Monday, May 31, 2021

Plenty more where that came from

Just remember these times.  These are the good times. You may think you have hilariously dysfunctional government now but just wait.  Someday Jeff Landry will be Governor. Let's take a look at what his official schedule might be like.

Guidry said Landry spends a few hours a month on his work for the Harvey Gulf board, one of several outside income sources the attorney general claims. Landry also claims full ownership of two staffing firms. He has not answered detailed questions about how much of his time is occupied by running those firms.

It’s difficult to ascertain from a review of public records how much time Landry spends on official duties versus outside ventures. His public calendars are often empty, with the exception of media appearances, often on right-wing channels, including One America News Network and Newsmax.

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Every time you think you've seen the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time...

.... along comes the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time. 

And whooo boy this has been a bad one.

On Monday night this past week, some of us tuned in to observe the latest reverberation of the session's loudest (but also emptiest) controversy thus far. Rep. Valarie Hodges brought a bill before the House that would introduce a specific requirement to the state's high school curriculum. 

Fallout from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus’ fight with Rep. Ray Garofalo (R-Chalmette) is to blame for the tense debate on the Louisiana House floor Monday over a bill requiring that high schoolers learn about World War II and the Holocaust, Rep. Tammy Phelps (D-Shreveport) said Monday evening.

Rep. Valarie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) got HB 416 through the House to the dismay of Black lawmakers who couldn’t win support for their attempts to simply have the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education consider adjustments to the curriculum.

Hodges told the chamber that “the sacrifice our country and our forefathers made in the part of a worldwide attempt at domination of the Third Reich” are worthy of being taught in every high school.

“The Holocaust is a study in how much the future of our nation depends on its citizens to stand up to the forces that divide us and stand up to hate among us,” she said. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

It's been a while since the leges have had this much interest in writing curriculum directives directly into state law.  That article references "fallout" over an earlier bill this session introduced by Ray Garofalo that would have barred the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as, for example, the idea that capitalism produces racist or sexist outcomes, or even that racism can be a central theme in the description of US history. 

In other words, it was a pretty bad bill and bringing it to the legislature at all is clearly a deliberate provocation on Garofalo's part.  Interestingly, though, media coverage of the "controversy" has too often elided the nature of the bill as an issue and focused instead on some words spoken by Garofalo while debating it. Take a look at how this Advocate story is framed.

Garofalo first ignited controversy last month when, during a discussion of his bill on how racism is taught in colleges, he referred to how a hypothetical case of a classroom discussion on slavery could include "the good, the bad, the ugly."

He quickly walked back his comment about the "good" in slavery, and allies contend he has been ridiculously portrayed as somehow sympathetic to slavery.

All of a sudden we're no longer talking about the bill he introduced specifically to outlaw academic questioning of white supremacy and are concerned instead with whether or not he's being treated unfairly by critics.  Even now, after his somewhat dramatic removal from his committee chairmanship, Garofalo is presented almost as a sacrificial lamb to petty Democrats. 

At one point Garofalo said, even with his measure, college classrooms were free to air discussions on controversial topics, including “the good, the bad, the ugly” of slavery.

The lawmaker quickly corrected himself on any suggestion of “good” surrounding slavery. But the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and Gov. John Bel Edwards said he should be replaced as chairman for multiple reasons.

It's probably true that the Black Caucus did force Garofalo's demotion by threatening to hold up a key tax bill until he was punished. They should have killed the tax swap bill altogether anyway but that's for a different post, probably. Either way, the press coverage over the past few weeks has unhelpfully obscured the reason they acted in the first place.  Actually, instead of "the press" I should just say Tyler Bridges in particular because most examples of this are form his reporting.  In this passage, for example, we see that Clay Schexnayder has pretty good handle on a problem that Tyler is nonetheless intent on turning into something else.

But the alliance between the two ended after Garofalo insisted on presenting House Bill 546, which sought to address concerns of conservatives that left-wing educators are teaching “critical race theory” concepts centered on the notion that racism is systemic.

The night before, Schexnayder advised Garofalo that having his committee hear HB546 would be racially divisive.

Garofalo forged ahead. In explaining his bill, he made an offhand comment about the “good” of slavery but then immediately disavowed it.

