Keeping the faith 2021

Happy New Year! Pandemic is over now. Congratulations to all who participated. 

(CNN)President-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on live television Monday afternoon and reassured Americans of the vaccine's safety.

The shot, which Biden received in his left arm, was administered at ChristianaCare's Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, by Tabe Mase, who is a nurse practitioner and the head of employee health services at the hospital, according to the Biden transition team. 

 

"We owe these folks an awful lot," Biden said, thanking those involved in the vaccine's development and distribution and front-line health care workers. 

 

Biden said the Trump administration deserved "some credit" for Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's vaccine program, and their role in making coronavirus vaccinations possible.

Certainly we do love to get up every day and remember to give Trump "some credit" for everything that's gone on this year.  But let's try to remember that.. popular and electoral vote counts notwithstanding... he isn't the only winner. 

The real winners are the bosses. The bosses have won the pandemic.  They actually have been the winners since the very beginning but if you read this website you would have seen us bleating about it many times over already.  We could already see how they were going to win early as March. Before the CARES act even passed it was clear that first shot at a federal response was going to be the one opportunity for a just outcome . And it was just as clear we were well on the way to missing it.  I didn't explicitly use the phrase "bosses are winning the pandemic" until about a month later but anyone could tell what was happening. By May we had the whole picture and it has not changed since. 

Eventually they're just going to make everyone go back to work. The Brennans will send a six foot rabbit to force us there at the point of a sword. Those of us there are even jobs for, that is. Those of us that can be used under whatever temporary and tenuous conditions that are set down. It will happen before anyone is safe from the virus. If there is no further action from congress and the status quo order is already maintained, everything will still be as broken as it is now and we will all be several orders of magnitude poorer for it.  Poorer workers are cheaper workers. When unemployment is high they are more disposable. The conditions that force them to work despite the danger make them easily exploitable. The bosses have won the pandemic.

I don't bring that up to get in a cheap I-told-you-so. If you read this website you also know nothing I can tell you matters.  I just want to point out how obvious all of this has always been even to an idiot blogger who only knows what he reads in John Geroges's newspapers. 

From the moment the pandemic hit, the most likely thing to happen, as has been the case with every of our century's many disasters, was yet another concentration of wealth and power at the very top and a further immiseration and impoverishment of the vast majority.  Jesus I said that too way back in March.  Look, if you are wondering why there has been less and less posting on the yellow blog as this year has gone along it's because fewer and fewer new things have happened as it's gone along.

 Anyway here we are a few days before the end of the year and how is all that going? 

Meanwhile, America’s wealthiest have seen their fortunes soar. The 100 richest people in the U.S. added about $600 billion to their wealth in 2020, enough to send a $2,800 check to every adult in the country. One, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, ended 2020 six times richer than at the beginning of the year.

Individual billionaires getting more billions? Check.  The engines that siphon the billions upward continue to crush and devour everything in their path?  Check on that too. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers. In a report published last month, we found that many of America’s top retail and grocery companies have raked in billions during the pandemic but shared little of that windfall with their frontline workers, who risk their lives each day for wages that are often so low they can’t support a family. This is especially true of Amazon and Walmart, the country’s two largest companies. Together, they have earned an extra $10.7 billion over last year’s profits during (and largely because of) the pandemic—a stunning 56% increase. Despite this surge, we ranked Amazon and Walmart among the least generous of the 13 large retail and grocery companies studied in our report. The two companies could have quadrupled the extra COVID-19 compensation they gave to their workers through their last quarter and still earned more profit than last year.”

Sounds about like mission accomplished, right?  Well, they're almost there.  As I type this right now, I'm watching Mitch McConnell fend off a last minute attempt by Bernie Sanders to tack a one-time $2,000 payment to individuals onto the jumble of giveaways to Wall Street firms and defense contractors that just passed as the (likely final) COVID relief bill.

They wouldn't even be there had our ingeniously unstable President not thrown one last incoherent fit during which he happened to mention that $2,000 is a larger amount than $600. Before Trump opened his mouth, the deal was already closed. Our leading opinion makers were well on their way to lionizing the moonshine sipping centrists who brought it to us and explaining that it was "good enough" the way it was. Who would have thought we might actually miss having Trump around to light random things on fire like this?  Going back to brunch is going to suck. 

Or maybe it doesn't matter. McConnell seems to have the situation well in hand. 

McConnell introduced the parallel pandemic relief bill on Tuesday, S.5085, which would include the $600 to $2,000 increase in checks to individual Americans, but tacks on a repeal of section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 and funding for a commission to investigate voter fraud. Both of these additions to McConnell's surprise bill are demands which have been made by Trump for months. The Section 230 repeal would pull back protections for internet companies and allow such media companies as Twitter and Facebook to be sued if users feel wronged by messages on the platform.

Aside from maybe Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell is the most consequential American political figure of the 21st Century.  Over the course of the previous two Presidential administrations, McConnell has completely turned over the federal judiciary. He delivered trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the corporate ruling class.  Now he is leveraging the pandemic to crush workers' rights and bankrupt every state and municipal government which will result in radical austerity nationwide. When future historians write about the dawning of the American neo-feudal age, McConnell will be remembered as a prime architect.

Not to give him too much credit.  I mean being an insider hatchet man for the establishment is always an easier job than trying to protect the disenfranchised.  That's kind of the definition of how power works. McConnell isn't engaging in any dark wizardry. He's just making obvious moves that no one can muster the effort to counter.  It's very easy to muck up something everyone wants by tying it to something else everyone know cannot pass.  State and local governments need relief but McConnell killed that by tying it to liability shields for bosses who callously expose workers to danger during the pandemic. And now he has blocked these one time survival checks by tying them to internet censorship and Trump election conspiracy crap. Being a jerk really isn't that hard as long as you are sufficiently insulated from any consequences.  

So McConnell isn't the definitive US politician of the moment just because he happens to be the guy in position to pull the lever on the machine that feeds the abattoir. It's more the fact that he, or any person who would get to work those controls embodies the universal ethic of the governing class. It's a power that only does one thing. And so anyone who seeks to wield that power necessarily wants to do that thing. Which is another way of saying they're all like this. None of them is here to help.  In fact as I'm continuing to type now, I see the Democrats in the Senate have, in fact, caved on their gambit for the $2000. It looks like they decided it was more important to continue funding the current push for war with Iran.  Here's Joe Biden barely acknowledging the issue while literally turning his back and walking away.  You're not going to get a clearer image of where the Democrats are than that.

Of course, a one time check for $2,000 or even the $2,800 we could have by splitting up the billionaires' profits from this year is still an insult. A just pandemic response policy would pay people to stay home, protect them from their exploitative bosses and rapacious landlords, guarantee treatments and vaccinations are free, and "re-start the economy" through continued fiscal stimulus on the back end.  But we'll never do any of that. All we care about, even at this very late stage of the game, is keeping the military and police state funded while also giving away billions of dollars to rich people. 

WASHINGTON — Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through on Monday night is a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.

It involves the tens of thousands of businesses that received loans from the federal government this spring with the promise that the loans would be forgiven, tax free, if they agreed to keep employees on the payroll through the coronavirus pandemic.

But for some businesses and their high-paid accountants, that was not enough. They went to Congress with another request: Not only should the forgiven loans not be taxed as income, but the expenditures used with those loans should be tax deductible.

The truly remarkable thing now is how little it matters that the supply side philosophy guiding such policy has been repeatedly discredited over the course of our 50 year experiment with it. Tax privileges for the one percent do not magically raise revenues. They do not end racial inequality. They do not "create jobs" or raise the general standard of living.  No matter. Our leaders will press on with it as an article of faith. It's the central creed of both parties from Congress all the way down to your local City Council. Giving money to rich people is the reason our electeds are called to service.  The hours are running short on the year now. But real quick, here are a few of our favorite local examples of neoliberal gospel preached in 2020. 

Just last week, Governor John Bel proudly announced a plan to give away $3 million in state funds to a company owned by the world's richest man who proposes to "create jobs" paying $32,000 on average.

Besides the access to Interstate 49 and 10, Amazon is eligible for a performance-based grant from Louisiana Economic Development of $3 million. The grant is payable over two years and can offset facility infrastructure costs. The state will also give Amazon access to LED FastStart, the state's workforce training program, which has given 463,000 training hours to more than 29,000 employees since 2008.

