What does "the economy" do?

David Dayen, writing in today's New York Times about generational supervillain Larry Summers, comes up with this concise little summary of US economic policy as espoused by both ruling parties over the past 50 years or so.

Mr. Summers was not especially novel in his preferences. He fit within an economist consensus that has largely governed the country since the late 1970s. The free trade consensus enabled corporate executives to chase cheap labor and centralize production. The just-in-time consensus pushed companies to only order what’s needed to pass on to customers, with inventories seen as unnecessary costs. The bigger-is-better consensus encouraged mergers and market dominance. The deregulatory consensus breaks worker power and greases the whole system. The Wall Street consensus lets investors dictate adherence to everything else, demanding ever-higher profits and returns that flow not into reinvestment but to them, in the forms of stock buybacks and dividends.

Suck the life out of workers all around the globe so that a very small class of asset owners can hoard the wealth that is extracted. The rest of this article is an explanation of how this strategy stretched itself thin and became vulnerable to real world "supply chain disruptions" caused by events like global pandemics and climate change. "Resilience" is a popular political buzzword these days but we do not use it to talk about becoming a more resilient society. Instead we mostly talk about "risk shifting" in order to keep the wheels of this machine greased by the blood of the poor.  

You don't even have to put your NYT down today in order to see that in action.  This, for example, is from another feature article. 

Poor nations are far more exposed to climate risks than rich countries. Between 2010 and 2020, droughts, floods and storms killed 15 times as many people in highly vulnerable countries, including those in Africa and Asia, as in the wealthiest countries, the report said.

That disparity has fueled a contentious debate: what the industrialized nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions owe developing countries. Low-income nations want financial help, both to defend against future threats and to compensate for damages they can’t avoid. The issue will be a focus when governments meet for the next United Nations climate summit in Egypt in November.

“Climate change is the ultimate injustice,” said Ani Dasgupta, the president of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. “People with the fewest resources, those least responsible for the climate crisis, bear the brunt of climate impacts.” He added, “If you don’t live in a hot spot, imagine instead a roof blown away, a village well overwhelmed by salt water, a failed crop, a job lost, a meal skipped — all at once, again and again.”

Too often, we write and think about these issues, the climate, the pandemic, even  "the economy" as unitary existential questions rather than the contentious political matters they actually are.  Political action is required to break the power of the wealth hoarding class and empower people to build a fairer society. Otherwise the status quo will cause millions to suffer ever more intensely. As Dayen writes, 

The bottom line is that a system without redundancy and flexibility, which assumes that the corporate executives who control it are doing everything in their power to prevent it from breaking, is simply unsustainable.

The shocks will only continue until we reverse course on this prevailing consensus. Democrats put their faith in an economics profession that is far too distant from on-the-ground realities to grasp the consequences of globalization, monopolization, financialization, deregulation, and just-in-time logistics. They failed to recognize how things could crumble because of the vulnerability they engineered.

No country can be perfectly self-sufficient; imports and shipping will still exist. But we can ensure some stability through bringing back manufacturing of critical goods to our shores, while maintaining productive capacity and strategic reserves. Public utility regulation can ensure smoother flow of goods, and competition policy can eliminate price gouging. And infrastructure investments like we’re currently embarking on can force open bottlenecks.

Economists will howl that losing efficiency will raise costs. Those words ring hollow in the face of the highest inflation in 40 years. Broken systems raise costs far faster than resilient ones.

"The economy" as it is currently designed seeks to isolate the wealthy few from the rising costs of "broken systems" by shifting those costs onto the shoulders of the many poor.  That is the first thing that has to change.  Simply put, we cannot have true resilience until we have justice.

Careful what you catch out there

Hope everyone is staying safe out there.  Happy to see that the COVID numbers are at their lowest point since the start of the Omicron wave.  Hopefully the closest you will come to catching COVID out there is if you get it in bead form like the above photo.  We've been doing our best to stay safe but we have been gathering in large crowds because how can you not.  That's still relatively low risk, or so we are given to understand. But just in case, maybe someone will throw us a few rapid tests in order to be sure. 

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - We all know that Carnival is known for catching unique throws and trinkets, but one crew has decided to make this year even more unique.

The New Orleans Health Department plans to hand out at-home rapid COVID-19 this Thursday at the Krewe of Muses parade. The at-home test will give you results in 15 minutes.

“We are excited to be part of the Krewe of Muses because we knew this would allow us to put more tests in the hands of our community,” said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, Director of NOHD. “If we want to participate in the activities we love at Carnival, we can’t let our guard down. COVID is not over yet, and we need to use every tool at our disposal to prevent a repeat of the tragedies of Mardi Gras 2020. Masking slows the spread, testing identifies cases and pandemic trends, and vaccines with boosters prevent hospitalizations and deaths.”

I didn't catch any rapid tests at Muses. I did get a krewe branded neck gaiter so, you know, every little bit helps.  

Anyway we're getting into the part of the year where I fall behind on getting my camera photos uploaded. But I did get a few with the phone last night.

Babylon was gorgeous. They did a fairy tales type theme. Here is their Golidlocks float. Kind of creepy, this one, actually.

 

Chaos is back... in more ways than one.

 

And, of course, the sight of this lantern after two years (actually three if you recall that Muses had to roll in the daytime because of the 2020 postponement) elicited a few goosebumps. 

As for the vibe check, it was mostly very good.  I'm trying to get an app on my phone that can detect vibes but until that gets invented, I just have video.

 

Also bonus video. This is the L.B. Landry band. 

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't perfect. There was a shooting along the route a few blocks down from us.  That hasn't happened at Muses since 2014. Previously there have been shootings during the Thursday parades in 2012 and 2004. In 2009 there was a shooting on Fat Tuesday so near to our place that we had to stay inside on a police-imposed "lockdown" for about an hour.  When these things happen it's ugly and horrifying and a reminder that real life is still going on around us and violence is a part of that. 

Anyway, once I get more photos uploaded (and tagged and described because yes that is still a thing I care about) I will try to post more stuff in between all the parading and doomscrolling which the times do in fact require one to do simultaneously. 

Did Sinclair buy WWLTV?

Yesterday morning we learned via the Times-Picayune that the conglomerate that owns Channel 4 has been bought by a private equity firm. 

Tegna Inc., owner of WWL-TV in New Orleans, its digital affiliate WUPL-TV and 63 other U.S. television stations, is being sold to a private equity firm in a deal valued at $8.6 billion, Tegna said Tuesday.

The buyer is Standard General L.P., which will take the publicly traded Tegna private.