The damage was done, however. The exchange went viral, and in the days that followed, the Black Caucus called on Schexnayder to remove him as the Education Committee chairman, while Garofalo said he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

No doubt people will think I am picking at nits here. But the way that is written, the reader is expected to conclude that a racist bill that says you can't teach about racism might have been a fine thing to pass if not for the "good of slavery" gaffe that went viral. 

Still, it is probably safe to assume that Garofalo is being punished because his fumbling presentation endangered a tax bill and not because Republicans were all that set against his trolling foray into legislative pedagogy. If it were otherwise, there would have been far less enthusiasm for Hodges's bill on Monday. Mark Ballard puts in a pretty good explanation today of how her bill and Garofalo's are really aimed at the same purpose.  

The first thing caucus chair Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, said was that tax policy, not culture wars, is the foremost interest of most House Republicans.

Still, they voted for transgender restrictions and school curricula impositions, such as requiring public schools to teach World War II and the Holocaust in greater detail as well as an emphasis on the nation’s important documents.

Not that such subjects are bad for Louisiana students to learn, but “patriotic education” is a strategy that crowds out conversations about race and its impact on American society. Louisiana educators oppose legislators dictating curriculum.

Another thing we have to point out about these "culture issue" troll bills is that they do not bubble up from the local constituents. They are dropped in from above by well funded national conservative agitators.  For example, Louisiana was one of thirty some odd states to advance bills cribbed from the national right wing grievance-cruelty template that bar transgendered kids from participating in high school sports.  Here is the House breaking out in applause over its passage.


What has made this session more frustrating than most, though, has been the ease at which bills like this have made it all the way through the process. During a session with the more weighty matters of hurricane recovery, coastal restoration, and the distribution of COVID relief funds on the agenda, why are we stopping to argue about any of this foolishness? 

The key observation is that this group of lawmakers doesn't play the game with the same um.. restraint.. that previous bodies might have exercised.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  Recall that 2019 was a wave election for reactionaries and we're seeing what happens when they get to run the whole show with little or no check aside from a Governor who is himself too hands off.  The other problem is this is yet another legislature seeing the effect of a term limits law that has weakened the overall competence of the body as members have less experience and independence and rely more on permanent $$ people to really run things. 

We've seen bills come out of committee this year with obvious problems one might have expected to get "fixed' on the full floor (or killed if they are altogether bad.) But now the customary brakes seem to be off. And, yes, of course the bar  for was very low already but my point is this bunch has managed to go even lower. 

A few examples of that: 

First, a couple weeks ago we saw the final failure to pass even a modest $28 boost to one of the country's cruelest unemployment insurance payments, in part, because House Republicans insisted (falsely) that the current $300 federal enhanced payment that expires this fall is "disincentivizing" work. 

Not willing to let facts flummox a good narrative, a murderers’ row of a half dozen self-described conservatives in the Louisiana House, one after another, pounced on Democratic Harvey Rep. Rodney Lyons’ proposal to increase Louisiana’s miserly unemployment benefit by $28 a week. The increase would move the state from the 49th lowest benefit to 48th by paying no more than $275 per week. Most would get less, and in any case the increase would start in January 2022, four months after the federal enhanced benefits expires.

When Lyons's bill was in committee, it was amended to also include a bizarre provision for one time $1,000 bonus payments to people who take a new job and end their UI benefit.  Accepting the bonus payment would then make the person ineligible for future unemployment benefits for a period after.  That amendment, questionable as it was on legal and moral grounds, was considered a political "poison pill" intended to tank the bill altogether.  However, it's also exactly the sort of thing that a previous House might have removed in time to pass a reasonable bill as clearer thinking heads prevailed.  That wasn't the case this time. 

The House failed again to listen to reason on Thursday when Barry Ivey (R- Central)  practically begged them not advance Rick Edmonds's (R- Baton Rouge)  blatant attempt to hide information about corporate tax breaks granted by the state from public view

House lawmakers on Thursday voted 59-38 for a bill that would change the public records law to allow the state economic development agency to hide certain corporate tax incentive records from the public. 

