The three genders of medicine

I don't know what Clay is even talking about here but it sounds very inclusive and open minded so kudos for that. 

I have COVID, Becca has COVID, and my son has COVID. Becca and I had COVID early on, in January 2020, before the world really knew what it was. So, this is our second experience with the CCP biological attack weaponized virus ... and this episode is far more challenging. It has required all of my devoted energy.

"We are all under excellent care, and our prognosis is positive. We are very healthy generally speaking, and our treatment of any health concern always encompasses western, eastern, and holistic variables.

Please get vaccinated.  Even if that means you have to like, sing a mantra and drink a matcha smoothie or something while they give you the shot, please get your shots.

Age of vulgarity

What's sad here is there is a lost art of conveying a sense of our decadent stage of imperial capitalism through subtext.  Instead we just hit you right over the head with it so much that it becomes uninteresting.  

Like we've all just given up trying. 

Caesars and Saints executives said the scope of their partnership agreement goes beyond the naming rights deal. They said the plan is for additional joint investments that will use Caesars' leverage in the entertainment and sporting world to bring more events to the Superdome, as well as to enhance Champions Square as a venue.

"This will be their building for the next 20 years at least, so a big part of the discussion has been about how do we get some of the world class entertainment they have," said Saints President Dennis Lauscha. "How do we get some of the big boxing matches into New Orleans? How do we develop Champions Square to take it to another level from an entertainment standpoint? Those are really big investments that we're talking to them about making jointly."

Whose building? The one the people of Louisiana built and maintained for four decades?  The place we've invested not only our public money but our community pride, the place where we welcomed Popes and Presidents, hosted concerts, crowned athletic champions at every level, this worldwide symbol of our collective suffering as well as our (ugh hate to use the word) civic resilience; whose building is this, Dennis?

Please specify your emergency

Oh look some of the emergencies are officially ending. 

NEW ORLEANS — Mayor LaToya Cantrell has issued two separate declarations that terminated the state of emergency declarations for Tropical Storm Zeta in October 2020 and the cyber-security attack in December 2020, respectively.

Not sure but this might bring the total number of active emergencies back below the number of consent decrees in operation but I don't feel like doing the math.

Declaring victory

When you are loudly proclaiming the success of your very big program and that program, in reality, turns out not to be very successful, or even very big, then people are going to lose faith that anyone or anything is coming to help at all. That's the hole the Biden administration is digging now. 

“June Emergency Rental Assistance Resources to Households More Than All Previous Months Combined,” the headline blared, highlighting the more than $1.5 billion in payments delivered, and triple the number of households helped relative to April. It sounds like a real achievement if you don’t know the denominator; that is, the total amount of rental assistance Congress approved in relief bills last December and this March. That number is $46.5 billion, which means that the June total amounted to a little over 3 percent of available funds.

It’s a simple math equation to get to what Politico figured out, that in the first six months since rental assistance was made available, only 6.5 percent of the funds have been distributed. At this rate, the money would dribble out between now and 2028.

Renters don’t have that kind of time. Next Saturday, July 31, the federal moratorium on evictions expires, and the Biden administration opposes an extension. In a world where rental assistance is flowing and the economy booming, policymakers could rest easy that a spurt of evictions will not ensue. But that reality only exists on charts and unofficial estimates.

The first of the month is coming again.  (There's one every month!) And this one is gonna be a doozy. With seven million potential evictions hanging out there and a new COVID surge threatening lives and livelihoods, Biden opposes an extension of the eviction moratorium. Meanwhile states are rushing to cut off unemployment benefits early.* Joe Biden isn't doing anything to stop them. 

Biden and his team pushed back on the idea that the federal benefits were to blame for a sudden shortage of workers, but they quickly changed course, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki ultimately saying that Republican governors “have every right to” reject the pandemic unemployment money.

That's not the whole story: 22 governors decided they would stop paying the PUA assistance for self-employed workers. As Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., pointed out at the time, “Congress did not grant states the ability to strip PUA benefits away from vulnerable workers.”

Sanders told Biden’s Labor Secretary Marty Walsh that he had an obligation “to ensure this aid gets to workers.” Instead, an unnamed Biden administration official told CNN: “There is nothing we can do.”

