial of serious structural problems. Americans prefer to blame individuals for their problems.  Our political leaders can either empathize with you or they can yell at you, but don't expect much help. 

Is either side "winning" right now?  Who knows. I know I'm not the intended audience, but last night the Republicans bored the hell out of me. Guilfoyle's speech was loud and nutty but, on a scale of recent GOP nuttiness, it probably rates about a 5 out of 10. It doesn't even approach Rudy Giuliani's 2016 performance, for example.  This Louisiana doctor showed up to tell us about the fantastic job Donald Trump is doing. But who could think that makes any sense? 

The United States has failed to contain the coronavirus as effectively as many other developed countries. After experiencing a surge in cases in many parts of the country this spring, the virus roared back in the South in the summer. As of Monday the virus had killed 177,176 people in the U.S., and the country had logged 5.7 million cases.

Support for Trump’s handling of the pandemic has lagged as infections and deaths continue to climb, dropping from 44% approval in March to 31% in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Monday.

Similarly, Republican speakers talked about all the jobs Trump has brought us. But checking back in with reality, we have to ask, who is this message for?  

But nearly half a year later, many of the jobs that were stuck in purgatory are being lost forever. About 33 percent of the employees put on furlough in March were laid off for good by July, according to Gusto, a payroll and benefits firm whose clients include small businesses in all 50 states and D.C. Only 37 percent have been called back to their previous employer.

There were 3.7 million U.S. unemployed who had permanently lost their previous job as of July, according to the Labor Department. That figure doubled from February to June, held steady in July, and is expected to hit between 6.2 million and 8.7 million by late this year, according to a new analysis from economists Gabriel Chodorow-Reich of Harvard University and John Coglianese of the Federal Reserve Board.

Again, I know the audience isn't me but it can't possibly be anyone experiencing the agony of job loss or death of a loved one by COVID either.  Can it?  Likely both parties are talking to a narrow strip of voters who see themselves as insulated from the worst of the pandemic; the wealthy, sure, but also middle class people with relatively secure jobs they can do from home.  Only that population is likely to see any of this empty showmanship and mistake it for substance. Anyone else can only despair. 

Monday, August 24, 2020

Careful with those

 

I hope they aren't planning to collect the nurdles and drop them at the doorstep of the chemical company executives responsible for putting them in the water.  If they do that John Bel might have them arrested.

Chemical dispersants?

Do they think it's an oil spill

Police threatened to tow cars parked in the Acadiana Mall parking lot and the crowd seemed to disperse only to regroup on Camellia Boulevard near Kaliste Saloom Road.

Police in riot gear confronted the protesters about 8:20 p.m. About 8:40, pepper bullets released a chemical dispersant into the crowd.

In other places, the cops may be tear gassing some folks. Here they hit you with Corexit. 

Hey, we did it!

 Whatever it is y'all got up to this weekend, keep it up. It's working.

All tropical storm watches and warnings for the Louisiana coast have been discontinued as Tropical Storm Marco continued to weaken Monday afternoon, while Tropical Storm Laura is set to strengthen as forecasters projected a landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border late Wednesday or early Thursday. 

That's the good news.  The bad news is.. maybe Laura.. but definitely the fact that most of us in Louisiana will probably have electricity and internet this evening and thus will feel obligated to observe the RNC clown rodeo.  Already in progress, by the way

Saturday, August 22, 2020

When I am elected mayor, we will make S&WB build one more pump

 We gotta round it off. This always bugs me

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board said Saturday afternoon that 98 of its 99 drainage pumps, four turbines and five elctro-motive diesel generators are working ahead of Tropical Storm Marco, whose forecast track shifted east earlier in the day and put the city square in its path.

Who will be the first baby actually born in a crossfire hurricane?

The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore has been dispatched to Touro Infirmary to keep us informed.  Too early to know the child's name. But the celebrity couple that births them is known as Laurco.



We know a lot of people are making the "cross the streams" joke right now. But I just want to point something out about that. Computer, enhance.



Probably not a coincidence at all that they come together right over the state capitol building. We all know that is where Gozer lives.

Meanwhile, this is all very stressful for us in New Orleans, which is a bit of surprise. One would think the hunkerdown alarm going off would come almost as a relief given the state of things. The thing about  hurricane doom as opposed to *gestures at all of the other doom in progress now* is that at least this is the familiar doom. We know how to do this kind.