House Bill 456, sponsored by Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), proposes to make an exception to Louisiana’s public records law for certain records under the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) tax incentive programs, including the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, Louisiana Quality Jobs Program and Louisiana Enterprise Zone Program. 

“It is imperative, members, that we do not let this instrument go across to the other side (to the Senate),” Rep. Barry Ivey (R-Central) said during floor debate Thursday. He said HB 456 is one of the most problematic bills he has seen.

What the bill would do is make it impossible for anyone to gauge whether or not recipients of the various "incentive" are actually hitting their targets in terms of workers hired and wages paid instead of  just hoarding all the money in the form of executive compensation, for example. In years past, there would still be a good chance the Senate might "fix" this later on.  But maybe not this year. 

If anything, it looks like they're "fixing" things in the wrong direction. Take for example this teacher pay raise that seemed to shrink overnight without explanation. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday approved its version of the state's nearly $37 billion operating budget, including $800 pay raises for teachers and other certificated personnel and $400 pay boosts for support workers, including cafeteria employees and school bus drivers.

The action marked a turnaround from April 28, when Senate Education Committee Chairman Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, said House and Senate leaders were getting behind raises of $1,000 per year, more than double Gov. John Bel Edwards proposal to boost pay by $400 annually.

Nobody says why the money was taken back out.  Louisiana Federation of Teachers' lobbyist Cynthia Posey does point out that the state spends over $9 billion a year on the kind of tax credits and exemptions that Edmonds's bill will shield from scrutiny.

Anyway it's not like there isn't enough money to go around.  This is the first "fiscal session" in quite a while that hasn't played out int he shadow of some massive budget shortfall or impending "fiscal cliff."  Between the federal COVID rescue plan and just better than expected revenues in general, lawmakers have plenty to play with while formulating a budget. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday released their mark-up of the state's multibillion-dollar spending plan for the budget year beginning July 1 with spending bumps for higher education, juvenile justice and dozens of other favored pets projects. 

Lawmakers in the upper chamber had the rare opportunity to divvy up hundreds of millions of dollars in better-than-expected tax revenues after the state last week forecasted $355 million in excess funds for the current fiscal year and $320 million in additional collections for the next fiscal year.

Too bad for the teachers, though.  Guess they had to wait in line behind -- this stuff. 

Senators also added dozens of earmarks for favored projects in their districts, including $12 million in road projects in Lafayette, the city where Cortez lives, and $2 million to the athletics foundation in White's hometown of Central. Other dollars would go to recreational facilities in Jefferson Parish, a skate park in Ruston, fire departments in Ascension Parish, the River Road African American Museum and the National World War II Museum

LOL, yes, there again is the big money pit of special tax credits, sweetheart bank deals, and public-private partnering we all know as the National World War II Museum.  According to the budget bill as currently written, they're getting $7.5 million in general funds for something called an "FP&C Management Plus Liberation Pavilion." Here is what will go on there

Following their immersive journey through the war, visitors to The National WWII Museum will enter the Liberation Pavilion. Three building levels will explore the closing months of the war and immediate postwar years, concluding with an explanation of links to our lives today. The first floor, Liberation, will provide visitors with opportunities to contemplate the joys, costs, and meaning of liberation and freedom. The second and third levels will focus on what the war means today, with exhibits developed through the lens of democracy and freedom.

The second floor of the Liberation Pavilion will present richly layered, interactive experiences that explore the postwar years: how the world—and America's place in it—changed after World War II. Dramatic and thought-provoking exhibits will explore selected themes from the postwar era, ranging from the readjustments faced by returning military service members to international tribunals seeking justice for war crimes. We will trace the war's lasting legacies at home and around the world, as America's elevated role as a world power and freedoms secured by Allied forces are continually tested—even to the present day.

One wonders if Valarie Hodges is aware of this appropriation.

See also:  Couldn't really fit it into the narrative here but go ahead and read this Bayou Brief feature on Hodges and the attendant controversies to her bill.  Among other things, it's a good reminder to check your spelling.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Ony 76 more to go

 Four is, of course, one more than three but -- there is much more work to be done

Right now, only three other New Orleans charter schools -- Morris Jeff Community School, Benjamin Franklin High School and International High School -- active unions, out of about 80 public charters in the city.