"After evaluating this opportunity against Tegna's standalone prospects and other strategic alternatives, our board concluded that this transaction maximizes value for Tegna shareholders," Tegna Chairman Howard Elias said in a company statement.

“As long-term investors in the television broadcasting industry, we have a deep admiration for Tegna and the stations it operates and, in particular, for Tegna's talented employees and their commitment to serving their communities," Soo Kim, founding partner of Standard General, said in the statement.

This NY Post story says the deal might still be blocked by FCC because the combination of companies it involves could leave Standard General in possession of more than 39 percent of the nation's TV audience. But there are moving parts to that might get them back within compliance. Here is a Bloomberg article that goes into more detail.  

In 2020, Soo Kim acquired the Bally's casino brand partly in order to get in on the booming online sports betting business which, you may have noticed, pushes a lot of advertising and even straight up content through local media these days. He tells Bloomberg that he's going to fix "uncertainties" in the casino and media businesses by "injecting a level of technology and evolution."

“Bally’s and Tegna have one very common denominator, which is their core businesses throw off a lot of earnings today. Whether it’s gaming or TV, they’re both license driven and there’s limited competition in every market,” Kim said. “But both of them face a little bit of uncertainty due to the internet.”

Tegna shares were nearly flat Wednesday at $22.43 while shares in Bally’s were up 1.3% at $25.72. 

For Bally’s, it’s an aging customer base and online gaming, he said. For Tegna, it’s that those in the younger generation aren’t watching the 11 p.m. news the way their parents did, he said.

“So, how do these very strong but old franchises actually survive in the internet era?” Kim asked. “We think that injecting a level of technology and evolution into the business will be amazing.”

Can't wait to place all of my bets directly over the WWLTV app. 

Anyway, here is another detail about Kim's acquisition of Bally's. His partner is that deal was Sinclair Broadcasting. 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. and BALTIMORE, Nov. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Bally's Corporation (NYSE: BALY) and Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBGI) today announced that they have entered into agreements for a long-term strategic partnership that combines Bally's vertically integrated, proprietary sports betting technology and expansive market access footprint with Sinclair's premier portfolio of local broadcast stations and live regional sports networks ("RSNs"), STIRR, its popular Tennis Channel, and digital and over-the-air television network Stadium. Bally's and Sinclair will partner to create unrivaled sports gamification content on a national scale, positioning Bally's as the premier omni-channel gaming company with physical casinos and online sports betting and iGaming solutions united under a single brand. The transaction is expected to position Bally's to capture a significant share of the fast-growing U.S. sports betting and iGaming market.

This is how it came to be that fans of the New Orleans Pelicans watch games over a channel with the Bally's branding. (For now, anyway.) 

It's not clear to me what Sinclair's role in the Tegna deal is. But if it does mean the Tegna stations purchased by Kim are going to be run like Sinclair stations, that's not great news for local viewers. 

Critics have claimed that Sinclair — a company with close ties to the Trump administration and conservative politicians — is pushing its stations away from local coverage and toward a partisan brand of political reporting on national politics.

In new research, we find evidence that that appears to be the case. Stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.

New Orleans is traditionally a highly parochial market. And I mean that in a good way. People in New Orleans are generally very interested in New Orleans. They can spot phonies and don't take well to outsiders who get key things about them wrong. On the other hand, as we've noted repeatedly, the city has changed greatly over the past decade. Gentrification has physically displaced people and disrupted a generation of cultural reproduction.  We're not sure what the long term consequences of that will be but it does often feel like nobody actually lives in New Orleans anymore. At least, fewer New Orleanians live here now. 

Couple this phenomenon with the degradation of local news media that's occurred at the same time and it's hard to deny that New Orleans in 2022 is a smaller, less informed and less locally engaged city than it was before Newhouse started its fire sale at the T-P ten years ago. Maybe you really could just flip all the TV stations to Trumpist propaganda and no one would notice.   

Or maybe it's not as bad as all that and Kim's Tegna deal isn't really about Sinclair programming. Maybe we'll just get more gambling everywhere.

The basic AF King Cake recipe

We mentioned in today's long rambling post about Mardi Gras and rituals and whatnot that we would post our king cake recipe.  Therefore, here now, is that recipe. 

Bloom a package of yeast in ½ cup of warm milk (heated to about 100 - 110 degrees F) and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Combine  that mixture with 1 melted stick of butter, 2 eggs, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp nutmeg, lemon zest, a cap of vanilla extract and a cap of almond extract (or a dash of each... or of either... or however much you like, just don’t drink the whole bottle) and whisk. 

Add between 3 and 3 ½ cups of flour and stir until it comes together into a dough. If you have a stand mixer, then do whatever you do with those. I don’t have one so I kneaded the dough by hand for about 10 minutes. Form the dough into a ball and place in a greased bowl to rise for an hour. It looks like this when you start.

And then an hour later it looks like this.  

Yes, it did actually rise. Seriously, don't worry about it. It's fine. 

Anyway, while your dough is seriously, actually rising, you can make the basic AF king cake filling.  To do that you will combine   ⅔ cup of packed brown sugar, ½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp nutmeg, and ¼ tsp salt and mix it with 4 tablespoons of melted butter to form a paste.

Turn out your actually risen dough and roll it into a 10 inch by 24 inch rectangle (because this is roughly the size of my cutting board) It should also be about ¼ to ½ inch thick. Get a pizza wheel and split it in half long way across the middle.  Paste the filling over each half leaving a bit of space toward the edge.  It will look like this. 

Yes, I know that is not exactly a rectangle. Again, it's fine.

 

Next, roll each half up (again longways) into tubes.  I suppose you could cut and roll three tubes if you are fancy which I am not. 

Braid the two (or three for fancy people) tubes and form them into a ring. Like this but less clumsily.

Cover and let it rise again for about an hour.  It should just about double in si... LOOK IT ROSE, OKAY? Seriously, it is fine. Do not get worried if you think this is not rising as much as you think it should. You are doing fine and should worry less in general. 

 

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes. Set it out on a rack to cool.  Look at that. It blew up real good in the oven. Nothing to worry about. And you were worried.

 

There’s a bunch of ways you can ice and decorate this thing. You can make a lot of icing or a little bit or none at all. You can use the big sprinkles or the colored sugar or neither. Whatever you want. But you have to put something on it or it will just look like a big naked cinnamon roll. 

 

I made mine look like a second grade art project by mixing three separate bowls of icing and dying them in Mardi Gras colors. Each bowl was about ½ cup of powdered sugar, at least a tablespoon of milk (actually more milk than that but only add a tablespoon at a time until you get the consistency right), and a dash of vanilla extract. Slather all of that stuff on there while alternating the colors and voila.