But, all the same, we were hoping to have electricity this week so we could watch all the horror/comedy to be presented at the Republican National Convention. We need some sort of eye-opener after being put to sleep by the Democrats' telethon or whatever that was. If it's any consolation maybe the mayor will come on TV and fire off a few jokes before the lights go out.

One thing is certain. This time there will be no need to impose a curfew. There's nowhere for anyone to go.

Friday, August 21, 2020

Kyle's tears

Sec of State Kyle Ardoin broke down and cried during a legislative Governmental Affairs meeting this week because the Governor won't approve his plan to make you get a COVID test and send it to him if you want to vote by mail. Now it's probably going to be up to a federal judge to write our elections plan. Kyle is upset, though, because he tried very very hard to do something nice and vote-supressiony that his Republican pals would like.  But now he can't have that because... partisanship is bad. 

We'll see what the judge says but the most likely outcome is Ardoin's plan gets approved plus some sort of expanded vote by mail option.  And since it takes the decision out of his hands, it's hard to understand why Ardoin would be upset over it.

Court is closed

Looks like Jason will have to carry the weight of his tax fraud indictment all the way through the campaign. 

The federal courthouse in New Orleans will hold no jury trials until next year, under an order issued Thursday that seems to make certain that City Council President Jason Williams will not face trial on tax-fraud charges before voters weigh in on his bid to become Orleans Parish district attorney.

The order from U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, the court’s chief judge, suspends all civil and criminal jury trials in the Eastern District of Louisiana until at least Jan. 1.

Too lazy to look it up right now but I can only assume the municipal courts are following a similar order.  I was actually supposed to start jury duty somewhere back in "Phase 1" but that wasn't possible then and I have to assume it still isn't since no one has called me. 

Eviction court is open though... no idea how that happened.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

yes, of course

 Honestly, how could we have expected any less than this now?

A tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico next week as a Category 1 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday.

It could be named Laura or Marco if it strengthens into a tropical storm. It's expected to strengthen into a hurricane on Sunday or Monday.

Forecasters also are tracking two other systems, including one in the Caribbean that's expected to develop Thursday into a tropical depression

Laura and Marco. Sounds like a morning talk show or something. 

Tropical Storm and Hurricane tracking map

 

Maybe they didn't hear it correctly through our masks

Pretty sure we've been saying de-fund the police, not re-fund the police. 

New Orleans City Council members agreed Thursday to ask voters to renew a sales tax that would pay off-duty New Orleans police officers to patrol the historic French Quarter.  

For the past five years, the 0.24% tax has paid state troopers to monitor that neighborhood. But the ballot language the council approved Thursday doesn't bind those troopers to that job, and members said the cash is better spent with the French Quarter Management District, whose supplemental police patrol program has been praised by residents and businesses. 

Under the program, off-duty NOPD officers use smart cars to navigate the Vieux Carre. Residents can use a mobile app to confidentially tell the task force about crimes in the area.

This is the cop app program created by Sidney Torres back in the day before he sold that idea to Fox television and then went on to bigger things as the star of his very own house flipping show

This week we learned that Sidney has taken his treppin' talents into the culinary world... during a pandemic... because certain kinds of wealth inoculate us against all sorts of risks, I guess.  Anyway, at least he didn't choose a cloyingly ironic name for the new... oh... 

Trep’s has been taking shape for months on property that was once an auto garage of the same name. As it’s progressed, neighborhood speculation about the plan here has swirled, thanks to the design and one high-profile partner in the project.

That would be Sidney Torres IV, the local celebrity entrepreneur and reality TV star.

Well alright.  Good to see Sidney is doing so well during the collapse of everything.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The fall of Jaegertown

Once there was a big beautiful gentrifying  and profiteering dream.  But now look.

Five years ago, Jaeger was involved in talks to develop the entire area through a partnership with Darryl Berger and the Howard Hughes Corp. And while talks never resulted in a deal, last year a new plan began gaining momentum.

After successful negotiations with Mayor LaToya Cantrell over tourism tax dollars, Convention Center officials began moving forward on a 1,200-room Omni hotel as well as a vast multi-acre development filled with restaurants, shops, residences and other amenities.

In December, Convention Center General Manager Michael Sawaya announced the selection of three development teams to submit "master plan" proposals for the entire property. With development under way, Jaeger's bet on what is still one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land near downtown New Orleans looked set to finally pay off.