Since they are run by independent boards, charters have more autonomy than traditional public schools and each management organization can make its own hiring and firing decisions.

In a news release, pro-union Bricolage teachers said they hoped to demonstrate to staff in other charter schools that unionization can be accomplished with enough solidarity.

Maybe this will help pick up the pace?  Remember the event from which the teachers are trying to recover happened in the blink of an eye. Also it happened almost 16 years ago

The Bricolage union is affiliated with the citywide teachers union United Teachers of New Orleans. UTNO represented educators throughout the city prior to the post-Katrina takeover of New Orleans public schools by the state-run Recovery School District. UTNO President Wanda Richard, Larry Carter, president of the statewide union Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and state Rep. Royce Duplessis were present on Friday and encouraged a union vote.

“We believe all teachers — no matter where they teach — deserve to have a seat at the table in this city,” Duplessis said.

Haven't had a "seat at the table" in this city for almost a generation now. 

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Ain't seen nothing yet

 Jeff Landry is going to be the most hilarious Governor we've had in a long time

The close relationship between Attorney General Jeff Landry and his top political ally Shane Guidry recently added a new layer: Landry took a spot on the board of Guidry’s oil services firm, Harvey Gulf.

Landry reported making between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2020 as an “independent board member” for Harvey Gulf, LLC, in his annual personal financial disclosure, filed this month with the Louisiana Board of Ethics. The company does not appear on Landry's disclosures for previous years.

The newly-disclosed business relationship is one of several close ties between the attorney general and Guidry, who is among Landry’s top political donors and a close friend. It’s also unusual: while other statewide elected officials serve on nonprofit boards and have private business interests, none reported serving on the board of a private firm while in office, according to recent personal financial disclosures.

It technically doesn't matter if the Attorney General is on his payroll or if it's the other way around. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Guidry's role with the Attorney General's office is listed in state records as "special agent/investigator," and he said he remains working as an adviser for Landry’s office. State records list his salary as $12,000 annually as a part-time employee for the past four years.

A spokesman for Landry’s office said Guidry has been on “unpaid leave” as a special agent since 2017 but declined to answer questions about the adviser role or other job titles. Guidry has also used the title “special assistant” to Landry.

Figures like Guidry are always looking for the dumbest possible character to install in the public offices.  Recall that Guidry's fellow industrial titan "kingmaker" Lane Grigsby very nearly purchased the Governorship for Eddie Rispone in 2019. Rispone really only played the buffoon on TV, though.  Landry is a good bit more pure. Which makes him more useful for all sorts of rackets. 

He also reported big increases in income from UST Environmental Services and Evergreen Contractors, two labor staffing firms of which he claims full ownership.

Landry claimed less than $5,000 in income from each of those firms in 2018 and 2019, then reported at least $200,000 from each of them last year.

Ben Landry, the attorney general’s brother who oversees those businesses, did not return messages seeking comment this week on the big bump in income for the attorney general.

Landry formed Evergreen in 2011 during his first year in Congress. It was among three Landry-related firms that applied at the same time in 2017 to import Mexican welders and pipe fitters to the U.S. under the H2-B temporary worker visa program.

Anyway, all of this makes Jeff an ideal candidate to become the next Governor. And since we've all but given up expecting anything except the stupidest of all outcomes, he's likely to be the favorite.  So, get ready to be entertained.

Thursday, May 20, 2021

The bosses and landlords won the pandemic

I feel like we've been talking about the coming techno-feudal order for a long time now.  And I guess this is just a post for the sake of note taking. But it's important to understand that the pandemic, like every major disaster of the 21st Century, was another accelerating event of the larger human disaster of wealth concentration

But since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Koch Industries has been plowing money into real estate.

In March this year, The Wall Street Journal published a report headlined “Charles Koch Is Betting Big on Distressed Real Estate.” The paper reported that the billionaire’s corporate conglomerate “is emerging as a major real-estate investor during the pandemic, using its robust cash reserves to buy properties at beaten-down prices and betting on a longer-term recovery.”

Last April, a month into the pandemic, Koch Real Estate Investments made a “$200 million preferred-equity investment in Amherst Holdings LLC's single-family rental business,” according to the corporate law firm Jones Day, which said it advised the Koch Industries subsidiary on the deal. Amherst says that since 2012, “its affiliated funds have acquired and operated more than 30,000 homes.”