There's nothing we can do, it's out of our hands, and the governors "have every right" to screw you over.  But aren't we doing a great job?  We delivered $1.5 billion in payments! If we didn't know better we might think they are actually trying to get people to give up hope.  But we know better. That can't possibly be what the goal is here. I mean it's not like they'd just up and "declare independence" from a pandemic even while it still rages out of control across the globe.  That wouldn't make any sense. 

*Including your very own state!

Did the babies get their bottle?

I mean it kind of depends.  Republican legislators didn't manage to overturn vetoes on either of the bills they targeted during the baby fit session. But like I said the other day, I was never sure that overriding the vetoes was the primary aim of this exercise. For many of them, I think the main purpose was to hold a rally and raise money off of their trademark brand of victimhood trolling.  All of that, they managed to accomplish.  And even though, there was a moment when we thought they might have ended up accidentally imprisoning themselves in the capitol indefinitely, the two day session was mostly a no-harm, no-foul event. 

Still, next year may be different. House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said in a statement yesterday that "veto sessions should be the norm from now on.”  Already, there is speculation about what that might mean for next year's redistricting battle.  Today the reporters on Twitter are mostly saying the failed overrides spell trouble for the Republicans there. Here is a pretty good sample of the consensus opinion.

Edwards ability to beat back any veto overrides has implications for the state’s political redistricting process coming up early next year. It makes it less likely that the Republicans in the Legislature will be able to redraw the state’s political districts without involving the Democratic governor. They now know it could be difficult to get enough votes to override a governor’s veto and cut the governor out of the political redistricting process completely. 

I'm not so sure that's what it means, though. At least it might mean they still have to negotiate. But the failure to override vetoes on two controversial bills facing headwinds from business groups and law enforcement doesn't necessarily mean they can't still go nuclear on a question of pure partisan politics. At the very least, they've now established that the threat exists. And that in and of itself is bound to affect the discussion next year.  Even if they can't prove the nuke isn't a dud.

The baby fit session

The first thing you need to understand about Republicans is they love government. They love it so much they are now calling everybody back to the big government building to do bonus governing. 

Louisiana lawmakers will return to Baton Rouge for an unprecedented session aimed at overriding the vetoes of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, after a majority of legislators signaled their intent to convene the veto session.

House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said in a statement Friday the Legislature will hold the first-ever veto session, which begins next week.

“In accordance with the Louisiana Constitution and the will of the majority of its members, the Legislature will return to Baton Rouge to consider overriding vetoes made by Governor Edward’s this session,” Schexnayder said. “This is democracy in action.”

Is it "democracy in action?" We have to trust that it is, I guess. The other thing we understand about Republicans is that they do love democracy. Which is why they passed bills like these that would have made the elections process more difficult and less accessible for thousands of Louisiana voters had the Governor not vetoed them. In the baby fit session, they could try and override either of those vetoes, or anything else from the list. But probably they will only focus on two. 

The first is Beth Mizell's obscenely cruel ban on trans high school students participating in sports. John Bel had some high minded phrasing in explanation of his veto. 

“As I have said repeatedly when asked about this bill, discrimination is not a Louisiana value, and this bill was a solution in search of a problem that simply does not exist in Louisiana,” Edwards said in a written statement Tuesday. “Even the author of the bill acknowledged throughout the legislative session that there wasn’t a single case where this was an issue.”

“It would make life more difficult for transgender children, who are some of the most vulnerable Louisianans when it comes to issues of mental health. We should be looking for more ways to unite rather than divide our citizens,” Edwards said.

All of that is true. However, I strongly suspect the Governor wouldn't care about any of it were it not for the economic incentive. 

New Orleans officials and tourism leaders have also warned that the legislation could spell trouble for Louisiana’s economy. Sports leagues have boycotted states over gay and transgender restrictions in recent years. The state — and particularly New Orleans — could also lose movie productions, concerts, business conventions and other regular tourism business over such a restriction. 

“[The bill] does present real problems in that it makes it more likely that NCAA and professional championships, like the 2022 Final Four, would not happen in our state,” Edwards said in his written statement about his veto Tuesday.