 

Oh almost forgot. You will want to hide a baby in there somewhere.  The odds are pretty high anybody reading this, especially this time of year, already has at least one king cake baby in their home somewhere. You just have to look around a bit. Shouldn't be too hard.

What's exploding now?

It's really hard to keep up.  I still don't think they ever figured out what the January 25th "loud boom" was. Maybe they never will. 

We know where this one came from. 

GARYVILLE — A huge Louisiana refinery was rocked by an explosion and fire Monday. Marathon Petroleum Corp. said six workers suffered minor injuries.

Officials later gave the all-clear sign, but it was not immediately clear what caused the morning blast at the Marathon Petroleum Corp. plant in Garyville, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Six contract workers were injured, Marathon spokesperson Joe Gannon said in an emailed statement. He said three were treated at the plant and three were treated and released at a health care facility where they were taken as a precaution.

 

A little bit of fun's never been an insurrection

 

We are parking according to our own individual levels of risk aversion this year

These signs were eventually explained by the mayor, btw. Good luck figuring out what she means

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of rituals lately.  Actually let's call "lately" the last couple of years. Beginning around the time of 2020's Carnival of bad vibes and portents, and then throughout everything that followed that time, I think we've probably all become a bit more introspective spiritually.  Early on during that season, probably the first Sunday, (I have foggy memories) I received a talisman.

Surely the appearance of the jaguar, our city's adopted avatar of defiance in the face of oppression, was a sign.  Our spirit animal had come to give us strength in trying times. As it turned out we would need it. Carnival 2020 was a difficult tumult of bad scenes and bad vibes that played out under the shadow of a crumbled Hard Rock hotel, the husk of which still held the remains of victims trapped by its collapse. Throughout the season, the universe seemed to be signaling its disapproval.  The chaotic weather caused controversial cancellations and reschedulings of some of the season's main events. Not one but two parade goers were shockingly crushed to death by floats. The city was headed for a major reckoning over these events before the pandemic drew everyone's attention to even worse problems. 

I kept the jaguar around my neck through all of that.  Did it help?  Maybe. Valerio didn't stop the bad things from happening.  But that isn't how talismans work. Their magic is not so profane. We keep them close and observe their rituals for a higher purpose. They are objects of contemplation, inspiration or humiliation if necessary. The fable of Valerio is about our will to freedom and a warning of what happens when we are unprepared to win it. It also tells us that tragedies and ecstasies travel in each other's wake.  On Thoth Sunday, 2020, my bike ride back uptown after getting off the float took me through the Quarter. I go the long way around so that I don't have to cross over the parade route during Bacchus. As I passed near the Hard Rock sarcophagus, I stopped, clasped the jaguar figure around my neck and gave it a kiss.  The bad vibes Carnival 2020 was about wind down.  A few days later we would close it out watching a Rex parade titled "Omens and Auguries." 

Whatever it was we may have done wrong in 2020, the pandemic has forced us to wait a full two years before we've had a chance to break the spell. I have decided to treat this Carnival as more of a sacrament than a party. If we do it correctly, there will no doubt be some room for joy. But the fundamental focus is on performing the rituals. For me, thus far, this has meant paying homage to parade season's iconic totems as they roll down the street. I have dutifully visited and genuflected before the following:

 

 The Phunny Phorty Phellows streetcar

 

 

 

The fabulous Krewe Du Vieux

 

 

 

The enigmatic AllaGator 

 

 

 

The majestic Sparta helmet

 

 

 

And the mighty Pygmammoth

 

 

I have heard the rapturous sounds of the Southern University Marching Band leading the Krewe of Femme Fatale on a Sunday morning. I have been greeted by King Arthur.  I have taken communion a few times over in the form of consecrated moonpies handed down from the deacon riders.  I've met Elvis.

I even made my own king cake. 

 

 

A little bit, uh.. rustic looking, I guess. But home baking is more about the meditative process than it is about style. I'd never done this before and this seemed like the year to try. It's a simple recipe I can post it later. [Update: There it is!] The result wasn't as light and fluffy as your Gambino's or Randazzo's or what have you. But it also wasn't as dense and bready as Rouses so I think that's a success. And if we happened to exorcise any demons in the process, well, that's all the better.  There are still plenty more to face.  

 

The pall cast over 2020 still hasn't been satisfactorily vanquished. We never got to have the promised citywide discussion about parade safety. Instead the mayor and the police have made the summary decision to shorten most of the routes. The new routes emphasize only the most tourist-intensive parts of town and have been described as "ruinous for locals."

Many krewe members and parade goers said they have emailed and continue to email City Hall to request that their neighborhood parade continue without change.

“This whole plan is ruinous regarding Carnival for local residents and families,” said Richard Parisi, who has watched Thoth line up near his house for over 40 years. “Thoth is for locals more than for visitors — and this arrangement is going to ruin that.”

The Krewe of Thoth originally did not parade to Canal Street, Larson said. It was solely an Uptown parade until the early 1960s, when Mayor Chep Morrison requested the krewe extend its route to pass in front of his newly built City Hall.

Now, Larson said, the krewe is willing to go back to its roots and give up the downtown part of the route to keep Thoth on Henry Clay.

The city didn't take Thoth's offer to trade the downtown part of its route in order to keep its traditional pass in front of Children's Hospital and other uptown homes for "shut-ins."  No explanation was given.  Nor was it explained why similar favors were granted to Zulu and to Endymion each of which was allowed to maintain the unique traditional portions of their routes with minimal changes near downtown. Although, one could argue, in Endymion's case, that cutting out the Howard Avenue portion just makes sense given that it would take the parade by the troubled Plaza Tower. Why take the chance of anyone even having to think about a collapsing building during Mardi Gras this time around.  

It has been suggested by apologists for Cantrell and NOPD that the route changes are temporary. But there is little evidence for that in the actual statements made by either of them.

Officials stressed that these changes are temporary but did not say how much additional manpower the city would need to go back to the original routes.  

“If that traditional spot that you’re used to being on … has changed this year, just know that we will consider that again coming for 2023 and future parade years to come,” Police Chief Shaun Ferguson said. “But we must be real with what we have right now and work with the capacity in which we can to make sure that the city is safe.”

Meanwhile, the fix for 2020's other lingering issue could hardly feel any more temporary, or at least thrown together for the sake of expedience. The plan for avoiding a repeat of the horrific accidents that killed two parade goers last time out is to simply slap a little piece of netting along the gaps between tandem floats. 