The same article describes Koch backing for groups that have lobbied against the CDC-imposed evictions ban.  This is a strategy to consolidate housing and finance on a larger scale than previously thought possible. The necessary result is mass displacement and dispossession of middle and working class Americans.

Starting last May, Koch Real Estate Investments began a financial relationship with Ladder Capital Corp., culminating in a $32 million equity investment in December. Ladder finances residential real estate, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported that its subsidiaries’ loans to former President Donald Trump have been scrutinized by prosecutors.

Koch Real Estate Investments was also among a group of investors that last month bought an ownership stake in SmartRent, a landlord technology company.

It's a trend in housing that got its first big bump after the 2008 foreclosure crisis. No doubt you are familiar by now with Jared Kushner's fortune in predatory mega-landlording.   COVID has only caused it to happen faster.  You may have also read this week about Blackstone's billion dollar takeover of rentals in San Diego.  

But it's important to stress that while the descent into feudalism is a national and in fact global phenomenon, it still  has to be confronted on the municipal level. Unfortunately this also happens to be where the politicians are the most clueless and/or wholly owned by real estate. In our city, for example, we have literally turned our land use policy over to a person who specializes in large scale conversion of housing into short therm rentals. This happened in the middle of the pandemic summer of 2020. A summer that is looking like the latest in a long string of wins for the bosses. 

Update: Meanwhile, even when they say they are helping, they aren't really helping

Frustrated tenants and housing advocates pleaded with the New Orleans City Council Thursday to do something to get millions in federal rental aid flowing to applicants faster, saying thousands are in danger of being evicted when a federal moratorium expires on June 30. 

Since February, the city has approved just 700 of more than 10,000 applications for the $11.6 million in rental assistance funds provided thus far under a federal pandemic relief law, said Marjoriana Willman, director of the city's Office of Housing Policy and Community Development.

How does that happen?  Well there is a long answer and a short answer. The long answer is in the details of how the assistance is structured. The city says it can't process applications fast enough because the law limits how much money it can spend on "overhead."  Because the grants process prioritizes getting money to landlords instead of directly to tenants, it gives the landlord too much power to discriminate against tenants or to refuse the help altogether in order to remain under the radar of city housing inspectors. And finally, there is still only enough money to disperse aid to about 3,000 of the (so far) 10,000+ applicants. 

The short answer is, this is how it was designed to happen.

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Preseason

I'm gonna have to dig through some posts but I'm pretty sure this happened with one (or maybe more than one) of these recent springtime flash floods. Maybe that's just how they do things now. 




We're gonna have to start figuring out how to name these. What's a negative Greek letter?

Update:  Here it is.  I ripped this image from local TV radar during the May 2016 floods. 


May storm

Friday, May 14, 2021

The price of crawfish

Seems like we were just talking about this last month. It's worse than you might think and has been for quite a while. 

Two Mexican citizens who worked for Crawfish Processing LLC last year filed suit in Alexandria federal court Thursday, claiming the company and its owner, Charles Bernard, routinely failed to pay minimum and prevailing wages. Plaintiffs say they also did not receive federally mandated overtime pay while working more than 60 hours per week.

The company also collected $60 per week as rent payments for rat-infested trailers packed with eight or nine people, according to the lawsuit. Also allegedly deducted from weekly paychecks was a $3 fee for cashing checks at a retail market affiliated with Crawfish Processing.

Not surprising in a state like Louisiana, where the legislature continues to debate the "good and bad" of and, in fact, defend the legality of slavery, that this would be allowed to go on.  Even if the plaintiffs win in this case, don't expect these practices to change in the future.

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Which warehouse has the prettiest decorations?

The committee charged with selecting a redevelopment plan for the Six Flags site is meeting today.  We already know that the preferred use is going involve some sort of warehousing/logistics staging facility.  The group everyone expects to win, Kiernan West, specializes in that sort of thing nationally and seems to be the most well situated (although the financial details aren't yet known to the public.) 