In October, with Orleans Parish homeowners still reeling from last year's property tax assessment, and renters facing a wave of evictions as CARES act protections and unemployment benefits ran out, Erroll Williams announced a $42 million tax cut for corporate owners of downtown commercial properties. 

According to data compiled by the Downtown Development District, almost a third of the total cut in commercial sector valuations — or about $90 million — is accounted for by 10 downtown properties, including the cluster of properties at the river end of Canal Street owned by Harrah's New Orleans Casino, a division of Caesars Entertainment of Las Vegas. Harrah's valuations were more than halved to about $15.3 million, which will reduce its property tax bill by an estimated $2.4 million, according to the assessor's office.

Similarly, the Marriott Hotel on Canal, the Sheraton, the Intercontinental, the Crowne Plaza, the Roosevelt and the Ritz-Carlton will see their property taxes halved.

All are owned by national hotel management groups, suggesting that any tax savings will head to corporate coffers outside of the city.

This gift to out of state mega-landlords will be paid for by about a $12 million dollar drop in revenues meant for public schools and services while homeowners and renters will have to pay $30 million more collectively. 

But let's not get too caught up in the distinction between businesses and neighborhoods. Because another thing we learned this year is that the city's official position is that neighborhood ARE businesses. 

“I really want to be thoughtful on the term business, because we were worried that there may be criticism that we only are thinking of businesses. I say business as a very global perspective where neighborhoods are businesses in my mind. People that have never been through this process and want to expand their gate, those individuals, those customers are businesses. So it’s not just ‘hey let’s help big business.’ “

That is New Orleans CAO Gilbert Montano employing a special kind of capitalism-inflected gobbledygook to talk about his plan to reorganize city planning, permitting and land use departments under something called the Office of Business and External Services. The scheme, which Montano describes as a "paradigm shift," would essentially change the mission of these agencies from protecting  public safety and quality of life from the hazards of profit-driven development to assisting the profit-seekers in getting around those protections.  

As if to drive the point home, the person they hired to implement this new vision made his own fortune monetizing the gentrification of New Orleans neighborhoods. 

Bowen’s new position caught the attention of some affordable housing advocates on Monday due to his former job as general manager of Sonder — a San Francisco-based company that has grown to be one of the largest operators of short-term rentals in New Orleans. In the resume he submitted for the job, Bowen claimed that during his tenure at Sonder he “Blitz Scaled the New Orleans market for Sonder from launch to 1,000 apartments (2,500 rooms) in under 36 months.” 

A report from March 2018 by Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, an affordable housing group that opposed the expansion of the legal short-term rental market in the city, found that Sonder had more listings on Airbnb than any other short-term rental operator in the city with 124.

Neighborhoods are businesses.  They are fodder for "blitz-scaled" profits regardless of whether anybody can actually live there.  It probably helps if they don't, in fact. That way they won't need things like public libraries which, incidentally, the city proposed to de-fund in order to pay for Bowen's new neighborhood monetization department. That proposal was killed by voters. But it's only a temporary set-back. It's clear where the city's priorities lie. Eventually they'll get the budget to follow. 

To expect anything different would be to expect a sudden conversion of the entire political class away from its religious belief in trickle-down economics.  But why would that happen when our priests continue to reaffirm their orthodoxy over and over?  As our final example, we have here one of Mayor Cantrell's very first actions in response to the emergency way back in March. She decided to give businesses a tax break. 

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.

What could possibly go wrong? Well they did ask her that. 

Given the strains to the city budget, Cantrell urged those businesses who are remaining open and can pay their sales taxes to do so, to lighten the burden on city government. 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.”

Don't be "negative." Just hold fast to the belief that doing nice things for those at the top of the ladder will result in nice things for those at the bottom. For ever and ever amen. Anyway, the true believers only need to hold out a bit longer. The sooner we can declare the pandemic over, the sooner we can dismiss any heresy that suggests that poor people have anyone besides themselves to blame. 

The savior is coming in the form of a vaccine... eventually... maybe.

It’s happening all over again. For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. That is, out of apparent, near-total indifference.

Well, they'll figure it out.  After all, as Joe Biden might say, we gotta give Trump some credit. Just have a little faith.

I wonder who bought up all of these properties

Eyebrow raising story here about the Bank Of Louisiana's 97 year old founder and his ongoing dispute with FDIC regulators. 

G. Harrison Scott, chairman and majority shareholder of the Bank of Louisiana, is not fond of his bank’s regulator, the FDIC.

“They’re lying sons of bitches, and you can quote me on that," he said. "They lie, lie, lie, and I’ve caught them in it.”

Yeah it's not really clear from the story that he's actually caught anybody in a lie.  In fact this says his family members and partners have a plan to comply with the FDIC orders but Scott still needs to sign off on it. Basically, it says he's being stubborn and taking things personally and his daughter who is more or less running things now is trying to work around that. 

Anyway what's fascinating here is that we're told this is a case of the old man being out of step with The Way Things Are Done Now.  But I think it's an open question as to whether the "good old days" described here were really that long ago. 

Shannon Scott said that the bank was forced to sell off loans to one customer in particular, Billie Karno, a prominent owner of properties in the French Quarter, including the bars known for their "Huge Ass Beers" trademark. She said the loans were performing fine and it was easy to find another bank to take on some of them to satisfy the regulator.

"It used to be you’d take the FDIC auditor out to lunch and have a couple of cocktails and take him golfing and he’d give you a great review," said Shannon Scott. "It’s just different times, things have moved on and you either adapt and change or you get out of the business."

Attorney Henry Klein, a longtime friend of Harrison Scott and a former bank board member said: “He and Judge Comiskey, when they ran the bank together, were gentleman bankers the way bankers used to be."

I mean if these loans to Karno's businesses didn't raise objections until 2011, then what has really changed?  We can LOL at the golf and cocktails line here but the new COVID relief bill does include a so-called "three martini lunch" deduction. Surely there's still some room in this business climate for a "Huge Ass Beer" clause.  

But forget about that. That's not really what's interesting about these Bank Of Louisiana dealings. What is going on with all these foreclosed properties? 

The main complaint in the FDIC's latest action was the bank's large portfolio of foreclosed properties. It started the year with 53, which had annual carrying costs of $1.5 million annually, according to the FDIC. That's enormous for a bank with revenue through the end of September of barely over $5 million.

Shannon Scott said she has since sold off 26 of those properties and expects to make more progress well before the scheduled hearing next summer.

Would love to see some follow up reporting on what sorts of properties these are and who is buying them.  One of the most disturbing trends in housing since the 2008 financial crisis has been the consolidation of rental properties by national private equity firms. Here is a recent NYT Mag article looking at some of that.  

When credit was tight after the financial crisis, the acquiring firms, led by Blackstone, figured out a way to generate more of it by creating a new financial instrument: a single-family-rental securitization, which was a mix of residential mortgage-backed securities, collateralized by home values, and commercial real estate-backed securities, collateralized by expected rental income. In 2013, a year after Ellingwood’s home was acquired, Blackstone’s Invitation Homes securitized the first bundle of single-family rentals — 3,200 of them for 75 percent of their estimated value: $479 million. Those who bought these bonds received 3 to 5 percent in monthly interest until their principal was returned (generally in five years). Blackstone put some of that $479 million toward repaying the short-term credit lines it took out to buy the houses. Because the value of the portfolio of homes had increased since their acquisition, Blackstone could extract much of the difference as cash and buy more homes. Blackstone issued a second bond package of nearly $1 billion six months later. Other REITs like Colony American Homes quickly began doing the same, rolling homes like Ellingwood’s into a $486 million securitization.

With the securitized homes, the rental income now needed to cover not only the mortgage but also the interest payments distributed to bondholders — creating an incentive to keep occupancy and rents as high as possible. In fact, Invitation Homes’ securitized bond model assumed a 94 percent paying-occupancy rate, putting pressure on the company to evict nonpaying tenants right away.

A lot of people are hanging by a thread right now trying to stay in their homes.  Not sure any of them are going to have much success settling back rent disputes with a corporate absentee landlord over golf and cocktails.