In an interview earlier Wednesday, float builder Barry Kern said a City Hall representative asked him several months ago to design something to make tandem Mardi Gras floats safer. Kern, CEO and president of Mardi Gras World and Kern Studios, said he’s conceived a device that is “basically like a cargo net” strung between float segments on “heavy duty bungee cords.” The device, which is still being designed, will be translucent, flexible and “not super complicated,” he said.

Look, I really hope Kern's "not super complicated" solution is the right fit. I wasn't too happy with some of the more draconian ideas floated earlier such as barricading the entire route or having escorts walk along the floats to shoo people away. This idea preserves the experience much better. But is it actually any safer?  I saw a few of these over the weekend and I can see why some might doubt it. 

Probably the bright orange netting seen here during Cleopatra on Friday night...

 

 ...is a little bit better than the all black netting seen here during Sparta on Saturday night. 

At least at night, anyway.  Day or night, the thought also occurred to me that the netting might actually make the floats into more of a hazard if someone happened to get caught up in it.  Maybe that's unlikely.  I don't know. Just don't go tugging on it or trying to climb around like Spiderman while you're out there. I'll sleep better knowing you didn't. 

Anyway, that only covers matters of bad vibes left over from early 2020.  Since that time, new disturbances have arisen.  For example, one question on everyone's mind now: is there even such a thing as an ex-superkrewe? Or maybe the term is ex-so-called superkrewe.  We need a new word for this, whatever it is. 

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - This year will look different for the Mystic Krewe of NYX.

“We are rebuilding our sisterhood. We’re very excited about having a smaller group to just rebuild and restart and reconnect with each other,” said Julie Lea, Captain of NYX.

The dramatic decline in membership came after a controversial social media post by Lea at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Some NYX members even staged a protest, calling for her to resign.

In 2021, former riders sued Lea in civil district court claiming a list of accusations including improper use of krewe funds. Her attorney denied those allegations.

Take a spin through our archives following the NYXcapades over the years and ask us if we could possibly have seen anything like this coming.  NYX always struck us as some kind of scam. The overt racism is really just the last straw. Of course, one of the things you do learn in the multi-level marketing game is that, sometimes losing 3,000 of your nearest and dearest suckers is really the best thing that could happen to you.  At least that's what Julie says. 

In 2020, NYX staged its largest parade ever with 82 floats and 3,400 riders.

For 2022, the krewe will present 17 floats with 240 riders.

“It is a big change,” said Lea. “And I think what we’re finding just moving forward is, again, those personal connections. When you’re over 3,000... 3,400, it’s very hard to make the personal connections.”

“Even though we did it, and everyone was very friendly with each other, it was hard to get to know folks on a one-on-one.”

Really looking forward to making a few one-on-one connections with the NYX rump this Wednesday.  They're rolling with 7 percent of the folks they brought along on their last parade but the odds that any one of them might throw you a confederate flag have skyrocketed. 

As the newly self-appointed spiritual adviser to Carnival 2022, my guidance to you, in case this does happen, is to just let it drop.  Kick it away if you have to, like the woman at Gallier Hall says she did in this story. But if you happen to catch any confederate flags or "Lee Circle" beads or anything like that what you should not do is post them. Do not put them on Instagram and tag the mayor in for comment. Do not call Doug MacCash to manufacture some cheap NOLAdotcom content out of it. These are evil talismans. They are anti-Valerio. Cycling them up through the media only gives power to them and to the trolls who choose to wield them.  Just look at the curses already conjured by their cult.

Co-chair James Reiss III, a representative of the Rex organization, warned against the tossing of "illegal/political” throws, perhaps heading off incidents of recent years such as distributing Confederate flag beads or beads advocating the preservation of the Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans.

Reiss cautioned against the overly enthusiastic tossing of throws at the Gallier Hall reviewing stand, where visiting VIPs gather. And he said bands should pause to perform at Gallier Hall for only 30 seconds.

Have we ever seen anything like this before?  In over a hundred years of these style of parades have we ever had an official warning from the city government (well, it's James Reiss so it's from the shadow government but close enough) that the "VIP"s are worried about being beaned by "overly enthusiastic" float riders? This is bad vibes all around.  The antagonists on either side of it feed off of each other. 

Again, my advice, don't look at it, Marion. The only revelation to be found is destruction.  I mean, I don't think anyone ought to throw confederate flag beads either. But "political" can mean a lot of things. You see a lot of political commentary at Mardi Gras. There is political satire from the left (well, center-left anyway) in Krewe du Vieux or from the right in Chaos and Krewe D'etat. Muses is often politically themed although played straight down the conventional center for the most part.  You can agree or disagree with or be amused or offended by any of that. But what you really do not want is the likes of James Reiss deciding for you what kind of political is and isn't acceptable. 

There is an inherent politics in Carnival. But its appeal is more universalist than partisan.  Carnival rituals, most of the time, end up reinforcing existing hierarchies through the absurdist pantomime of their inversion. But they also serve to stoke the imagination and maintain the idea that subversion is achievable. In an early chapter of the recently published The Dawn of Everything the late anthropologist David  Graeber and his co-author the archaeologist David Wengrow have this to say about Carnivalistic traditions.

What's really important about such festivals is that they kept the old spark of political self-consciousness alive. They allowed people to imagine that other arrangements are feasible, even for society as a whole, since it was always possible to fantasize about carnival bursting its seams and becoming the new reality. In the popular Babylonian story of Semiramis, the eponymous servant girl convinces the Assyrian king to let her be "Queen for a Day" during some annual festival, promptly has him arrested, declares herself empress, and leads her new armies to conquer the world. May Day came to be chosen as the date for the international workers' holiday largely because so many British peasant revolts had historically begun on that riotous festival. Villagers who played at "turning the world upside" would periodically decide they actually preferred the world upside down, and took measures to keep it that way.

Carnival offers people a dream of a different world. These are rituals of hope. There is something political buried in them but it is politics of a deep spiritual nature. The city's attempts to restrain it, over-police it, and reduce it to a wholly commercial product are an act of sacrilegious political repression. They're a strike at the civic soul. 

How do we defend ourselves from this kind of spiritual warfare?  Well we have our mantra supplied by the (occasionally lapsed) priest Arthur Hardy. Every year his Mardi Gras bible publishes the same Mardi Gras FAQ. Our favorite call and response verse:

Q: Is Mardi Gras staged for visitors?

A: Not really. While the "greatest free show on earth" draws hundreds of thousands of visitors, that is not its purpose. Mardi Gras is a party the city throws for itself.