“They will have a negative impact,” said Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, a Republican official in charge of the state’s tourism efforts, when asked about the proposed transgender restrictions in April. “It would be better for us to open our doors very wide.”

Even Billy Nungesser is sufficiently motivated to let this bill die.  It's hard to imagine the entirety of the Republican caucus holding together to push it through. From the looks of things, there are barely enough of them there to override anything. That is if we can gauge according to where they stood on the question of even being there in the first place.

Of 105 House members, 69 did not send in ballots to cancel the veto session, meaning one short of two-thirds felt a veto session was necessary. In the Senate, 27 of 39 members, one more than two-thirds, signaled support for a veto session.

Maybe they are figuring on doing some arm twisting and favor trading once they all get in the room. But one would think that process would work against an override with real money on the line. 

The other main target of the baby fit is Edwards's veto of Jay Morris's carry-your-gun-around-wherever-you-want-as-a-security-blanket bill.  

Senate Bill 118, sponsored by Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe), would have amended Louisiana’s concealed carry permit law, which requires applicants to pass background checks and pass a nine-hour course that includes live-fire training in order to carry a concealed handgun in public spaces. Louisiana residents can already carry a gun openly in public — referred to as “open carry” — without any special permits as long as the firearm is in plain view. 

Again, though, the path to overriding this veto is not clear. Numerous political formations, including various law enforcement groups are urging lawmakers to let the veto stand.  Given the slim margins and given what looks to be strong political opposition to either of these overrides, one has to wonder what the babies are even having the baby fit session for in the first place.

It's not clear what they're doing there. But it is worth paying attention to what goes on. Even if neither of the marquee issues sees action, all of the governor's vetoes are in play. Maybe they'll pick something less controversial and override that just to see if they can.  Just in case that happens, various lobbying groups are already sending in suggestions.  The Jefferson Parish Chamber, for example, put out a press release today urging overrides in favor of a Barrow Peacock bill that would have imposed limitations on the kind of advertising lawyers can do.  They also are advocating for Rick Edmonds's bill that would have required school districts to share more information with the "Louisiana Checkbook" website.  Neither of those sounds particularly necessary but they're also just innocuous enough to squeak through if the legislators feel like they need to justify their decision to even be there for this.

They also make good test cases if something like this turns out to be the actual project which would also make sense to me.

Correct. Also, the end goal of the other side here is to be able to totally control redistricting. This is a test.

— Mandie Landry (@votelandry) July 16, 2021

What Representative Landry is talking about there is next year's looming fight over redrawing political boundaries based on the 2020 Census results. That promises to be a complex and acrimonious battle fought in several venues and the legislature's theoretical ability to override the Governor is certainly a weapon that could come into play.  The session we are about to see might just be a baby fit. But next year could bring massive convulsions.

The first of the month is coming again

There is one every month.  The next one is going to be a bloodbath.  

Courts across the country are reopening, but during the  pandemic lockdowns I spent more than a year watching landlords try to evict tenants in virtual hearings. These hearings went on, even with a federal eviction moratorium in place, one that is scheduled to end next month. 

I’d estimate that in about a quarter of the hearings I watched, the tenants  kept  freezing or lagging due to poor internet connections. Tenants without reliable internet access had to go to the courthouse in person and wait to argue their case in front of the court’s computer. Every day, poor people who were  behind on rent and didn’t  have internet access had to attend court in-person, during a pandemic, so they could  join a Zoom call and potentially be kicked out of their homes. Many of them didn’t even have a lawyer to help them through the hearing.

Next week in New Orleans is qualifying week for the upcoming municipal elections.  Rest assured not a single person filing to run for any of these offices gives a shit about the people who are about to be pushed out of the way so that real estate developers can run their "renaissance" such as the one Tyler Bridges is breathlessly celebrating in this article.  You can, however, scan this article up and down to find the names of the people who will be funding those campaigns. What is it they want permission to build and maintain? Game changers.

“The game changer was short-term rentals,” said Mohamed “Hammy” Halum, who, with his father, is one of the pioneers on Canal Street on the same block where the Hard Rock Hotel collapsed in 2019.