Because this is a city-owned property, though, and especially because it was once an amusement park, the bidders have all been obligated to dress up their proposals with different grab bags full of public-facing amusements of varying worth and which may or may not ever become real. Us real Six Flags heads have been through enough of these exercises to have seen all kinds by now.   No monorail this time, as far as we can tell. But at least one of the proposals has put the zipline idea back in.  You love to see that. 

Developers Wendell Armant, Gerald Billes and Shelly Wills have partnered with lender BlueBell International, design firm Gould Evans and others to build an array of homes and condos, a grocery store, a day care, and a hotel at the site. 

Retail stores, a film studio, an amphitheater and a campground would help round out the $1.85 billion picture, as would a waterpark, wave pool, skate park and zip-line attraction.

But if we were giving odds, we'd probably put that one as the longest shot.  Of course, Kiernan West is the favorite. But the dark horse underdog is something, amusingly called "Bayou Phoenix"  which has to be be considered somewhat of a contender simply because it is Troy Henry. That "private police force" idea seems rather inspired. 

Renaming the entire area Bayou Phoenix "would allow the area to shake the stigma associated with the former Jazzland/Six Flags name," developers said in a city presentation.

A private police force would also provide security on site to protect the massive investment, freeing up the New Orleans Police Department to work solely to manage the crime in the rest of the sprawling 7th District, Henry said.

But, most probably, they will give the deal to Kiernan West. They did, after all, go to the trouble of hiring some NFL players to do the promotional nonsense side of the project.  

In the first round of evaluations in March, a plan from Kiernan West LLC of Colorado and S.H.I.E.L.D 1., a foundation launched by former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, Saints linebacker Demario Davis and Buffalo Bills cornerback Joshua Norman, scored highest. That project, if chosen Tuesday, would bring an urban farm and a series of educational centers to the site, along with a transportation and logistics center.

What we haven't yet learned, though, is how much will the public pay to subsidize whatever project is chosen. Will the city retain ownership of the land?  Will there be "tax incentives" given away to the developers?  Each proposal includes widely varying estimates of the number "direct" and "indirect" jobs it will create. But we won't get clarity on what that means until we know more about what actually is getting built.

We have to assume in the meantime that the main piece of this will be the warehouse. And aside from worrying about what pretty little schemes go up around the warehouse, we should probably ask how the pay and working conditions will be there.  Is the city adding any stipulations as to how workers are treated on the site? That sounds like something that could be added to a lease agreement.  Will it, though? Probably not. But worth asking about.

Update:  Turns out they couldn't settle on one today. Narrowed down to Kiernan West and Phoenix.  Typically this suggests a play is in the works to maybe cut Henry in on the deal even if it does go to Kiernan West. But who knows.  

Upperdate:  Starting to think maybe Henry's group has a better than even chance now.  Transdev is there, after all.  Also, look what they're bringing. 

The Bayou Phoenix proposal, created by Henry Consulting, TKTMJ Inc and master developer Hillwood of Dallas, scored 417 of 500. That plan would see a logistics hub, a water park, a 200-room hotel and a travel center.

It would also partner with Transdev, a French transit conglomerate that once managed New Orleans' mass transit system, to build light rail transit between Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner and the Six Flags property.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have found our monorail. 

Saturday, May 08, 2021

Four out of 80

Years of organizing work to get to point where there would be four schools out of the 80 charters in New Orleans where the staff are unionized. That is, if BAE is successful. 

The vote is set for May 28, according to the release issued by United Teachers of New Orleans, a citywide union and local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers that has helped the charter school educators organize.

Bricolage Academy Educators, collectively known as BAE-United, spent weeks petitioning the school's governing charter board to voluntarily recognize their union. 

Bricolage organizers have said 80% of eligible teachers and staff signed a petition in favor of organizing, and they submitted the request to the school's board of directors in late February.

Eighty percent of the staff signed up in advance of the vote is a good sign. It's only in the last few years that teachers have gained something like momentum in the long effort to overcome structural barriers to organizing imposed by the depowering and isolating nature of the charter arrangements. When New Orleans Public Schools made the big move to charters, it not only immediately fired 7,000 people, it set back the work of reclaiming power by at least a decade.  Four out of 80 would be better than three.  But there is so much left beyond that.