We have our Sentinel supplied this year by the artist Simone Leigh. This is her Prospect 5 installation at the circle we once named after Robert E Lee.

The text below the sculpture reads:
 

Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture Sentinel (Mami Wata) is sited at the base of the pedestal that once held a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The title of this work means “guard” or “watchman,” and it honors the work done by activists, citizens, and New Orleans city officials to remove symbols of white supremacy from public view, while also suggesting the possibility for a new protective spirit at this central downtown location. Sentinel (Mami Wata) takes the diversity of African cultures in New Orleans as a starting point, evoking African folklore and spiritualities. Mami Wata, a water spirit or deity, is known under many names across the African diaspora, including Yemaya, Yemoja, and Iemanja. Leigh’s sculpture holds forms of knowledge that have been passed down through spiritual and masking traditions in the city and beyond, wherein masking signifies transformation, not simply concealment.

Celebrating rituals and practices throughout the African diaspora that includes New Orleans, Sentinel (Mami Wata) marks a new chapter in the history of the renamed Egalité Circle, wherein the site represents one point in a larger constellation of public art, conversation, and historical memory. This constellation decenters whiteness and the legacies of colonialism, renewing access to knowledge and culture that has been suppressed by the falsehoods of white supremacy. Rather than perched atop the imposing multistory column that served as the pedestal for the Lee monument, this new work of art sits at ground level, not looming over people but emerging from among us. Leigh's sculpture is a temporary proposal for what could stand in the place of the previous monument—Sentinel (Mami Wata) will remain at Egalité Circle for a brief period before making space for other histories and narratives.

And, of course, we have our patron St. Valerio. Ready as ever to guide us through another ordeal as we solemnly seek to purge the demons of past seasons of misrule.

Putting St. Valerio out in the kitchen to protect our home from bad vibes this Carnival season pic.twitter.com/sPvLexCUPL

— skooks (@skooks) February 18, 2022

 It's Carnival time again. Meet me on the other side, another direction.

What is going on in Algiers?

The city councilmembers are in a bind this week as they have to scramble to complete their decennial redistricting process during the thick of the Mardi Gras season.  If they don't finish by March 16, they forfeit the whole gambit to the university presidents and nobody wants that. 

The council's website has information about the compressed timeline and links to an "engagement portal" where you can submit comments and even draw up your own maps if you want to get super geeky about it. You can watch their consultants run through a training on the software in this video. But hurry. The "draft" maps are supposed to be up and ready by the middle of this week. Presumably the debate from that point on will be about picking which of those to approve. (Although maybe not. This stuff can get super improvisational toward the deadline.) 

Today, the T-P explains the preeminent issue in play.  Basically, over the past 10 years District D (currently held by Eugene Green) has gained significant population while District C (Freddie King) has lost a lot. Like a whole lot of people, actually.

District C lost more than 3,000 residents, with about 70% of those losses coming in Algiers, while District D grew almost everywhere; St. Bernard, Filmore, Dillard and several other neighborhoods gained more than 1,000 residents.

Wow what has been going on in Algiers? When I first saw these census numbers, I thought they might be due to the hollowing out of Bywater and Marigny by short term rentals. But, no, people are getting the heck out of Algiers for some reason. Curious to know more about that.

Why don't cops want to work?

Even in the year 2022, after all of these past several years of protest and upheaval, it is still true that the police will just up and kill you in an instant. 

Jefferson Parish deputies shot and killed a man in Marrero early Wednesday after they say he refused to get out of a vehicle.

Deputies responded to a 911 call to the 500 block of Wilson Street in Marrero at 2:15 a.m., according to a written statement from JPSO, which did did not offer any details about the nature of the call.

As they were investigating, the statement said, they encountered a man who was inside a vehicle and "refused lawful commands to exit the vehicle," they said.

For the heinous crime of remaining seated, they will just shoot you to death and nobody will stop them from doing it again and again.   They might also be stealing your car (or at least working with someone who does.) It's happened before. Any decent person would expect there to be a political movement afoot to rein in this terrifying behavior. But that movement has largely exhausted itself and, as a man once famously said, decent people shouldn't live here. 

Instead, we are subjected to a 24/7 crime panic bombardment across all media where the loudest demand is that the police be given even more liberty than they already have to destroy lives at will. If we do not allow them to do this, the argument seems to ask, what incentive do they really have to do any work whatsoever?

On Saturday, the Times-Picayune took a closer look at the much discussed NOPD "manpower shortage" and found that, at 1,069 officers, the department is currently at its lowest staffing level since the 1960s.  What the article doesn't say is that the city's population as of the 2020 census is down from 1960 by about a quarter of a million people which might put that in a little bit better perspective.  An infographic included in the article notes that the pre-Katrina 2005 NOPD was staffed at 1,730 and has never regained that number since. But, again, neither has the city returned to its pre-K population figure of 484,674.  The 2020 census pegs New Orleans at 383,997.  A 38 percent decline in police staffing, while significant, is not so out of step with a 20 percent decline in overall population as to be unmanageable. 

We also know that mere numbers don't tell the full story of the demographic upheaval visited on New Orleans over the past decade or so. Gentrification, displacement, wholesale demolition of public housing, and the scourge of short term rentals have greatly altered the distribution of New Orleanians and the nature of life in their neighborhoods. Sometimes it can even feel as though nobody actually lives here at all.

Given all of that, is a thousand cop force is even necessary in the first place? Police don't prevent crime. They respond to certain kinds of crime committed by certain kinds of people after the fact. But their mere presence does not automatically make a city any safer. The Times-Pic article picks up on this point, in fact. But in doing so, it raises another issue.

Whether more cops would mean less crime is doubtful, experts caution. But the mounting losses and their impact on Carnival season and response times have begun to lay bare the city’s reliance on police officers to do work that many seem to no longer want.

Over the last couple of weeks, early Carnival parades like Chewbacchus and Krewe du Vieux have seen their routes cut and then cut again on short notice as police have refused to show up for these "volunteer" assignments.  Between that and other high profile refusals of service, it's not a stretch to suggest this is a deliberate and strategic work stoppage as the police lobby for more money. Not that they have to put too much effort into that. The city seems more than willing to bend over backward for them.  Maybe they just have better things to do right now. 

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Five New Orleans police officers have received target letters from the federal government regarding possible violations of criminal laws, sources tell FOX 8.

The letters come after FOX 8′s series of investigations looking into NOPD officers potentially double-dipping and one officer racing cars while on the clock. On 20 different days, FOX 8 found NOPD Sergeant Todd Morrell racing cars, while the police department paid him to be on the clock.