Dozens of short-term rental rooms have opened on Canal within the past year. Dozens more are planned in a change that is injecting life and economic vitality into the historic avenue.

“You’re centrally located a few blocks of where you want to be: the Superdome, the [Harrah’s] casino, Bourbon Street,” said developer Aaron Motwani, another pioneer along with his father, Kishore “Mike” Motwani.

The developments will likely have wider significance for New Orleans beyond just the old retail area.

“Canal Street is where Mardi Gras happens,” architect John Williams said. “All of our cultural events happen around Canal Street. Every sidewalk on Canal Street is 21 feet wide. It invites masses to be downtown. As Canal Street goes, so goes the city. It used to go that way, and I believe it will be that way again.”

"All of our cultural events.."  Whose cultural events?  Not "ours" so much. We don't actually live in the theme park you are building there anymore.

Whose idea was it to do the Separate But Equal Blvd scheme?

In this story we find the Toussaints saying they were approached by Jared Brossett about considering it at least. In response, Jared says that's not what he wants. Either way both sides seem to agree they did discuss the idea.

Alison Toussaint said Brossett suggested in April that the stretch of Robert E. Lee in his district could have one name, while the part in neighboring council District A could have another.

Brossett on Friday evening disputed that, saying he called Alison Toussaint to say he did not support the idea of two names for one street.

Allen Toussaint, who died in 2015, lived on Robert E. Lee Boulevard in Gentilly.

Reginald Toussaint said he viewed the idea of a street with two names as one that not only crossed political boundaries, but racial ones as well.

“We're not going to be involved in a street that's split in half by color,” he said.

Joe Giarrusso is also mentioned in the story and he spent some time yesterday on social media also denying that he has proposed splitting the street to the Toussaints. 

We first read about this plan to segregate the name of what we now call Robert E Lee Blvd back in January.  This article seems to say it came either from the Street Renaming Commission itself or from comments or suggestions submitted to it. 

The commission has also received recommendations to divide some of the more prominent streets, picking different names depending on the neighborhood - an idea with significant racial overtones. For example, the commission’s current recommendation is to rename Robert E. Lee Boulevard for musician Allen Toussaint, but an alternative would call it Toussaint in the Black neighborhoods of Gentilly and Hibernia or Lake Boulevard in the majority-white areas of Lakeview.

I scanned the Commission's final report and found only two public comments suggesting a "Hibernia Blvd."  Both of them seem to favor that name for the entire length.  One suggests putting Toussaint's name on nearby Leon C Simon Blvd instead. But I don't see anything about dividing Robert E Lee between its Lakeview and Gentilly sections. Doesn't mean it's not in there. Just means I couldn't find it putting what I thought were good search terms into CTRL-F. 

The suggestion could have come from lots of different places. But the "split the baby" approach does sound like something somebody either working for or talking to a city councilperson would try.  And it isn't hard to believe that Brossett and/or Giarrusso or their staff , once having received such a suggestion, would then mention it to stakeholders in discussion just to feel them out even if, as Jared claims, they do not explicitly endorse the plan.  (Note: Giarrusso maintains that he has not spoken to the family at all about this.)

In any case, since, according to the Toussaints, this is clearly still being talked about by somebody we should probably keep asking who that is.

The line is going back up again

LDH is reporting 853 new COVID cases in Louisiana today.  (42 in Orleans Parish) That is the biggest one day jump since February.  Most likely this is related to the spread of the more highly contagious "Delta" variant of the virus.  According to most of what we read, the available vaccines seem to protect you as well against the new variant so here is the LDH site with information on how to get your shots.  

If you are reading this, though, it's highly likely you've already been vaccinated.  The problem is, you are one of about only 35% of Louisianians who have been.  Which makes us one of the more vulnerable spots in the whole country right now. (On the bright side, your lotto odds are pretty good!) Add to that an entire regime of political leadership who have all but given up on protective public health measures in favor tourism promotion and "reopening" campaigns and you've got a recipe for disaster brewing. 

Hopefully it won't be that bad! But it's worrisome.

Property rights

At first glance it might seem at least a little bit insensitive of Kailas to even bring this up.  