Eddie Rispone: Perpetual outsider

One of the state Republican Party's long time major fundraisers and "kingmakers" who hilariously ran for Governor in 2019 as an "outsider" is going to run for the party charimanship as.. a self-described outsider. 

After successfully electing several candidates to the committee in December, Rispone is now looking to take even more control over the Louisiana GOP, running for chair of the party.

“It was never my intention to run but recognizing the substantial challenges we face as a body and as a party, I believe we need someone with major business and large organizational skills to ensure the party can be the most effective in helping elect conservatives in the future,” Rispone said in an email to party officials.

Remarkable that he can keep up that pose. Even now after having "recruited" (i.e. bought and paid for) a number of candidates to turn over seats on the central committee, Rispone continues to insist it was  "never my intention" to run for chair.  Until it was. 

Eddie also complains about having been "outworked and outspent" during the Governor's election. There's actually some truth to that. But it's Rispone's own fault. He and his campaign decided the way to win was to hide behind the President and a barrage of TV ads rather than appear at a runoff debate or god forbid actually talk to any real live people. But now Eddie says he's the guy to change this culture? 

Anthony Ramirez, who ran Rispone’s communications during the 2019 governor’s race, said after reviewing the results of the race, “we saw that the Republican party was clearly outworked on the ground.” And after poring through attendance records, they discovered nearly 40% of the Republican State Central Committee didn’t attend a single meeting last year.

See that? Republicans don't even want to talk to each other.  And who can blame them, really? Read the rest of this article and see how they treat each other.  

After stepping down as party chair in 2018, (Roger) Villere dove into political consulting work through CRV Consulting, who he runs alongside Phil Capitano, the former mayor of Kenner who was arrested this summer after police said he used his vehicle to ram the back of a woman’s car during a dispute over allegedly stolen property. Villere and Capitano also run the Louisiana Conservative Republican Coalition, which is registered as a nonprofit and which doles out endorsements to Republican candidates. It endorsed Capitano in his bid for re-election to the Republican State Central Committee this year, but Capitano was unseated by Keith Conley, a longtime Jefferson Parish government official.

State Rep. Mark Wright, a Covington Republican, said Villere’s group sent a mailer endorsing his opponent for the Republican State Central Committee, using “the Republican party seal or something that looks exactly like it.”

The picture coming into focus here is one of a good old fashioned dispute over territory and patronage.  You wanna run for something in Louisiana as a Republican?  Well here is the list of people you need to hire or bribe or both. Villere and Capitano and  want to be those guys on the one hand.  Rispone is installing his own people on the other. (There are others vying for position as well including Lenar Whitney apparently.  You'll just have to read the article.)  

The Villere faction is backing current chair, New Orleans private security mogul Louis Gurvich, over Rispone.  It doesn't take much reading between the lines here to see why.  Eddie "refused help" from Villere.. which is to say, he didn't pay him for anything.

“I have made up my mind I’m going to be against Ripsone,” Villere said. “I thought he was a poor candidate (for governor) … You need a party chair who can bring people together. Why would you elect a party chair who refused help in the runoff and didn’t bring people together in his own race?”

And, of course, the pro-Rispone side's motivations are just as petty and personal. 

As part of the race for state central committee – typically low-profile, low-wattage affairs that are decided by a few dozen votes – Bayham said he was hit with an “ugly” mailer that attacked his weight, which he says was sent by someone other than his opponent. (Spending on Republican State Central Committee races doesn’t require disclosure under Louisiana’s ethics laws, like other campaign spending.)

“This is what this party does. We cannibalize ourselves because this is about control and contracts and not about defeating the Democrats,” Bayham said. “We have to see who is going to finally change the culture of this party. Is Louis prepared to do it or is an outsider like Rispone prepared to do it.”

Villere said in an interview he had “nothing to do with” the mailer attacking Bayham, calling it “reprehensible.”

There's that "outsider" characterization again, though. It sure is doing an awful lot of work. 

Don't call it a task force

Well certainly this explains everything

The investigative team was created amid the fallout from a June report from the federal monitors overseeing the NOPD’s progress in fulfilling a reform plan. The monitors said that district task forces routinely conducted questionable stops and searches.

Ferguson emphasized that the new “VCAIT” team is not a task force but rather an investigative unit.

Asked about concerns around violent crime, Ferguson said several units announced in the fall are beginning to produce results.

“It is coming to fruition. It may take some time with some of it,” he said. “We hear and we understand the community’s concerns, and that is why we are here today.”

What does the "investigative team" not do that the "task forces" were doing?  Ferguson doesn't say.  This story does say that the Investigative Team includes FBI and State Police among its number. When we learned last week that the city had been lying about NOPD's use of facial recognition technology, it came out that "state and federal partners" were key to enabling that to happen.

The New Orleans Police Department has confirmed that it is utilizing facial recognition for its investigations, despite years of assurances that the city wasn’t employing the technology.

In a statement to The Lens last week, a department spokesperson said that although it didn’t own facial recognition software itself, it was granted access to the technology through “state and federal partners.”

The good news is we learned yesterday from the tweets that City Council had passed a new ordinance that supposedly bans facial recognition and "3 other invasive, racially biased surveillance technologies."  But we see no mention of it in today's T-P/Advocate so we aren't quite up to speed on the details yet. Maybe we'll learn more when we are finished digesting the city's argument for ending the NOPD consent decree.  It appears to hinge on having met the exacting requirements set forth by Jeff Sessions. 

The Cantrell administration’s legal argument leans heavily on a 2018 memo from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which dramatically limited the scope of police consent decrees. Sessions was forced to resign the same day he issued the memo, and it’s unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden’s Justice Department will adopt the same stance.

Not sure what Jeff's standard for rooting out racially biased surveillance is. Sure hope it's a good one. We should note, though, that according to the Lens, NOPD views the new ordinance more as guidance on how to use the technology rather than a ban. 

Jones told The Lens that the NOPD only used facial recognition for “violent cases,” but that “documentation of frequency of use of Facial Recognition is not currently available.” Asked whether there was any written policy or procedure regarding the technology, Jones responded by saying that NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson “is currently working with Councilman [Jason] Williams on a policy as to when facial recognition tools should be used.”

So we'll see how that shakes out. Of course they could always go right back to lying about it. Or it may be that as long as they can keep coming up with new names for doing the same things, that they don't have to. 

Update: Okay here is the story about what City Council passed this week. I think this is the key point.

However, it does let officers use evidence gained by outside individuals or agencies from any of those technologies as long as no one from the Police Department requested or knew that was the source of the information.

Seems like a pretty big loophole easily exploited by a multi agency investigative team, right?

#Takeemdown

The cameras are already such a tremendous insult to everyone's dignity and general expectation of a reasonable amount of (if not quite privacy)peaceful  anonymity on the streets of their city. But add to that the lying and, it's long past time for them to go. 

New documents obtained by the ACLU of Louisiana through a public records request are shedding more light on how the New Orleans Police Department utilizes facial recognition software — a practice that the NOPD had denied using for years until admitting it last month.

As The Lens reported, the city has justified its previous denials on the basis that it didn’t actually own facial recognition software. Nonetheless, the NOPD has been using facial recognition since at least 2018 by tapping its intelligence partnerships with federal and state agencies, including the FBI and Louisiana State Police.

“After years of assurances from city officials that facial recognition was not used in New Orleans, the ACLU of Louisiana has obtained nearly 50 pages of email requests from New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) to the Louisiana State Police (LSP) Fusion Center asking LSP to use facial recognition on various photos and video stills,” said a Monday press release from the ACLU of Louisiana.

City Council had been considering a ban on facial recognition. But then they learned it was already in use.  Now the ban's sponsor... who was never really serious about it in the first place... has been elected DA. So, likely, nothing will happen. What should happen is the cameras should all come down.  But no one is even going to consider that. 

In other words, he skipped bail

You have to admit it has a certain elegance to it. 

The Louisiana Supreme Court set up new rules this year to quell public criticism over its secretive system for disciplining judges accused of misconduct.

But the first judge to face public charges under those attempts at transparency, Orleans Parish Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell, is about to run out the clock. He'll be leaving the bench and a stack of ethical complaints behind him -- with no public disciplinary hearing, much less a blot on his judicial record.