Since then, the shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus have sent the Convention Center into a tailspin. With events canceled for the foreseeable future, officials have said they will have to dip into reserves to cover tens of millions of dollars of expenses and upgrades to its existing buildings. In April, board members put plans to choose a master developer on hold.  

Sure COVID 19 is bad and all but consider also that Market St. power plant might just be cursed.

The old coal-fired plant, with its Victorian-era twin smokestacks, was built in 1902 by the predecessor to Entergy Corp. and supplied electricity to the city's residents for more than six decades. It has remained a feature of the New Orleans skyline even since its furnaces ceased operating when the building was sold in 1973, and there has been speculation about what its next iteration would be ever since.

Will that be enough to keep the speculators away, though?

Siegel said that the Market Street plant will likely attract the kind of long-term buyer who can wait for a possible return of plans for the entertainment district when travel and business resume.

"I would be surprised if we didn't see substantial interest from potential national and international buyers...[but] it will be someone who takes a generational view," Siegel said.

Of course, the only outcome anyone can imagine for some of the most valuable land on high ground near downtown New Orleans right now is for it to become a site for parked money from "international buyers" with a "generational view."  Things are going great, aren't they. 

Anyway, RIP Jaegertown... or at least this particular vision for it.  I wonder what the NOligarchs map will end up looking like at the end of the depression.

 

 

Nobody could have known

 Oh my goodness, can you believe it? I can't believe it. 



Wow that is shocking. If only somebody had said something... 

Oh wait nevermind we did say something.  A few times, actually.  But if you notice, each of those times, the editorial board at a certain newspaper seemed to feel differently about it.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Pandemic Summer Reading

Whoa, hey it is already time for Back-To-School (except not really.)   I really have lost track of time.  How was everybody's summer? Did you see anything interesting?

  

It sure does feel like everything is happening [at once/too fast/too much/forever] and it can be difficult to unplug and re-focus.  So maybe this won't help at all but sharing some recent book notes probably won't hurt. Maybe there's something here you'd like to check out while watching the next month or so of school and sports... but definitely not rent... get cancelled.



China Dream by Ma Jian translated by Flora Drew (2018)

Chinese dissident Ma Jian's short satire of totalitarian corruption is by turns funny, surreal, and disturbing. Protagonist, Ma Daode is a high ranking functionary in the city of Ziyang's "China Dream Bureau" tasked with promoting President Xi's propaganda. His department is at work on a "China Dream device" which is supposedly a microchip implant that would replace the actual dreams of individuals with one collective "China Dream." This isn't really elaborated on in a technical sense except that it becomes clear that the idea is as far-fetched in the story as it would be in real life.

Meanwhile, Ma Daode's own persistent nightmarish memories of his experience during the Cultural Revolution are threatening to unravel his psyche and undermine his position. As suppressed guilt metastasizes to paranoia, Ma Daode struggles to maintain his slipping status in the bureaucracy where the worst thing a person can do is lose his composure. Or, as Ma Jian writes, "Like a live crab dropped into boiling water, as soon as you turn red hot, your life is over"

We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America  by Jennifer M. Silva (2019)

A few years back there was a boomlet in journalism and publishing for works aimed at upper middle class liberal audiences where an author would study "working class" Trump voters as though they were mountain gorillas. Exemplars of this genre like Hillbilly Elegy and Strangers in Their Own Land have been picked apart elsewhere for their condescension, and their class and racial biases. 

But Silva does not reproduce those failures here. Instead, this is a study of a multi-ethnic down and out working class living in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region during 2016.  The election is really only background noise in the book much as it is in the lives of these interview subjects most of which are several generations of despair removed from  a time when politics could have anything tangible to offer them.  Recommended for anyone with questions about the depth of social and political isolation in America who also isn't seeking superficial or self serving answers.

Biloxi by Mary Miller (2019)

Louis McDonald is going through some stuff. His wife has recently left him and his father has just died. Already having trouble adjusting, he has retired a few years early in anticipation of an inheritance that may or may not actually be coming to him. And that's when he sort of accidentally adopts a new dog. 

The setting is familiar, the story is not very complicated. Miller's voice and dry sense of humor expressed through her sarcastic and often flustered first person narrator are enjoyable. You'll probably finish this in a day or two.

Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard (2019)

Leonard takes us through the half century of Charles Koch's career at the head of the oil company he inherited from his father then expanded and diversified until it came to dominate massive industrial sectors of the American economy and therefore wield a staggering influence over political system as well.

Probably you are aware of this story. But having it all laid out like this can still be a revelation. We see Koch Industries swindle Native Americans,  bust unions,  skirt and rewrite environmental regulation, trade derivatives, and game markets for oil, electricity, chemical fertilizers. Almost everything that makes the modern world possible, is skimmed or outright controlled by Charles Koch in one way or another. 

The company's internal culture is deliberately ideological and often evangelistic in nature. Not only for the sake of its own growth and profits but also as a kind of a messianic cult.
The unity among Koch Industries' employees was hard to overstate, or even to articulate to outsiders. This was a cadre of people who worked for a secretive company that made the world work. They operated the mind-numblingly complex machinery that lay just beneath the surface of modern society: the pipelines, refineries, fertilizer plants, clothing factories, and trading desks. The stupendous profits that they realized from doing so only seemed to reinforce their sense of superiority over the outside world.  When it came time to fight the outside world, it wasn't done with malice or disregard. It was done with a sense of pity.  People outside the Koch campus seemed misguided, uneducated, somewhat oblivious to what it took to keep the lights on. Koch Industries would patiently work to correct these problems and make the world a better place.
It's becoming fashionable to speculate about our world's descent into a neo-feudalist order and what that sort of thing might look like.  One thing to take away from a book like Kochland is there are some actors out there who believe an outcome like that might be just what the world needs.

Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick (2019)

15 year old Ilya has been admitted to a study abroad program that has taken him out of his deteriorating Russian gulag town and placed him with a suburban family in (what we surmise to be south central or south west) Louisiana for a year. But he has also just learned that his brother has been arrested and accused of murder.  The novel then alternates settings between flashback chapters about the events leading up to Ilya's departure and his time adjusting to life in America while also searching for evidence that can clear his brother's name.

Obvious contrasts are drawn between the poverty of Ilya's hometown and the relative luxury enjoyed by his host family. But also we see similarities between life in the two towns both of which are dominated by oil production. The book's title describes the lights of the refinery in Ilya's town that would penetrate the windows of his family's home at night.  The core of theme, though, is about the heartbreaking effects of opioid addiction which we also see in both settings.

There is an unevenness to this set-up, though. Because the dominant narrative takes place in the Russian setting, the Louisiana scenes can feel a little.. less developed. There are characters and events there but they don't really matter enough to occupy half a book in this format.

Still this is very much worth recommending but maybe more for a YA audience.


I picked this up right at the beginning of our quarantine lockdown and, boy, is it ever the perfect thing to read while thinking about the governmental, institutional, and socio-political failures that not only  exacerbate the harm inflicted by a public health crisis but also ensure that it takes forever for anyone to learn from those failures if ever.

Brown's research into the Chernobyl aftermath brings to light tens of thousands of deaths she links to fallout spread far and wide through ecological contamination and the food supply chain.  Scores of poor people are basically deemed insignificant and sacrificed in order to accommodate profit, power and international politics. Not only do Soviet bloc governments in Ukraine and Belarus suppress information and deny medical care but Western powers and NGOs including the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization are also complicit in covering up the full extent of the damage on behalf of the nuclear power industry.  

Anyone concerned with the cost/benefit calculations of policymakers responding to the current public health disaster will find this an eye opener to say the least.

Other Words For Home by Jasmine Warga (2019)

A young Syrian girl's point of view story about migrating to the United States told in affecting free verse.  As life in her home town becomes dangerous during the Arab Spring uprisings, narrator, Jude, travels with her mother to stay with an uncle in Cincinnati leaving her father and brother behind. There she describes the challenges of cultural adjustment on top the typical pre-teen worries about fitting in, making friends, and trying out for the school play.  The family worries over intermittent news from home while also expecting a new arrival. 

Recommended for ages 10-15

Zed by Joanna Kavenna (2020)

Hoping to see this one show up on a few "best of" lists when this infernal year finally does come to an end.  Zed is first and foremost a dystopian satire about Big Tech and the hyper-surveillance state. But it's also something of a meta-commentary on the fraught politics and language we use to describe and combat those phenomena now, however ineffectively.