The developers of the ill-fated Hard Rock Hotel have sued the city over a new measure that would restrict the height of future construction at the site of the building collapse, alleging that it’s a politically motivated ploy from City Council member Kristin Gisleson Palmer.

The developers say that lowering the maximum building height allowed at the site from 190 feet to 70 feet constitutes an illegal taking of their property, and they’re asking an Orleans Parish Civil District Court judge to declare a motion sponsored by Palmer null and void. 

After everything that happened here, the damage, the disruption, the cost, the injuries, the deaths, the exposure of the corrupt systems that underlie all of it, you'd think that the property owner doesn't  just say "my bad" and start over.  But we're so far off the edge of the map with regard to oligarchic late stage capitalism now that all the human questions about what should happen with that space now must take a back seat to the sacred "property" rights of people like Kailas to suck maximum value out of it.

Also he's probably just thinking the developers own their own judges now anyway. Might as well put that work. 

The developers’ preemptive lawsuit says that the process leading up to the June 3 vote was fatally flawed and that a judge should order it reversed. The lawsuit claims that an April report from the City Planning Commission cited only vague generalities about economic damage instead of specific violations of the city's comprehensive zoning ordinance.

The lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Jennifer Medley. The city declined to comment.

Well so much for that

It was a long shot but I was kind of hoping John Bel would veto this transportation carve out from the general fund.  They say there are little tricks and workarounds built into it to prevent this but in all likelihood, it will mean less money for schools and hospitals and a variety of state services down the.. um... road. 

Also, that "self-reporting" bill for polluting industry we wrote about on Wednesday, of course, he signed that too. The effects of the new law are still open to interpretation but this certainly seems like an invitation to let some rather bad events slide on technicalities. 

Bagert referred to records submitted to DEQ for several other accidents in which the actual levels of the pollution were either unknown or left off the record, prompting DEQ to accept it as a minor non-reportable incident. 

In one such case on May 8, the oil and gas company, Lobo Operating Inc., discovered one of its pipelines leaking into the waters of Breton Sound after someone noticed a sheen of oil on the surface. According to the document submitted to DEQ, the oil sheen was measured to be 10 feet wide by 2 miles long yet was deemed to be less than a half-gallon and below the reportable quantity. The report further indicated that the sheen escaped “beyond the incident location” and was unrecoverable.

Bagert said he is worried the public might no longer have access to these types of records if such accidents involving unknown quantities of released pollution are deemed minor events and accepted under the self-audit program. But he is optimistic after the governor’s office told him it would work with Together Louisiana on implementing the new DEQ regulations, Bagert said.

Anyway it's nice that they are "optimistic" now.  

Meanwhile, given that the Governor has gone ahead and signed bills like these that carry significant impacts toward meeting conservative priorities, you would think that Republicans would be pleased.  And, of course, you would be wrong about that. 

The babies are thinking about coming back into session for one more big baby fit. 

Senate President Page Cortez and other key lawmakers said Wednesday there is a growing likelihood Louisiana will hold its first session to debate whether to override gubernatorial vetoes.

The gathering would begin July 20 and could last until July 24.

Legislators typically cancel veto override sessions when a majority of the House or Senate – 53 and 20 respectively – cast ballots saying the session is not needed.

But Gov. John Bel Edwards' veto of several high-profile bills, and the possibility he may veto more, is boosting chances lawmakers will return to the State Capitol.

A list of the Governor's 28 vetoes and his reasons for issuing them can be found here.  Of the bills we are told are the most likely to spur a veto session, the transportation bill was the most substantive.  But John Bel signed that one so now if the baby fit happens it will be over the two most performatively stupid culture war items lawmakers wasted our time with this year.

One would allow anyone 21 years or older to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. The other would cruelly ban transgender high school students from participating in team sports. Both of those bills passes with theoretically "veto-proof" majorities. But that's not really a guarantee that the same legislators will vote again to override a veto.  The concealed carry bill is opposed by the normally quite powerful Sheriffs Association which could easily flip a few votes back.  For the trans students, well, let's hope at least some of these legislators won't actually vote to hurt these kids when they know the vote will actually count. 

But then we have not done well this year expecting this group to do the right thing in a moment of truth. There's always hope, one supposes.