That included a day when video showed him at NOLA Motorsports on the West Bank, where he raced three times while also claiming he worked a 12-hour NOPD detail shift patrolling the fairgrounds neighborhood on the other side of the river.

And, look, NOPD need to get their thrills in somewhere.  According to one disgruntled cop interviewed for that T-P feature, the job itself is just too boring these days.

For one officer who left the NOPD last year, the grass was greener on the north shore despite what he described as a significant pay cut. He’d joined NOPD in 2019 after serving as a jailer in Mississippi, and patrolled in the department's 6th and 7th districts.  

“If I was going to be a policeman, I wanted to be in the city where you’d get all the crime,” said the officer, who declined to be identified out of concern for his new job.

But the officer said restrictions under the federal consent decree that governs reforms to the NOPD, along with what many officers perceive as draconian discipline by the department's Public Integrity Bureau, set his sights elsewhere.

As we've already said, police do not prevent crime. Police get called out when certain kinds of crimes happen. This guy understands the job description. He says he "wanted to be in the city where you'd get all the crime" so he'd be going out on a lot of these calls. Evidently, he also has ideas about what he's supposed to do when he gets there. But NOPD is operating under a federal consent decree which monitors their actions until such time as they can be demonstrated to be minimally compliant with the US Constitution. It's trouble getting over that bar in particular that drove this particular cop off of the force. I mean, imagine the indignity...

“Somebody said it best: ‘I’m pretty much a secretary with a gun,’” he said of the NOPD. “All I do is take reports. If you mess up and (the Public Integrity Bureau) gets involved, you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent.”

Our secretary friend here would prefer to be firing the gun at people, apparently. Somebody has to do it. It's practically a natural law.  But the grievances do not stop there. 

The former officer noted tight restrictions on vehicle chases and warrantless searches. He pointed to one incident that he said grounded his decision.

“I was on I-10 going towards Slidell, right past Michoud, and some guy in an older Cadillac was going 80 mph. I tried to stop him, he slows down to 60, I get in the middle lane to look at him, he ends up flipping me the bird and keeps driving,” he said. “By policy, I can’t chase him. I had to turn my lights off and watch this guy ride.”

Can't violate the 4th Amendment. Can't use his car to cause whatever havoc and death the gun won't do.  And they flipped him off too?  My word, the indignity.  No wonder nobody wants these jobs anymore.

The pace of evolving expectations

A Krewe du Vieux sub-krewe of TOKIN float sports the mock Entergy slogan "We're not happy until you're not happy"

 

So a few weeks ago, when we last mentioned that we wanted to do more posts, we were reminiscing about the fast one Walt Leger and LaToya Cantrell pulled on everybody when their so called "fair share" legislation actually empowered the tourism moguls to steal public money under the false pretense of funding infrastructure. Since then (on that very day, in fact) another, and similarly dubious, infrastructure deal was collapsing.

This story stretches back to last summer when the city announced a deal with Entergy whereby the utility would finance construction of a new substation supposed to create more reliable power generation for pumps operated by the Sewerage and Water Board. The announcement came right about the time of the mayor's reelection campaign launch. Her campaign twitter account hailed it as "Promises kept." But, now, we learn that Entergy has broken its part of that promise. 

Entergy said in a prepared statement on Monday that it could not afford its portion of the $74 million deal, at least for now. That could change if “financial stability is restored,” the statement said.

Under the terms of a deal announced last June, the city was set to kick in $22 million from a bond issue to pay for frequency changers that convert Entergy power to an older standard compatible with the city’s pumps. State construction financing would contribute more than $20 million to the project, with Entergy handling the rest.

Entergy originally only committed to $34 million up front.  But even that wasn't really a plan to spend their own money.  

The $74 million will come from three different sources. The initial $34 million investment to build the substation will come from Entergy. The Sewerage and Water Board will then pay Entergy back for that investment over time.

So what they are saying right now is they are too cash poor to just raise the upfront capital?  $34 million? That doesn't sound right.  What could have happened between June and now to cause this highly profitable mega-corporation to suddenly not have $34 million to throw at something? And don't say Hurricane Ida, you frauds....  

Oh dammit.. 

Entergy said the cost of repairing its own system from Hurricane Ida damage made fronting the money too difficult right now.

“Entergy New Orleans was discussing the unusual step of financing a substation for the S&WB given its financial condition,” Entergy spokeswoman Lee Sabatini said. “Subsequent to those initial negotiations, Hurricane Ida hit Entergy New Orleans’ service area, which further strained the company’s own financial condition by having to fund large amounts of storm costs with uncertainty around the timing and mechanism to recover those costs.”

Oh no Ida ate up all the money.  Hey, did Entergy still manage to pay out huge sums to shareholders in dividends and buybacks after Ida? Do we even have to ask?

Last month, Entergy New Orleans revealed it was pulling funding from a vital city project to shore up the city’s flood defenses. Citing the massive cost of recovering from Hurricane Ida, the company said it could no longer fulfill its commitment to loan $30 million to the Sewerage and Water Board.

Four days later, the utility’s parent company, Entergy Corp. announced quarterly shareholder dividend payments at $1.01 per share, totaling $202 million. 

The two announcements, side by side, are indicative of what several utility experts told The Lens is a broader trend for Entergy, and for utility monopolies across the country — insulating shareholders from risk and shifting the burden to customers.

Incredible. Why on earth would Entergy prioritize parasitic profit taking over the service needs of the ratepayers from whom those profits are extracted? Well, see, that's actually how it's supposed to work. 

Like other utility companies, Entergy stock doesn’t offer investors big growth potential. To make up for it, the company dedicates a huge portion of its annual earnings — over 60 percent on average — to ensure its quarterly shareholder payments remain steady and predictable. In a statement, an Entergy spokesperson said that keeping the dividend high and protecting the stock price also benefits customers by making it cheaper for the company to raise cash for infrastructure investments.

See?  Keep the stockholders nice and happy and they will reward you with "infrastructure investments."  Like, for example, the new substation that will... wait a minute.... 

Well anyway it's complicated. You just keep paying your bill. Whatever amount it says on there.

According to the presentation, Entergy New Orleans boasts a 99.1 percent accuracy rate on bills. Leslie Dennis, who works in Entergy’s billing department, said that the company would try to get that number even higher by expanding auditing and improving staff training. 

“We recognize we may have some human performance errors,” Dennis said. 