Judge Cantrell will leave the bench without having faced any consequences for his overly harsh, obnoxiously so, in fact, treatment of defendants and their lawyers who had the nerve to object to his bail policies even though a federal court found them to be unconstitutional. 

Among other things, Cantrell was accused of “willful misconduct” and “persistent and public conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute.”

From the bench, he launched or threatened contempt-of-court proceedings against defense attorneys who requested bond for their clients in amounts below a $2,500 floor that he’d adopted. That sparked a federal civil rights lawsuit that forced an overhaul of the court’s funding scheme.

And yet now it is Judge Cantrell who is skipping out on bail.  And that many not even be the biggest irony here.  For that we need to look at the reason the judge was able to postpone his matter past the expiration of his term.

Cantrell requested, and received, an extension to this week, saying that COVID-19 concerns had slowed depositions and subpoena returns. A new hearing date was set over three days to begin Monday. Recently, it was recently “continued without date.”

In and of itself, that seems proper.  But consider the judge's lack of consideration for accused persons in his own courtroom and it seems less like justice. Makes one wonder what his daughter-in-law might say.

She has stoutly resisted more recent pressure from advocacy groups urging that police release nonviolent suspects from custody. “You’re worried about criminals catching coronavirus? Tell them to stop breaking the damn law,” snaps Cantrell, a streetwise woman known for her salty tongue.

How big is the Six Flags site?

Over the years I've seen it reported differently a few times. Is it 140 acres or 220 acres or 227 acres or 224 acres or 150 acres?  Today the city's latest RFQ lists it as separate parcels of 162 and 65 acres.  Is that right?  What is happening? 

Under the latest request for qualifications, developers have from this Wednesday, Dec. 16, through to Feb. 9, 2021 to demonstrate their interest and ability to revitalize the area.

Schwartz said the city then hopes to winnow those bidders down to a short-list of potential master developers who will be asked to submit fully-fledged proposals.

He said the city is aiming to choose an exclusive developer, which can be a joint venture, and to have worked out a redevelopment plan by the end of June.

"We're going to do everything we can to stick to that with no more delays," he said.

The city is asking for proposals that include both the 162-acre main site where the abandoned amusement park is located as well as a nearly-adjacent 65-acre site located to the northeast, closer to Bayou Sauvage, between Interstate 10 and Michoud Boulevard and abutting two residential areas that contain several hundred houses.

Guess we'll find out soon enough.  This reclamation project has attracted some truly remarkable ideas from some fascinating people over the years.  Can't wait to see what is in the next exciting batch of presentations.

Fast Pass

Kudos to the Times-Picayune/Advocate for polling its stable of "influencers" on the... well.. the kind of things the influencers might think about.  This question, for example, is just not something we'd expect the ordinary non-influential Joe or Jane might have to consider. 

We also asked a speculative question: If allowed, how much would respondents pay to be one of the first people vaccinated? More than half wouldn't bite.

More than half say no!  Well, 58% wouldn't go for it anyway.  Still, consider that a lot of that squeamishness likely has to do with just plain uncertainty about the rushed vaccine itself and it's kind of amusing that many of them said yes. 

Just this week the Governor laid out the state's plan to administer as many as 159,000 vaccinations by the end of the month. That number may be optimistic depending on how many doses become available and when.  The first batch of 39,000 injections could happen as early as this weekend.  But it will take many more months to get the vaccine out to everyone so we have had to prioritize health care workers. 

Between 200,000 and 215,000 people are estimated to be in the first priority group for the vaccines, according to state Health Department figures. That includes 75,000 to 80,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities and between 125,000 and 135,000 health workers.

The T-P Power Poll question doesn't only presuppose that the blessed elect should have the option of skipping this line. It goes straight on past that and asks them how much would they pay to have that privilege validated.  Turns out that's extremely valuable to some of them!

Byron LeBlanc, president of LeBlanc & Schuster Public Relations, said he'd consider it: "I'd probably be willing to pay more than $100 for the vaccine if it meant I could get a wrist band or something that would let me do away with the masks and resume normal behavior and travel."

What is this, Disney World? I just want to ride on the planes again.  Please let me buy a fast pass. Actually, going super-early would not allow you to "do away with masks and resume normal behavior."  Because vaccinations, much like masks and social distance precautions, are only effective when everyone has them.  Until that happens, early vaccine recipients who aren't being careful around others could be even more dangerous. 

Only people who have virus teeming in their nose and throat would be expected to transmit the virus, and the lack of symptoms in the immunized people who became infected suggests that the vaccine may have kept the virus levels in check.

But some studies have suggested that even people with no symptoms can have high amounts of coronavirus in their nose, noted Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who represents the American Academy of Pediatrics at meetings of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The first person confirmed to be reinfected with the coronavirus, a 33-year-old man in Hong Kong, also did not have symptoms, but harbored enough virus to infect others.

Vaccinated people who have a high viral load but don’t have symptoms “would actually be, in some ways, even worse spreaders because they may be under a false sense of security,” Dr. Maldonado said.

As with so many human problems, no one is really safe from COVID until we all are safe from COVID.  Elites such as those identified by the Times-Picayune as "influencers" tend to think they can buy their way out of that social contract. A lot of the time this makes them suckers.  But mostly it just makes things difficult for the rest of us.

It's the spirit of the season

Lot going on downtown this morning. 

A bomb threat has been reported at the edge of Jackson Square in the French Quarter, New Orleans police said at 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Officers are at St. Ann and Decatur streets and they are asking the public to avoid the location. They said a suspicious device has been found at the location.

Decatur Street is closed from Wilkerson to Dumaine streets, according to Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Very important to note that the bomb threat is in no way related to the individual barricaded inside of a building just a few blocks away. These are separate events. 

Police are also asking the public to avoid the 500 block of Dauphine Street in the French Quarter. They said someone has barricaded themselves inside a building and police are at the scene.

NOPD did not say why the person is barricaded inside, but did say the police activity on Dauphine is not related to the bomb threat near Jackson Square. The Dauphine Street situation is not a SWAT roll, NOPD said just before 10 a.m.

 Happy Holidays

Everybody pays some kinda rate

According to a presentation made at City Council, the recently enhanced City Utilities Regulatory Office has managed to save the city $1.2 million this year by performing functions that had been outsourced to two consulting firms who typically bill $600 an hour for their services.  

The two major utility consultants, Dentons and Legend Consulting Group, have contracts that allow them to bill up to a combined $5.6 million. But prior to the new accountability measures, the City Council was routinely forced to pass contract amendments that allowed the consultants to exceed the contract cap. The City Council didn’t have to do that this year.

“I just think that’s really amazing,” Moreno said. “We together worked long and hard trying to figure out what were the best protocols to put in place so that we really had increased oversight on the spending on our outside consultants. And because of this increased oversight and monitoring, we’ve been able to save ratepayers over a million dollars.”

That "ratepayers" thing threw me for a sec. So I had to go look back at the notes from last year where we saw in prior reporting that "most of the consulting costs" are passed on to Entergy ratepayers. 

Those contracts are far and away the most lucrative awarded by the council, adding up to nearly $7 million a year. Most of those costs are paid by Entergy, but they’re ultimately passed on to ratepayers through their utility bills. Some observers question how such a prized gig could remain locked down by the same people and firms for so long.

But given the pass-through nature of the savings, it's still an open question as to whether this is going to have much of an effect on your light bill this year.  Most of us were expecting to see at least a $1.50 increase as of last month.

These two items are not related

The way this story presents the information, a casual reader might conclude that Caesar's "pledged" to uphold its obligations under its licensing agreement because Erroll Williams gave them a tax break. Rest assured this is not the case. 

Part of Caesars' pledge on the license extension deal was that it would continue to employ at least 2,400 people and add 500 staff after the hotel was built. It also committed to pay for various state and city infrastructure projects, including $19.5 million over three years to New Orleans.

Earlier this year, Caesars got a big break on one of its biggest city bills. The casino operator was one of the prime beneficiaries of a decision by the Orleans Parish Assessor to cut property valuations for 2021 — and thus cut property taxes — for businesses in the area because of the unprecedented effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Hotels saw the highest valuation cuts, at about 58%, which translates into an annual savings for Caesars of an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.