In the book, a company called Beetle is now THE tech giant uniting all the functions of e-commerce, logistics, data, entertainment, media etc. currently dominated by, you know, these guys.  Naturally, Beetle is even more tightly entwined with the state than our tech lords currently are. City streets are a grid of autonomous taxis. There are cameras everywhere. And, of course, the public safety is maintained by an automated police force acting under the guidance of a predictive algorithm. But when the system fails to foresee an unexplained murder, several characters must scramble to explain the failure as a human error or "Zed event" and ensure that no more random events happen in the future. 

So the premise seems pretty straightforward but there is a lot more going on here. Kavenna isn't just writing about technology, politics, police, and media.  She's writing about how we interpret those things through literature, through art, and even through our understanding of physical science.  One disturbing suggestion is that the total quantification and therefore commodification of human experience really does decontextualize and obviate any human objection.  

Thankfully, she doesn't beat you over the head with any of this heavy stuff the way a lesser writer might. Instead this is an absurdist story that owes more to Joseph Heller or even Douglas Adams (and certainly the authors she cites in this column) than it does to Orwell.  There is ironic commentary on the nature of causality and on the meaning of authenticity. The character in charge of maintaining the algorithm, one Douglas Varney, is a haggard and disheveled figure who has to appear in  "Real Virtuality"  chat rooms as a cool-faced avatar called @TheRealDouglasVarney.  Near the end of the story, as things begin to unravel a bit for the regime, we get this. 

The point was made across all free media. Nothing you are told is real. Remember this, until we tell you something you are being told is real. Actually, the thing we are telling you, that nothing you are told is real, is actually real. That thing is real, about nothing being real. Just that thing, though and nothing else. Is that clear?

Highly recommended. Would be my favorite novel of the year so far if not for...

The Mirror and the Light by Hillary Mantel (2020)

The third and final installment of Mantel's best selling, prize winning and otherwise much celebrated fictional history of the life of Thomas Cromwell.  Mantel's books draw on  20th Century scholarship that revised the traditional view of Cromwell as a power hungry villain and cast him as a uniquely competent, even progressive, reforming administrator.  Historians continue to argue over these interpretations but Mantel's work has clearly moved the more sympathetic version of Cromwell into the popular imagination where it is likely to stay for some time. 

He is a compelling character for modern audiences.  An unlikely rise from blacksmith's son to mercenary soldier to legal aide and finally to first minister and political fixer for Henry VIII defies the feudal social conventions still in place during Tudor times and presents to us as sort of a "rags to riches" meritocratic ideal.  So Mantel's Cromwell becomes a bit of an avatar for the early emergence of a capitalist order.  In a scene from the first book in this series, Wolf Hall, Cromwell reflects on certain members of the English nobility's misconception of where power lies in the new age.

The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence … from Lisbon, where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from the castle walls, but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle, but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.

In the middle of reading Mirror, I also picked up Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology which paired particularly well because of this. Piketty's book compares different historical "inequality regimes" and the ideological underpinnings that rationalize each regime's structural distribution of power and wealth. One such contrast is between the medieval "trifunctional" (3 estates) order based on rigid social hierarchy vs the "proprietarian" capitalism based on the primacy of individual property rights that replaced it. 

Cromwell may be a man of the new era, but he has to operate within the fading but still dominant norms of the old. In one scene from Mirror he is investigating a murder when a colleague stops to advise him he isn't relating to the commoner witnesses he interviews in the correct fashion.

Listen, Cromwell, you don't get a good name among the lowly by sharing their concerns and handing out coin. You get their respect by overlooking them, as if you did not understand their sort, and your own belly had never been empty. 

One facet of Piketty's argument is that our 21st Century neoliberal regime may be devolving into a neo-trifunctionalism where a corporate dominated cultural elite divides governing responsibilities with state police powers while the majority working class is, well, overlooked. So there are resonances between these books that might also be harbingers. 

Another familiar political theme throughout the Cromwell novels is the problem of navigating an authoritarian regime headed by a spiteful narcissist.  One simple way to describe these books, in fact, is to say they are a story about how to survive under totalitarianism until you don't.  

By the time we reach the third book, Cromwell has survived and thrived because he has understood better than any of the courtiers around Henry that the imperative is always give the king what he wants.  It's a rule that supersedes all considerations of morality and law and meeting its requirements demands ruthlessness. The further Henry's appetites strain against what should be his boundaries, the greater the danger increases. Not to Henry, of course. There are consequences for his transgressions but as Cromwell reflects at one point...