But the presentation stopped short of explaining, beyond the issue of accuracy, whether customer bills are actually rising. Sandra Diggs-Miller, Entergy New Orleans’ vice president of customer service, implied that recent customer complaints about high bills have more to do with rising expectations, rather than rising bills. 

“We recognize that our customers’ expectations are evolving at a pace that admittedly outpaces the level of engagement we’re providing as a company. The billing complaints we’ve seen are certainly a byproduct of that.”

It is time to get your expectations back down to a reasonable pace that Entergy can keep up with. In other words, try and be more like the New Orleans city council. Already they have adjusted their expectations all the way back down so far that they are ready to subsidize Entergy's shareholder bonanza by spending COVID relief funds allocated to the city by the American Rescue Plan.  

Thursday’s measures still have to be passed by the full City Council. At Thursday’s budget committee* meeting, Councilwoman Helena Moreno said the new funding presents an even better deal than the original plan. She pointed out that under the financing plan in the original proposal, the Sewerage and Water Board would have to pay Entergy back $85 million over 15 years. 

“This to me is a no-brainer,” Moreno said. “If we look at this project, and compare it to the original deal that we had with Entergy, this is actually much more beneficial to the Sewerage and Water Board.”

There is some apprehension, however, from Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration. While the administration says it’s supportive of using federal funds for the substation, it had concerns about the exact financing model proposed by the council.

The Cantrell administration is non-committal because they are trying to use the ARP money to hire more cops which is probably a worse idea than covering for Entergy.  But that still doesn't make Helena Moreno's proposal a "no-brainer." It's true what she says there about the original plan requiring SWB to pay Entergy back over time.  That was one of our first complaints, in fact, back when the scheme was announced last year. But I don't think we should let any of that distract from the fact that we are still using public money to subsidize a ka-billion dollar private utility company specifically in order for it to continue paying out as much cash to its shareholders as possible.  There is something fundamentally very wrong with that. And it's not just a matter of one local dispute over powering our antiquated pumps. Instead it is one small manifestation of a larger trend in public-private finance. 

Here is a short article published in November by the economist Daniela Gabor.  She is writing about the finance discussions at the COP26 international climate conference held in Glasgow last year. The thrust of the analysis is that central banks and governments have backed away from taking the necessary aggressive steps to mitigate climate change and instead turned the very fate of the planet over to private finance.

The macrofinancial politics of COP26 should be understood as status-quo financial capitalism now entering its green age. Day three of the Conference of the Parties was Finance Day, rather than green public investment day, because of the growing political consensus in the Global North that decarbonization must be finance-led. In a 2021 paper, I termed this the Wall Street Consensus. If the Washington Consensus had its most articulate ambassador in economist John Williamson, the Wall Street Consensus has Mark Carney, the head of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the UN Special Envoy for Climate Finance, and the intellectual author of the green turn in central banking.

GFANZ gave COP26 its big decarbonization number: USD 130 trillion “relentlessly, ruthlessly focused on net zero.” To put that number in perspective, at COP26 rich countries failed again to honor their pledge for USD 100 billion per year in climate finance for poor countries. There was greenwashing even in the headline number, since USD 130 trillion was not the estimated credit flow about to inundate green sectors, but rather the combined assets under management of GFANZ members, many issued to finance dirty activities. 

But those USD 130 trillion would not find their way into climate-friendly activities, GFANZ members like BlackRock’s Larry Fink argued, without a little help. Of course, Larry Fink was not calling for mandatory decarbonization, but for public policy and private firms to work together on climate in the same way that they worked together on vaccines. John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, translated such calls for public-private partnerships into Wall Street Consensus lingo: “Blend the finance, de-risk the investment, and create the capacity to have bankable deals. That’s doable for water, it’s doable for electricity, it’s doable for transportation.” 

This is the Wall Street Consensus mantra: the state and development aid, including multilateral development banks, should escort the trillions managed by private finance into climate or the Sustainable Development Goals asset classes. The state derisks or “blends” by using public resources (official aid or local fiscal revenues) to align the risk-return profile of those assets (“bankable projects”) with investor preferences or mandates. Transforming climate or nature into asset classes necessitates the commodification and financialization of public goods and social infrastructure, beyond water, electricity and transportation, and including housing, education, healthcare; these have to generate cash flows that pay institutional investors. The consensus understands the state as a derisking agent: its fiscal arm enters public-private partnerships to render them bankable by transferring some of the risks to the balance sheet of the sovereign, while its monetary arm protects investors from liquidity and exchange rate risk. 

Reading through that one begins to see the ideology reflected in our local government's willingness to use federal funds of which it is a steward not for their ostensible purpose of building sustainable infrastructure but instead for propping up the finances of a private utility company.   In essence, our politicians have ceased to understand that those goals are inherently in conflict.  Instead, their purpose is to "de-risk" the investment of Entergy shareholders at the expense of US taxpayers (and, of course, Entergy ratepayers.) Wealth transfers upward, risk shifts downward. Nothing else is guaranteed for anyone.  Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Winks and nods

The special redistricting session taking place in Baton Rouge this week is going just about as poorly as we thought it would. Because the legislature is dominated by the Republicans, we already know they are going to have their way with this process. It's possible the Governor could weigh in a bit. But notice that Republicans have already fired a warning shot at him. That's what last week's exercise in pretending to care about the Ronald Greene case was all about.  Someone really does need to hold the John Bel accountable for what is clearly a cover-up. But Republican leadership won't do that... unless he provokes them.

So it's basically a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are going to maintain the current number of majority-minority Congressional districts. It's also a foregone conclusion that the maps for the state House and Senate as well the PSC, Supreme Court and BESE will also maintain the status quo to the greatest extent possible. (Although there are a few instances where petty scores may be settled along the way.) 

This is all very depressing because redistricting is actually pretty important. This is the democratic infrastructure we're going to have to struggle under for the next decade. It would be great if there was any hope of making that not terrible somehow. But the numbers in the legislature are what they are and there's not much to be done about it now besides watch and complain. Next comes another several cycles of Democrats losing elections and turning around to blame people for not voting hard enough.

There's an outside chance that somebody could sue. Although, that chance seems more and more fleeting every time the Supreme Court takes another hack at what's left of the Voting Rights Act. But, just to keep their bases covered, the Republican leadership has retained legal counsel anyway. We're not sure who is paying for that.... or even who the lawfirm's actual clients are in the first place. Do they work for the Republicans or for the legislature as a whole? We do know who they are. 

BakerHostetler has worked in states around the country on political redistricting and election litigation, and it has earned a reputation for defending Republicans against voting rights lawsuits. One of its attorneys, Mark Braden, was general counsel to the Republican National Committee for a decade. 