The license agreement has nothing to do with the property tax assessment. The license agreement was negotiated with the legislature in the spring of 2019. The tax break is part of a larger corporate giveaway cooked up by the Assessor's office this year. Just after homeowners saw their assessments go up dramatically and as housing costs remain high while workers are being laid off left and right during a pandemic, Erroll Williams and Michael Sherman arranged to hand over $42 million to commercial landlords with deep corporate pockets.  I know the placement of the two paragraphs above in today's story might make it look like this has something to do with Harrah's/Caesar's lease. But it does not.  

Meanwhile, Did You Know.. next Friday your beloved City Council and School Board are scheduled to approve a series of back-tax exemptions that would cede another $25 million to Folgers. Last month when the state Commerce board gave its preliminary approval to the exemptions, a certain parish assessor took their side. 

At Friday’s meeting, Folger consultant Jimmy Leonard said the company requested the delay simply because it wanted the board to consider the application along with the company’s other newer applications at the same time. Leonard also presented a letter to the board from Orleans Parish Tax Assessor Erroll Williams describing Folger as a good taxpayer that has been transparent with him throughout the process. 

Together Louisiana members were armed with a letter of their own — from New Orleans Councilwoman Helena Moreno — that painted a different picture.

“A recent investigation by journalist Lee Zurik on WVUE-TV brought this matter to the public’s attention in August, due to the alarming length of time of not paying millions of dollars of taxes and now seeking a loophole to get a pass,” Moreno wrote in the Oct. 26 letter. “The total owed could be as high as $12 million…We cannot afford for a large corporation to not pay its fair share when our residents and small business owners are being asked to sacrifice so much.”

The board, nevertheless, approved Folger’s application because it was up to the tax assessor to place the property on the tax rolls, which he never did, Board Chairman Jerald Jones said.

Together New Orleans has scheduled a rally and press event at City Hall to discuss the Folger's situation. Although, at the moment that page says the event is Friday in the headline and Monday in the text. So maybe check back when they have it sorted out.

And on that note

One of my all time favorite songs.  This whole album is underappreciated gems buried under ten tons of tape hiss. But that just means its worth the work you have to put in to appreciate it. 

who makes the breakfast?

who gasses the truck? 

same little bee that stung the bull and caused the bull to buck

only a matter of time before we have to pay....

Running out the clock

The first thing to understand about this "bi-partisan" stimulus proposal is that it is, in fact, a total cave on the part of the Democratic leadership.   

The top Democratic congressional leaders on Tuesday embraced a $908 billion coronavirus relief framework -- a massive concession meant to prod President Trump and Senate Republicans into accepting a compromise as covid cases spike and the economic recovery shows signs of faltering ahead of the holiday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that “we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.”

The "framework" would amount to about a third of what the Democrats had been asking for which also was not going to be enough. And, of course, as a "starting point" it is only going to be watered down further from here. McConnell has already rejected this first offer, in fact. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pushed for a smaller deal and it appears unlikely he is poised to support the bipartisan agreement.

He circulated a proposal on Tuesday that offered minimal aid to the jobless, in a sharp break with the bipartisan group that could represent an obstacle to a final deal.McConnell has also delivered an ultimatum, requiring any legislation to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. 

Nothing is written into a bill yet so the details of the "framework" are still fluid, as they say.  But according to this article we know it aims at a $300 per week boost to unemployment benefits matching the now expired emergency stop gap written by Trump after the original $600 provided by the CARES act ran out.  Today we learned another 712,000 new jobless claims were filed this week.  A lot of headlines highlight that the number is "fewer than expected" or down from last week, but as Atrios points out, "Every week since this began has been higher than the peak week of the Great Recession," so what are we really looking at here?  An historically large number of people need help and will continue to need it. $300 is not really help. 

The starting point framework includes $160 billion for state and local governments.  The notion of any state and local aid at all has previously been a non-starter for Republicans so expect that figure to come down.  Our friend, Senator John Kennedy was seen "trashing it" on TV today, in fact.  In any case, the starting figure is not enough.  According to, still incomplete estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities  state budgets are expected to take a hit of at least $194 billion.  This Brookings study figures that state and local revenues will take a hit of well over half a trillion dollars in the next few years.  Obviously we aren't going to get where we need to go from this "starting point." 

Certainly this $160 billion (but likely much less) sop isn't worth trading this for. 

The measure, spearheaded by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would restore lapsed federal jobless benefits, providing $300 a week for 18 weeks; would include $288 billion for struggling small businesses, restaurants and theaters and $160 billion for fiscally strapped cities and states; and would create a temporary liability shield for businesses operating amid the pandemic.

"Temporary" or not, there can be no compromise where the US government allows your boss to simply order you to your death with no repercussions. 

Anyway, the punchline to all of this is now that the vaccines are almost ready, the political pressure to do more emergency stimulus will quickly reduce to zero. So Joe Biden can say all he wants about how whatever comes out of the lame duck session is a "first step," come the new Congress, the focus will be on the quickest way to just vaccinate everyone and tell them to get a job. Nevermind that the jobs are half gone and what's left out there is gig-a-fied beyond all recognition. That's the "new normal" all of this has been leading toward all along.  McConnell has run the clock out all year and the bosses have won the pandemic. They're even going to be shielded from future liability. The rest of us will just have to get used to it. 

Update: Well at least somebody gets it. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday announced his opposition to the bipartisan coronavirus relief package gaining momentum in the U.S. Senate, as jockeying intensified among lawmakers eager to cut a deal to provide relief amid renewed signs of economic weakness.

Sanders said he would vote against the $908 billion relief framework that has attracted a flurry of interest from Democrats and Republicans since it was introduced earlier this week. Sanders said he would consider backing it only if it is “significantly” revised. That package, broadly embraced this week by both senior congressional Democrats and more than a half-dozen Republican senators, leaves out some priorities among liberals such as another round of $1,200 stimulus payments.

Taylor Circle

Last week we moved a step closer to removing symbols of the city's legacy of white supremacy from its streets and public spaces. The committee charged with coming up with new things to call all of this stuff published its list of suggestions.  There are still a lot of things that need to happen before any of this becomes official, but the results so far are pretty good compared to what we expected. This could have ended up as a slapdash of bland cliches thrown together by tourism marketers. And maybe some of that is still evident but, mostly, this list has real depth. Rather than focus solely on entertainers, it highlights figures who fought for civil rights and escaped or defied slavery. Remember the purpose of this exercise in the first place was to counter a century's worth of damage inflicted by Jim Crow era propaganda. This list does fit that aim.  Heck, Mama D is on there. Who woulda thought?

Of course, it would fit that aim even better if the commissioners had taken our advice and renamed the traffic roundabout formerly known as Lee Circle for Dorothy Mae Taylor.  According to this, they did at least try. 

Commissioners initially considered naming Lee Circle for Dorothy Mae Taylor, the City Council member who was instrumental in desegregating Mardi Gras parades. But that plan failed to get enough votes from the commission. A proposal for Jazz Circle or Music Circle also was rejected.

“I definitely respect us trying to get a win for everyone by going with something generic but the whole purpose of forming this commission was to right wrongs and to acknowledge harm,” Commissioner Gia Hamilton said. “ I personally feel like it would be against my own personal beliefs to vote on something that’s generic.”

Before settling on (Leah) Chase, some commissioners sought to include Taylor as well and name the circle after both women jointly. That effort didn’t gain traction, either.

Nothing wrong with Leah Chase, to be clear. She belongs on this list somewhere. But it would make more sense to honor her in the Sixth or Seventh Ward neighborhoods her memory is best associated with.  Uptown was Dorothy Mae's territory. There really should be a statue of her scowling down at Rex as he passes around the circle every year (well... in the years to follow 2021, that is.) 

Anyway, despite our best efforts, and until  the"Chase Circle" designation is approved, it seems for now that the more appropriate Taylor to name it after is Phyllis.  After all she does own, or control, most of the property there. 

When Circle Bar co-owner Dave Clements arrived for an Oct. 8 meeting at the office of the bar’s landlord, prominent philanthropist and energy company executive Phyllis M. Taylor, he didn’t expect the dramatic good news/bad news dynamic that was about to play out.