But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

But Cromwell is not an amoral actor. He has agendas of his own both personal and religious which he has been able to advance by staying on top of the gossip, knowing who to do favors for, and by "arranging his face" so as never to give the game away.  In other words, office politics but with actual beheadings. 

Now we see all of that unraveled as the realities of that haphazard justice begin to catch up with him. We can rise to great heights learning to work the system and flatter even the most dysfunctional sort of  power only to discover we are, in fact, as captured by and subject to its caprices as everyone else. Frustrated by his inability to advance the cause of Protestantism beyond that part of it that fits the king's whim, unable to defend friends and allies without compromising himself, knocked back by one particularly stinging personal rejection, Cromwell begins to resemble, ever so slightly, that red hot boiling crab described by Ma Jian.   

Cromwell's enemies conspire against him in plain sight but there is no recourse other than to continue arranging one's face and acting as though everything is under control.  Until, inevitably, it isn't.  Once the disaster is set in motion, the only move is to allow it play out.  Whatever the strength of our convictions, talents, or resolve, ultimately we are at the mercy of terrible forces greater than anything within our grasp.  All we can do is wait on those forces to mete out what punishment they will.

While awaiting his sentence, Cromwell imagines what Hell might be like.

That is how it will be-not pain itself but the constant apprehension of pain; the constant apprehension of fault, the knowledge that you are going to be punished for something you couldn't help and didn't even know was wrong; and the discord in Hell will be constant, repeating for ever and ever, a violent argument being carried on in the next room.

If Pandemic Summer 2020 had a more definitive mood than that, we would be hard pressed to name it. 

They did have the option of voting no

Tons of fun watching City Council completely throw up its hands last week at the prospect of having to vote for the STR tax.  There were objections from the public comment but those were met with typical condescension from our elected friends about how poorly the public supposedly understands the background details.

But that's bullshit.  New Orleanians have been following this story for the better part of the past two years that it has dominated the local political news. We know what it is and why it does what it does. The deal was bad enough even for "normal" times. It offered insufficient and mostly one time funding to shore up failing city infrastructure in exchange for authorizing permanent publicly funded slush funds for the convention center and for a private tourism promotion board called New Orleans and Company.  

The STR tax is only one piece of the deal authorized by the state legislature and then by local ballot measure. It has been criticized for two reasons. The first reason is it creates a perverse incentive for the city to promote the proliferation of short term rentals despite their destructive impact on New Orleans neighborhoods and housing costs. Residents have spent several years now fighting to rein in the STR boom but political leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its indifference. Recently, the former executive director of Sonder, one of the largest and most damaging purveyors of STRs was hired by the Cantrell administration and put in charge of city permitting and land use policy; a shocking development for the thousands of New Orleanians now threatened with the prospect of eviction. 

The second criticism of the tax is that it hands millions of dollars over to a private non-profit tourism promotion agency so that it can produce dogshit tweets like this. These were the complaints presented to City Council last week.  Members responded by shrugging and talking down to people about the "ballot language."

“This council was also not involved in the negotiation of the fair share deal when this was broken down,” Councilwoman Kristin Palmer, one of the council’s most vocal opponents of short-term rental expansion, said on Thursday. “The ballot language was what was passed by the voters, we have to adhere to that ballot language, and that’s why we’re here today. And I’m referring, of course, to the 25 percent of the tax that is to be given to New Orleans and Company.”

The ballot initiative approved by voters last year gave the Council the ability to levy a new short-term rental tax. But it didn’t require them to. And while the City Council couldn’t create the new tax unilaterally, it can create new fees for city permits and licenses, like short-term rental licenses. Prior to the fair share deal, council members had floated a fee structure on short-term rentals that would have raised an estimated $20 million for affordable housing projects.

They didn't actually have to vote for it.  Since the time that the Fair Sham deal and the ballot language of some of its component parts was finalized,  many things have changed. New Orleans is going to be hit harder than most places by the pandemic/depression/mass eviction crisis we are dealing with now.  City Council had an opportunity to at least try and force a reconsideration of the bad deal which had become far worse. Instead they chose to pretend it was out of their hands.

Friday, August 07, 2020

Lovely ideas these people get



But isn't that for... yep...



Couldn't have picked a better time too.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said there could be up to 25 storms which have sustained winds of 39mph or greater. Storms which hit this threshold are named by the agency.