Cortez and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, said the firm was not chosen for its work with Republicans, but because of its experience and expertise. Kate McKnight, the BakerHostetler attorney Hewitt said she spoke with about her map, was on a redistricting panel last summer organized by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

“It was the [law firm] that was best suited to our state, whether it was Republican or Democrat,”  Schexnayder said in an interview Sunday.

Yesterday, some of the Democratic legislators tried to get answers about the nature of the firm's contract during debate on the Senate floor.  It's still murky.  Page Cortez says the firm has been "hired for litigation purposes in the two lawsuits that have been filed against the state of Louisiana,” referring to redistricting challenges already underway. But if the state is the client it should be easy to determine how the firm is being paid and how much.  But Cortez also insists that "zero public money" has been spent on this. The Illuminator also reports that it is seeking public records on any public contacts with BakerHostetler but that might also prove difficult because these lawyers know how to keep their email voices down.

McKnight, the lawyer that Hewitt consulted, has advised state legislators, in general, to avoid a paper trail when it comes to redistricting, according to an article on the National Council of State Legislatures website.

“I will always talk about email hygiene. Please,” McKnight told lawmakers from around the country last summer. “If you can meet with someone in person, do that. If you can’t do that, call them. If you absolutely must, send them an email (that says): ‘Call me.’”

This, no doubt, will trigger most observers into reciting their favorite Earl Long quote that all Louisiana schoolchildren are required to learn by rote. 

"Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.​"

Follow the money all the way through

 From The Lens on Thursday. 

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday unanimously approved $4.6 million in education grant funding for three NOLA Public Schools programs designed to work with the city’s most vulnerable students. 

The funding — which was in question over the past year under the previous council — will support the Travis Hill School at the city’s juvenile detention center; the Center for Resilience, which serves students with severe behavioral health needs; and the district’s student support office, which addresses truancy.

The Harrah’s Fund education grants — money paid to the city by the casino as part of a lease agreement — had historically been given directly to the school district. But a new lease signed by the casino in 2020 broadened the council’s ability to award the grants, and last year, the city council expressed an interest in shifting the funding to early childhood education. 

The previous council had approved a plan to involve the Mayor's Office in the process for distributing these grants. The new council has reversed that decision. Really though, it might not have altered its eventual destination too greatly. This WWNO story explains the mayor's interest likely stems from an effort to prioritize early childhood education. Which could have meant the Harrah's grants would be destined for daycare non-profits instead of these other non-profits with incarcerated and special needs clients.  But there are other contingencies in the works that might convince them to share. 

For example, city council has already placed an Early Childhood Education (ECE) millage proposal on the ballot next month that could alleviate some of the need. According to campaign materials produced by millage proponents, the new tax would provide approximately $21 million which they say could fund just over 1000 ECE "seats" which is the term the private service providers in this area use for the number of children enrolled in pre-school.  It turns out, though, that the actual need for "seats" in New Orleans is estimated between 6,000 and 8000 so, really, this millage would only be a starting point.  However one provision of the stalled "Build Back Better" social infrastructure bill that may still make it through in some form is a near $400 billion allocation for early child care that would make a significant difference against the need for "seats" as well. 

All of this is to say that the ECE outlook isn't necessarily so dire that it demands immediate rediriection of the $4.6 million in Harrah's grants from one set of private non-profits to another. Which is one reason current beneficiaries of those grants, like the Center for Resilience, likely still had a good chance to retain their status even if the mayor's office were to get involved. 

Liz Marcell Williams, the CEO of the Center for Resilience, said the vote reflects the “original intent” of the funding, which she described as being aimed at prioritizing truancy and mental health services in the city’s unique all-charter school district. 

“A school district alone isn’t equipped to address these needs and this is the council really reaffirming it understands that,” she said. 

“I think it’s a really clear stance that the council is fully in support of our city’s most vulnerable youth and in our current climate when we’re having so many conversations about crime, juvenile crime, that there are prevention programs aimed at helping these students,” she said.

The Center for Resilience, which Williams runs, served 15 students when it opened under the state-run Recovery School District in 2015. In 2018, it shifted to a non-profit model contracting with the Orleans Parish School Board. Williams said the program now has a capacity of 50 students. 

“This affirms [the council] understand there are existing programs that are designed to minimize kids’ involvement in crime by addressing truancy, making sure kids who may make risky decisions are supported with mental health services and that kids who do become system involved are getting support.”

Or to put it another way

City Council OKs $4.6 Mil for DAs wife and 2 other carceral programs https://t.co/tF9BXwVJQE

— KD♐︎ (@ineedja_kadeeja) February 3, 2022

Weird that neither the Lens story nor the previously published WWNO report mention that part.  Anyway, Jason Williams's wife's non-profit, originally awarded Harrah's grant funds while Williams was a councilmember, will continue to receive funds from the Harrah's grant. Also, probably, the city will be able to help more children receive daycare services through other private non-profits funded by the new millage Jason Williams helped put on the ballot during his last term on the council.  It's one of those win-wins you like to hear about.

The bad vibes Carnival

 Everyone is talking about this today. 

There’s been a great disturbance in The Force, you might say. Since the NOPD can’t muster enough officers to patrol Saturday’s Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus parade, the route of the sci-fi foot procession has been substantially pruned. A krewe official said they got word of the change on Thursday evening.

Instead of starting at St. Claude Avenue and Homer Plessy Way, the 1800-person procession, named after a "Star Wars" character and the Roman god of wine, will begin at Royal Street and Elysian Fields Avenue, then continue into the French Quarter, organizers said.

This comes after we had already learned KDV's route was forcibly shortened and that most of the Uptown parades would also be required to follow a truncated route. That includes, even, Thoth whose unique "Krewe of Shut-Ins" route is designed to pass by Childrens' Hospital and a number of institutijons for the old and infirm. 

Obviously things are headed in an unsettling direction.  Of course there's much more to say about this. But, since I haven't been terrific about finishing the long posts lately, here is a link back to something I wrote in early March 2020. This was during the brief period between the start of the pandemic shut downs and the end of what was itself an ominous Carnival season of tragedies and bad vibes.  Before COVID interrupted everything, the city was getting started on a political dialog about the future of Carnival.  A lot of things were at stake in that fight. But we never got to have it. And now it looks like the city's ruling class is imposing the worst possible version of what might have come out of that process. 

Anyway, I tried to address a lot of my concerns at the time.  So check that out.  I'll try to build on it soon.