The good news: Taylor would cancel the Circle Bar’s rent for the remainder of the year, and not seek back rent dating to March, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the storied Lee Circle bar/music venue to close. That gesture saved the Circle Bar, already cash-strapped before the pandemic, nearly $70,000.

The bad news: The bar would be required to start paying rent again in January, and its lease would not be extended past December 2021.

Taylor, whose fortune derives from a company responsible for one of the largest - and longest running - oil spills in US history, owns, through various companies and LLCs, the Circle Bar, the parking lot next door, and the office building across the way. She also purchased the property for and funded construction of the Greater New Orleans Foundation's massive "Center For Philanthropy" building that sits diametrically across the Circle from the bar.  

Given this information plus the fact that the "philanthropic" non-profit industrial complex completely dominates not only our economy but our entire system of government in 21st Century New Orleans,  it only makes sense that this be reflected in the nomenclature.

As for the New Orleans of the 20th Century, well, that is mostly gone now. Its old landmarks are dying away one after the other this year.  Oh well, goodbye to all that. Can't wait to find out all the exciting entrepreneurial ventures Gayle Benson is going to fund during the post-COVID phase of late capitalism. So much free real estate out there all of a sudden.

Still haunted by the ghosts of grandma

Look, of course, there is so much happening all the everywhere at the moment but it is still important to stop and appreciate the little details when we can.  For example, it is adorable that Sean Payton still thinks about this. 

Sean Payton says on WWL radio the statistic that he's beaten 31 teams in the NFL just isn't true.

"It's 32 teams, including the Saints," he says laughing.

"Tampa Bay at home, we're up by four, we run the double reverse and fumble it. I beat the Saints."

— Amie Just (@Amie_Just) December 1, 2020

As well he should. People's grandmas died that day. (Wow, that was almost 13 years ago to the very day! This is quite a momentous week in Saints history, all told.) But it made Sean a better coach so the grannies did not give their lives in vain. We must always remember to thank them for their service.

Noblessse Oblige

It's not quite the techno-feudal state we're headed toward just yet but it is beginning to take on some of those characteristics. 

If there’s anything that substantiates the allegation that the United States is a failed state, it is Bill Pulte’s Twitter mentions. To read them is to grasp the cruelty and irrationality of American capitalism.

For five full decades, the nation has undergone a systematic, large-scale upward redistribution of wealth. Meanwhile, for reasons ranging from public relations to personal gratification and absolution, the rich are occasionally obliged to engage in a little charity, which is acceptable to them so long as it is in the amount and to the beneficiary of their choosing. Public records reveal that Bill Pulte donates exclusively to Republican candidates — a bleeding heart in the streets, a fiscal conservative in the sheets.

Disquieting in ordinary times, the spectacle of Twitter philanthropy is bone-chilling during the COVID-19 crisis, when an uneven and insufficient government economic response has left tens of millions of people high and dry.

Informational purposes

Yes, there is another election date coming up December 5.  There are runoffs in a couple of the judicial races from November, a very important District Attorney race, a Public Service Commissioner, and several school board seats on the ballot along with one constitutional amendment and a few ballot propositions that may be of some interest. 

Early voting is already under way this week!  And it's a little more convoluted than normal this time because of the holiday.  Here is the schedule. 

Early voting is Nov. 20-28 from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. (excluding Sunday, Nov. 22, Thursday, Nov. 26 (Thanksgiving) and Friday, Nov. 27 (Acadian Day); early voting is advanced one day because of the holidays)​

You can't go Thursday or Friday.  The good news is if you do end up waiting until December 5, then that will give you time to do some reading beforehand.   The extensively researched  DSA New Orleans and Antigravity Magazine voter guides have are available now and should prove to be a big help.  You probably won't end up following all of their recommendations. In fact, they rarely make those.  Quoting the AG guide here.

Our most consistent position through all the years? That no aspiring politician has earned our endorsement. We review candidates with the mentality that we ought to elect the people that grassroots movements might successfully push and pressure, to lessen suffering among those most likely to suffer. In other words, we vote for who we most want as our opponents.

And DSA's slightly different approach here.  

The New Orleans DSA has not endorsed any candidates in this election. We are a member-run and funded organization, and our endorsements are material investments of resources. In this guide, we describe candidates openly, wearing our politics on our sleeve. It may be clear which candidate our guide prefers, but we've tried to give you more than just a name to copy down

Still, whether you're voting against one terrible candidate or for one you want to keep kicking around,  you're probably not going to fine any more thorough examinations of your choices than you will in those documents.  So study up and happy voting.  

After that , of course we will have solved all the politics and you won't have to worry about any of this stuff ever again. 

Orrrr.. on the other hand...

Reformer's dance

Here is reform candidate for District Atttorney Jason Williams during the city budget hearings this month rejecting calls to defund police. 

City Council members were generally complimentary of the department, and did not signal that there would be any major changes to the proposed budget. 

City Council President Jason Williams — who is also running for Orleans Parish District Attorney, casting himself as a progressive criminal justice reformer —  addressed the calls to defund the police at one point, but he questioned whether or not there were ways to change public perception of police, rather than exploring the idea of cutting the department’s budget further. 

“Given the changing of culture, people crying out for defund the police, people protesting the departments — whether or not there has been a particular egregious situation in their communities or not — across the board there has certainly been a different perception of police officers and law enforcement,” Williams said. “What are we doing now, or what can the council do to start addressing that perceived lack of trust or actual lack of trust, to redefine the NOPD?”

Here is reform candidate Jason Williams suggesting that we put more cops in the schools, while also suggesting that everyone's "older brothers and siblings" are all in jail, maybe?

Williams suggested focusing recruitment efforts toward people who might not normally think to go into law enforcement, and outreach programs in elementary schools to change young people’s perception of the police.

“I would encourage you to figure out a way to get in front of elementary school kids before they have older brothers and siblings helping to frame their narrative about what police mean, and what police do in their community,” Williams said.

Here also is reform candidate Jason Williams helping us get a lid on NOPD's use of intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology by.... helping NOPD write a policy that lets them use intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology.  

Jones told The Lens that the NOPD only used facial recognition for “violent cases,” but that “documentation of frequency of use of Facial Recognition is not currently available.” Asked whether there was any written policy or procedure regarding the technology, Jones responded by saying that NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson “is currently working with Councilman [Jason] Williams on a policy as to when facial recognition tools should be used.”

Everyone agrees. Of the two candidates remaining for District Attorney, Jason is definitely the more inclined to speak out on behalf of reforming the criminal punishment system. So, you know, as the saying goes, with reformers like these, who needs anti-reformers?  

Well, it turns out, a lot of people think we do. 

Cannizzaro hasn’t endorsed in the race to replace him, but Williams made him a centerpiece of his attacks on Landrum on Thursday, calling her a “surrogate” chosen when the current DA realized he couldn’t win re-election. Cannizzaro did not qualify for the race.

Williams also sought to use against Landrum her stack of endorsements, a list that includes five of Williams’ six colleagues on the council and the BOLD political organization. “You shouldn't have to go through (Councilman) Jay Banks or the BOLD political organization to get to the next DA,” Williams said.

Landrum said Williams had sought the same endorsements she won, and she rejected the idea that Cannizzaro would have any hold over her.

Landrum has wrapped them all up, basically.  It's been something to see.  Not too long ago, Jason Williams, coming off of two overwhelming victories in citywide council races, seemed like he was on a fast track to unseating Cannizzaro, or possibly becoming the next mayor. But now it looks like the whole establishment is lining up against him. The only significant voice we're still waiting to hear from, in fact, is third place primary finisher Arthur Hunter's.  What does Arthur want? Well it sounds like he wants to watch the candidates dance between both sides of the reform question. 

Just out of the money was former Judge Arthur Hunter, with 28%. He has yet to endorse, but in a statement Friday he called on the contenders to prove they would “focus on violent crime while restoring public trust in the DA’s office.”

But dancing is what the so-called "reform" candidate Jason Williams has been doing all year. And look where that has gotten him. I wonder if he will recognize that.

Whoa, settle down, Bill, you won

This is from a few weeks ago but I'm still thinking about it for some reason. Bill Cassidy says here that a half-hearted Joe Biden proposal to slowly replace fossil fuels over time will only happen, "over my dead body."  Seems a little bit much.  He's even embarrassing the oil lobbyists now. 