In a normal year, there are usually two storms before August which are named.

This year, there have already been nine named storms, a record which makes 2020’s hurricane season one of the busiest on record in the US.
It's going great, guys

Wednesday, August 05, 2020

Decisions

There are things some of us have the power to choose.
Gov. John Bel Edwards is requiring unemployed workers once again to apply for jobs each week as a condition for receiving jobless benefits – at a time when almost 1 in every 4 workers in Louisiana is collecting unemployment pay.

The governor’s decision comes just days after some 450,000 out-of-work residents in Louisiana lost their eligibility to receive a $600 weekly supplemental payment from the federal government that expired on July 31.
Of course we argue slapping the work search requirement back on is just insult added to the injury of having the $600 expire. But why do that when we can choose not to?

They don't really care, do you?

Why are they still doing this?

 
Okay now watch how exhausting this is to even say.  Actually, Jeff, there is not a "cure" for COVID-19 and if there were one we know it would not be hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus has "absolutely no benefit" and "proves to be ineffective," Dr. Chris Thomas, a pulmonary and critical care doctor at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, said in an interview Monday.

Thomas, appearing on WBRP-FM in Baton Rouge, said four randomized, controlled trials have proven that that the once highly touted drug "for sure" doesn't work for hospitalized patients.
But why even bother engaging with it?  None of this is happening in good faith.  So much of the political theater of COVID is, like the conservative culture war tradition it draws upon, is just noise without content.

It is hard to ignore, though.  In fact its persistent dominance of the narrative is a fascinating experiment we're conducting right now.  I think it's supposed to measure the actual degree of separation between governing elites and the actual needs and concerns of the people they govern.

I mean it seems like Brian Kemp must be pandering to.. somebody here. But it can't be the thousands of people whose lives he's endangering.
Washington (CNN) On Wednesday in Georgia, there were almost 4,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Almost 2,800 people are hospitalized due to Covid-19, the highest number in the state's ongoing battle against the virus. A total of 37 people died, the highest number of daily deaths since June 25, according to data from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

How did Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) respond to this obvious surge in Covid-19 in his state? By signing an executive order banning cities and counties from mandating that people have to wear a mask when in public.
Kemp's order was defied by Atlanta mayor and cop enthusiast Keisha Lance Bottoms setting up yet a whole news cycle of tedious back-and-forth between the authoritarians who "believe in science" and the other authoritarians who "defend your freedom."  (These, of course, are stupid slogans of performative groupthink and not at all reflective of any genuinely held ideological or ontological belief.  Please do not @ me.)  The skirmish did little to advance the cause of coherent public health policy. But it sure did emphasize the respective brands of the combatants and their acolytes.

Meanwhile in Louisiana, Jeff Landry  issued an opinion that the Governor's recent mask mandate is "likely unconstitutional and unenforceable."
"Although the mask mandate and the 50-person limit may be good recommendations for personal safety, they may not be enforced with financial or criminal penalties," Landry wrote. "Both businesses acting under color of law as mask police and actual police acting as mask police could face liability if individual civil rights are violated due to the proclamation."
What's interesting about Landry's wording here is that it isn't all that different in spirit from the Governor's actual announcement. It was clear that John Bel's purpose was to get everyone on the same page about what to expect of one another as we all struggle to slow the virus down.  This wasn't a rule anyone wanted to have to enforce. He even said as much
In a press conference Saturday afternoon, Gov. Edwards said of implementing a state mask mandate that “we know that face masks work, it really is that simple.” Regarding enforcement, he said businesses will have to urge customers to wear them. “If someone refuses to wear a mask, they should be asked to leave. If not, they are trespassing.” He added that “citations will be against businesses for not enforcing mask requirements,” but that “we aren’t going to be out there with a goal to write citations.” 
So Landry is pandering to somebody. But it can't be to people who are afraid of being carted off to gulag because they left their bandana in the car or something.  Because that just isn't happening.

He's certainly not pandering to the scores of essential workers in Louisiana forced into unsafe environments by employers who he says can't be compelled to comply with the mandate. According to a law the Governor just signed, "essential" businesses are shielded from liability if their workers get sick under the conditions the bosses subject them to. Landry is now compounding that by opining that the same bosses could face liability if they make those conditions safer by enforcing a mask policy.