Tyler Gray, the president and CEO of Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, expressed less concern than Cassidy with Biden’s comments.

“We don’t have to choose between reducing emissions and meeting energy needs. We can do both,” Gray said in a statement. “We are proud of the grit, innovation, and progress we’ve made so that Americans no longer have to choose between environmental progress and access to affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy and we aren’t going anywhere.”

Interesting that Gray is more or less saying the Biden rhetoric verbatim. I wonder who he expected to win the Presidency. 

Of course when the window of discourse is only wide enough to allow for a "debate" between burning the world up as fast as possible vs. kind of pretending we are trying not to while it burns anyway, I guess people like Gray are playing with house money.  And since both Cassidy and Biden are going back to D.C. next year, it's going to stay that way.

Eta is enough

Louisiana's inclusion in Hurricane Eta's "cone of uncertainty" marks the eighth (Eta-ghth?) time we've been there this year.  It's been quite a ride, folks.

Plenty more where that came from

 Somebody wrote that five years ago. Or something to that effect

Again, Irvin Mayfield, himself, isn't the actual problem. He is a symptom of the problem, though.  The problem is the post-Katrina ascendance of neoliberal "volunteer entrepreneurism" in rebuilding the "ultimate libertarian city" prescribed by Glassman. The club members who've worked so hard to bring the Glassman vision to life are hard-pressed to admit it, though.

Instead they're quick to offer up scapegoats from among their own number whenever one of them fails too stupidly or publicly.  Ray Nagin himself is the prime example here. Meffert is another.  Mayfield is only the latest. There will be more eventually.

And when, eventually, there are more, we will wash our hands of those individuals as well and go on pretending everything is fine.

Misrule of the Lords

It's only November but already the matter of Carnival 2021 has fallen into chaos. The city has apparently outsourced its authority to make the major decisions to the individual eminences in charge of the parading krewes.

Clark Brennan, captain of the Krewe of Bacchus, says the mega-parade “definitely plans to roll down St. Charles Avenue” on Feb. 14, if the city gives the green light to Carnival parades in 2021.

“We have a theme, freshly painted floats as well as throws and costumes in production,” he wrote in a statement Thursday morning.

Brennan emphasized the krewe’s preparedness ahead of a meeting of the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council, scheduled to take place on Thursday afternoon.

And why wouldn't it be this way?  If this year has proven anything to anyone it's that everything in this country is completely ungovernable.  COVID cases are spiking all over the world but the odds are your city or state is pressing on with plans to "reopen" schools and businesses. The election result points toward a divided government next year so don't expect there to be a plan out of Washington that would help us do anything differently.  As a result, municipal governments are going bankrupt. The elected leaders of those municipalities, whose job it had been to distribute favors and revenues their offices allow them to access as patronage to their backers among the social and business elite, suddenly find themselves with a lot less to give away. 

In a better world, this would signal a shift toward a more populist style of politics focused on protecting the working poor.  But our political system is utterly broken so what we have instead is a situation where we're still trying to pay off the elites by dismantling what remains of the social contract and selling off the parts. More tax breaks. More PILOTs, more "business incentive" plans. They're even inviting the oligarchs in to run the bribery operation themselves. It's a "major paradigm shift." 

It's why, despite the mayor's celebrated posing over maintaining stricter COVID guidelines here than in the rest of the state, Gayle Benson still gets to do whatever she wants. And it's why, despite our beloved "Teedy's" tough talk all year about maybe having to cancel Mardi Gras, in fact these decisions will all be left up to Clark Brennan and Jimmy Reiss and the rest of the council of aristocrats. 

Cantrell emphasized her proposals were meant only to inspire brainstorming, not as a template. The differences, she said, "are not going to come from me; they're going to come from you." 

And so Carnival policy is going to be treated the way everything else is under our elitist junta. Because the decisions will not be made by an ostensible representative of the people, their concerns will not have priority.  Instead, what we will get is a Mardi Gras for and by the "business leaders" in charge. You, for the most part, are not invited. 

Smaller walking parades would also be required to follow safety guidelines, she said.

Dr. Takeisha Davis, a member of the council and a rider with the Krewe of Femme Fatale, brought safety recommendations from a council subcommittee. The panel recommended that parade goers be required to wear masks and to stay with their group six feet from other groups. It also recommended that tents and other structures be prohibited on parade routes, that drinking be discouraged and that kegs be banned — all efforts to prevent crowds from gathering.

So the things we know we can expect to see at Carnival 2021 include some version of the Bacchus Parade, a socially distanced Rex Ball imbued with elements of hygiene theater, whatever else they can turn into a controlled, isolated event.  On the other hand, the real heart of Carnival, the thing where regular people walk around in the streets greeting their neighbors with snacks and cocktails, that's probably going to get you a fine.

Listen to the raving bearded guy rocking back and forth in front of his phone

Maybe this format isn't for everybody, but, for me at least, Christman's Twitch streams have been helpful in keeping things in perspective throughout the pandemic.  And this one where he grapples with the implications of this election result covers a lot of ground that deserves attention. 

The 2020 Democratic primary was a last gasp attempt at making class-based mass politics work again. But what we found out in the process was that class-based mass politics hasn't been a meaningful thing in the US since the 1970s at the very latest. Instead everything is broken. And it is likely way more broken than many of us previously imagined.   So what do we do now?  Unclear.  But Matt has a lot of insightful things to say about where we are that might somehow prove useful.. if anything can.

Normalcy in our time, normalcy in our town

Did we talk about the Democratic convention on here yet?  It's been such a weird year in so many ways. Too often I find myself falling behind the noise before I can write enough of it down.  That's not good. Keeping good notes on this website has been such a useful tool for me in just holding it together over the years, I am afraid if I let it go for too long I might dissociate completely from reality.  Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.... 

Oh wait. Here it is. Just a quick summary because I was probably in a hurry. 

But one theme the Democrats pushed relentlessly was Joe Biden's capacity for "empathy."  In Zoom video after dimly lit Zoom video, speakers testified about the times Joe personally had reached out to someone to let them know how well he understood their trauma, how much he cared about and validated their pain.  Almost nothing was said about what he planned to do about any of it.  In fact, one may have come away from the convention with the impression that nothing can be done.  It's a strange thing to offer to voters but it does seem to be in line with the Democratic brand. 

They're basically saying, yeah we know, your life sucks right now. Look at Joe. He's out there feeling your pain. He understands. Meanwhile the policy program is full of little ways to make it easier for you to get used to and cope with the shittiness. We're not out to change the shitty conditions. We're here to valorize your experience of suffering through them.

The hallmarks of this ideology of free market fatalism are visible throughout the mainstream of the Democratic Party.  For example, the same tone was easily detectable in Mayor Cantrell's "State of the City" address delivered just around the time of the convention this year.

“We are all well-versed in the unwavering focus, the hope, and the strength it takes to rebuild from what can seem like disaster,” she said. “I’m here to deliver a message of hope and point the way forward to our future beyond this pandemic.”

The city is now five months past the initial outbreak, which trailed a range of side effects including rampant unemployment and evictions and a city budget now estimated to be more than $100 million in the red. Frequently harkening back to the 1853 yellow fever pandemic, which claimed 8,000 lives, and other, more recent tragedies, Cantrell framed the city and its people as among the most capable of rising to the challenge the current crisis presents.

“We are no strangers to trauma and disruption, you know better than me,” Cantrell said, noting next week will be the 15-year anniversary of the levee failures and flooding set off by Hurricane Katrina.

Again, the message is, our lives are marked by trauma but the mayor knows it and wants us to have "hope."  What, specifically, should we hope for? Well, it's murky.  She says we shouldn't have to worry about making rent.  But her policy response is embedded in trickle-down economics and charitable fundraising projects administered by private non-profits.  And, above all else, great pains are taken to ensure we do not saddle our landlords with worries of their own.

Acknowledging a tripling in the eviction rate, Cantrell touted various rental assistance programs — including a fundraising effort by the nonprofit set up for her transition into office — and said she is fighting for federal assistance.

“The time of a pandemic is not the time for our people to lay awake at night wondering how to make next month’s rent,” Cantrell said. “It is also not the time for landlords to face missing mortgage payments or losing investments they spent a lifetime to build.”

The Dem convention and Cantrell's speech took place a week prior to the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's arrival in New Orleans. That week, a New York Times feature called attention to the long term effects of that disaster and what everyone should know by now are the harmful consequences of the unjust and ineffectual "recovery" policies implemented in its wake.  Sorry to pull such a long quote here.

Pre-Katrina, there was already a considerable shortage of affordable housing in New Orleans. The situation has only become worse, as many of the affordable units the city had were never rebuilt after the storm and the urban core became whiter and wealthier.

New Orleans now has roughly 33,000 fewer affordable housing units than it needs, according to HousingNOLA, a local research and advocacy group. There are opportunities in every corner of the city to fix this, argued Andreanecia Morris, the executive director of HousingNOLA, when we met in her office in Mid-City on South Carrollton Avenue.

Most New Orleanians are renters. Pre-Katrina, the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment was around $578 monthly. It has roughly doubled since then, meaning a full-time worker must now earn about $18 per hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

Real wages, however, have stalled, and many of the places that employ New Orleanians remain closed. Tens of thousands of workers in the city’s beloved music, drinks, food and tourism businesses — who were the most likely to lose their livelihoods both after the storm and now during the pandemic — make a minimum wage of $7.25.

In some other cities, Ms. Morris explained, unaffordable rent “is the result of a housing stock shortage, but in New Orleans we have a vacancy rate of about 20 percent!” In total, there are about 37,700 vacant units. I could feel it biking and driving through the curvilinear streets that weave from the river to the lake, passing by elegant, unfilled properties on otherwise vibrant blocks, then by neatly rebuilt houses sitting lonely in areas frozen in 2007: three empty lots for every six homes you see.

Residents like Terence Blanchard, the Grammy Award-winning trumpeter, who resides in a thriving midcentury neighborhood along Bayou St. John, live this dichotomy. “People talk about the recovery,” he told me as we stood on his dock overlooking the water and City Park. “But if you go to my mom’s house in Pontchartrain Park, there was no real recovery.”

The federal housing vouchers mostly known by the shorthand “Section 8” — which subsidize rent payments above 30 percent of participants’ income — fully cover “fair market rate rent,” which in New Orleans is calculated as $1,034 to $1,496 for a one-bedroom apartment. That means even in increasingly upscale, higher-ground areas of town there is little stopping developers and landlords with vacant properties from lowering rents by a few hundred dollars and still being able to generate revenue.

For Ms. Morris, the continued holdout by many landlords that want “a certain kind of family,” or Airbnb customers, has grown to “psychotic” levels of classism and racism. “At a certain point,” she said, “the math has to let you at least manage your prejudices.”

Whenever the post-2005 destruction and gentrification of New Orleans is discussed, I am obliged to point out again that none of it was an accident.  Since, literally days after Katrina landed, we were already trying to warn that this was going to happen and it would happen as a result of deliberate policy choices made by people who wield political power in New Orleans. Then it happened. It happened every day. Sometimes in very big ways and other times as part of a general creep. But the whole time, we were saying out loud to anyone who would listen, this is happening, the money power, the real estate, tourism and business owners were gutting the city.

And it didn't matter. They did what they wanted. Because that's what always happens. They have the power. We have nothing. You can see it, you can say it, you can object all you want. But they do whatever they want and you don't matter.  Even now, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a depression, there is no such thing as housing justice. Because they can afford to be "psychotic" in their stubbornness and no one with any political power will stop them.

Even at the lowest point of crisis, political leaders emphasize the concerns of landlords holding them equal to or greater than the housing stressed poor. Today, a week after a Category 2 hurricane ripped through and knocked out everyone's power we're still struggling with worries over whether or not the polling locations can operate.  Guess what was back up and running immediately, though.

Public transportation is down, power is out for 90% of the city, but eviction court is open. We have monitors headed in to watch how the judges handle evictions after a category 2 hurricane, during a pandemic.

— Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative (@JanePlaceCLT) October 29, 2020

The thing about New Orleans politics people most misunderstand is how fundamentally conservative it is. The governing ideology in all the major power centers is pro-police, pro-landlord, anti-labor. It's rare to find any observer, let alone someone from out of town, describe it this way, though. Which is why this New Yorker piece by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is refreshing. Taylor is writing primarily about the superficial racial politics of the Biden-Harris campaign but within that argument we find this passage.

There is little consideration of how a municipal administrator’s class standing may complicate solidarities with those it is simply assumed they will represent. This is especially true for Black elected officials, many of whom come from working-class origins but whose class standing shifts when they move into political office. In May, 2018, LaToya Cantrell became the first Black woman to be elected as mayor of New Orleans. Cantrell, who first moved to New Orleans in 1990, in order to attend Xavier, a historically Black university, was deeply involved in community organizing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and served on the city council for six years before ascending to the position of mayor. Despite this background of community engagement, Cantrell has stood on the sidelines during a strike by a small group of Black sanitation workers, over demands for hazard pay and P.P.E. during the pandemic. Sanitation work is outsourced in New Orleans, allowing contracting companies to pay workers less than the city’s living-wage ordinance allows. In this case, when the sanitation workers decided to strike, one of the subcontractors procured a contract for prison laborers, who worked for even less than the striking workers. Even as these “essential workers” have called upon the mayor to help them secure P.P.E. and better pay, Cantrell has refused to intervene directly, saying that these issues are between the contractor and the workers. There is no inherent solidarity along the lines of race, and, when class conflict is introduced into the calculation, it is even more fraught.

This is a city where only a person who promises not to take from the rich and give to the poor and "all that kind of crap" can be mayor.  Policy can only be formulated through a distinctly neoliberal lens. Every problem can only be met with some sort of "business incentive" public-private partnership, or other such trickle down scheme to benefit the ruling classes.

Meanwhile, even within the (very small and insular) world of progressive activism you can't get agreement on basic principles like, for example, housing as a human right or that teachers deserve unions.  And, in any case, the decisions that matter get made at a 10,000 foot remove from any of that through deals between political careerists, tourism bosses, and real estate interests. The public side of the political process, such as it is, is just nonsensical theater.

Which brings us to today's elections.  If you've voted early, or if you've wandered into a polling location this afternoon, you may have noticed that there are a lot of things going on with your ballot besides just that dismal Presidential election.  What even is all that stuff?  Well, if you really want to know the details you should stop here and go read the excellent and extremely thorough Antigravity and DSA voter guides.  But if you want the short version, stay here and I will tell you. 

Basically three things are happening. A slate of reformist candidates mostly associated with the public defender's office is trying to win a bunch of judicial seats.  A few somewhat progressive minded challengers are trying to wrest one or two school board seats away from incumbent charter school privatizers with national corporate backing. And, all of this is happening in the context of various power brokering institutions trying to consolidate their positions as electoral and patronage gatekeepers ahead of next year's municipal elections. 

The linchpin in the insider tug of war is the DA's race where Mayor Cantrell's alliance with BOLD, which did very well in the legislative races last year, is backing Keva Landrum. You can read a little bit about the dynamics of the race in this Advocate story about the fundraising. Landrum has positioned herself as the more conservative "law and order" candidate compared to Jason Williams and Arthur Hunter who she has criticized as "backed by third party special interests." Each of their platforms is invested in reforming the criminal legal system more aggressively than she would like.

As I type this right now, the polls are open for another twenty minutes. But my strong suspicion is the establishment candidates will win most of these judicial and school board races and Landrum will run first in the DA race.  Overall the theme of the night is conservative establishment results at home to match the general "return to normalcy" nationwide as Joe Biden becomes the next President.

Maybe that is disappointing.  But disappointment has pretty much been baked into this since March. Here is what I told the kids yesterday on a parallel internet. We know that the Biden Presidency only represents the replacement of one kind of conservatism with another. We know that, regardless of the election result, we are no nearer to overcoming the massive obstacles to human happiness posed by poverty, racism, disease, empire, and climate catastrophe. And we know these are all deeply embedded consequences of systemic capitalist exploitation and that the work of rooting them out has not even begun. 

But, if only for the sake of your own mental well being and that of your neighbors, please do not deny yourself the chance to revel in the pure and absolute joy of seeing Donald Trump ejected from the White House. Fuck that guy. He's almost gone. It's okay to enjoy that.