Another interesting fact about Landry's opinion is that it was issued a day after he tested positive for COVID himself. If there's a point to any of this it can't have anything to do with actually protecting people from the virus. Landry is clearly looking past that hazard in service of some other cause. But what is that cause? 

Supposedly Landry's opinion was meant to bolster an effort among Republican legislators to revoke the Governor's emergency order. At the time it was thought they were on the verge of actually doing it. We see here hospital administrators in Baton Rouge were already preparing to deal with the consequences.  See Lamar White's Daily Beast article for more on the Republican coup. It  seems to have been quashed for now but they can keep adding signatures to their petition as long as the emergency order remains in effect. (The Governor extended Phase II again this week until August 28.)

But the quest to show up John Bel is just another sideshow like the continuing Tony Spell follies or whatever Louie Gohmert's problem is.
 

Or... good lord..

The cause being advanced by all of this nonsense is that of the bosses who are winning the pandemic.  While our political leadership fashions a farcical public debate out of obstinate stupidity vs. police-scolding individual behavior, the actual policies they're implementing are throwing millions of people out of work and then denying them benefits. They're obliging those who still have jobs to quietly accept more intrusive and tenuous and unsafe working conditions.  They're allowing people to be evicted from their homes. They're devolving the public schools into a libertarian pay-to-play private tutoring chaos.

The entire social contract is being dismantled right now and we have no avenue of popular response beyond figuring out which bar to call the cops on first. Other than that, good luck getting anyone with any power to listen to anything you have to say anymore.  Just keep watching the circus and hope for the best.

Not my problem

John Bel:  Well if Formosa wants to keep collecting state subsidies to dump poison everywhere, that's really not any of our business.
Edwards said he has spoken often with Chuck Carr Brown, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and expects the permits will survive the legal challenges.

"You have standards in place, and, if an application is put in that meets the applicable standards, then you permit it," Edwards said. "I mean, that's the way this works, and, if they'd like to change the standards, then that's something that EPA needs to look at."
Maybe people should be better protected from the racist condescensionanti-speech bullying and global climate disaster wrought by malevolent actors like Formosa.  But it's not anything John Bel is going to lift a finger to do anything about so long as they filled out the forms okay.

Monday, August 03, 2020

Craptacular August is here

Well, they did it.  They let the unemployment benefits extension expire.  I know a few weeks ago I wrote that they will definitely do that. But, like most people who also do not know the future, I thought probably there would be a last minute extension just before we all fell over the cliff.  Anyway, we fell over the cliff. So now the task is to climb up out of the ravine. But nobody seems to know how to do that.
Washington (CNN) The US economy, plagued by a resurgent pandemic, is showing signs of sliding backwards. Key deadlines on extending a federal eviction moratorium and federal unemployment benefits have come and gone. Yet lawmakers and the White House, sources say, are as far apart as they've ever been in talks on the next emergency aid package.

As one person involved told CNN on Sunday night: "No clue how we get this done at this point. Just so much outstanding."
Because we do not find it useful to despair, we at least try to find ways to explain how this can be so.  The easy answer is that our elected leadership exists in such an elite and isolated sphere of the upper class that it is profoundly disconnected from the needs of the vast majority of the people. That has been true for long while, though. But even so, until now, there has existed at least a slight incentive to pander.  When things are getting really bad, especially with an election right around the corner, there would be some pressure to give people something, even if it's just a little something.

That's become less true over time.  The change hasn't been sudden. It's been a process of learning just how far they can push things. How much suffering can people endure through ruling class indifference? The 21st Century to this point has been one great exercise in finding out.  They've learned they can get away with leveling whole countries and committing unspeakable atrocities on the people there without ever having to answer for any of it.  They've learned that they can leave a city to drown for weeks after a hurricane while spreading lies about the victims' behavior and situation meant to imply they deserve what's happened to them. They've learned that the whole financial system can melt down triggering millions of home foreclosures and evictions and all that has to happen is some "too big to fail" banks need to be bailed out while everyone else is left to suffer.

So our unaccountable authoritarian state for and by the wealth holding classes has been learning to crawl and then to walk for a while.  And now we are going to see if it can stomp all over everybody as the pandemic-depression begins to hit people full force.  On Friday, the New Orleans Renters' Rights Assembly mustered a protest to stand in the way of  landlords stomping into eviction court.  They can't do that every day.   Unless and until congress makes a move to extend aid to people now, we're in for an especially rough end to 2020. And that rough end begins with August.