Hard Terrier Get

The plot of the 1993 New Orleans shot Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle, Hard Target (1993) is kind of a "Most Dangerous Game" knock off.  A criminal organization sells "human hunting" trips to wealthy scumbags.  They select a homeless person as the quarry whose goal is to make across town alive for a $10,000 prize. The film is purposefully trashy but the artfully shot John Woo action sequences and 1990s New Orleans settings make for solid entertainment.  Varg and I talked about it on Catch Basin Cinema a couple of years ago! Check that out if you like.

Anyway, like I said, there are some memorable stunts and set pieces in the movie.  Van Damme dodges bullets, leaps from great heights, and evades capture by a motorcycle gang in a cemetery. Something tells me, this is ripe for a reboot.  Just one slight casting change..

Scrim, New Orleans' legendary runaway dog, eluded capture once again on Thursday, slipping out of an Uptown cemetery just as his pursuers closed in.

Based on multiple sightings, Scrim was traveling through the Freret neighborhood early Thursday afternoon, not far from the site of his most recent and most daring escape, according to Michelle Cheramie, owner of Zeus' Rescues. She spent months earlier this year tracking the dog, and had been keeping him in her home since he was captured in October.

At roughly 2 p.m. on Thursday, Cheramie texted The Times-Picayune to report that she and her team of dog trackers were closing in on the Crescent City’s favorite fugitive dog.

But the speedy pup eluded capture once again.

"We had him in the cemetery at the corner of Lasalle and Soniat. I had trailed him there from Napoleon. He was three blocks from my house, and it kind of felt like he was coming home," Cheramie said by phone.

Maybe an older, wiser, Valerio in the Wilford Brimley role?  We'll have our people make some calls.

Political problems

That's one way of putting it. 

Gov. Jeff Landry’s ambitious plan to overhaul Louisiana’s tax structure has largely been pared down to a more modest goal – cutting state income taxes.

 
Lawmakers are working on a way to make sure the state can pay for that desired tax reduction while not having to make damaging cuts to areas such as health care and higher education.

The paring down was part of the plan, though.

The idea here was always solely about affecting a massive shift in tax burden from the richest (corporate and high income taxpayers) to the poorest (people who pay sales taxes on every day essentials.) The feint at lessening the blow by cutting out special exemptions and tax credits was a ploy to establish buy-in to the scheme as various lobbying groups mobilized to save their own privileges. Mission accomplished. 

This week, the Senate declined to fully roll back some of the state’s expensive business incentive programs, such as its movie and television tax credits and historic preservation tax breaks that collectively cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

A plan to eliminate a state inventory tax credit, which covers taxes businesses pay to local governments, has been delayed until 2026, and a proposal to increase a tax on heavy machinery and equipment used by industrial employers has also been scrapped.

And now we're back to where Landry and Richard Nelson always planned for us to be. Legislators will approve a higher sales tax than their own bill originally targeted vs. the prospect of more cuts to health care and higher ed. A win-win for them despite the conventional reporting that posits it could lead to "political problems." 

If he doesn’t find a way to make up for that money, Landry runs the risk of revisiting the same political problems that plagued former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Jindal also cut income taxes without replacing the lost revenue or finding a permanent way to cut government spending. His policy led to chronic budget problems for years and made the former governor deeply unpopular when he left office.

Bobby Jindal left office after having steamrolled to a second term and launching an ambitious (although comically hubristic) Presidential campaign. You could say he was unpopular, but he never seemed to notice that. He seems to be living well. More to the point, the income tax cut Jindal pushed through (quite similar in nature to the one Landry is proposing now) set the stage for budget cuts and the currently regressive taxation regime that are core elements of the Republican ideological project.

And now they are about to build on that. If those are "political problems" they're not "plaguing" Jindal or Landry so much as they are Louisiana's poor and working classes instead.

Scrim Update

By now everyone probably knows he got out again.  MacCash certainly knows, anyway.  As usual, though, Doug is not thinking his clever bits all the way through. 

With the ground floor of Cheramie’s house locked down as tight as Alcatraz, Scrim made his way to the second story, where he found an open window, gnawed through the screen, and recklessly launched himself into space like Wile E. Coyote, plunging to the ground below.

I know it's passe to bemoan the death of the copy editor in professional news gathering organizations. But someone really should tell Doug that 1) You can't use an Alcatraz image in the same sentence as a Wile E. Coyote reference. Wile E. Coyote is not known for escaping from prison. Stick to one metaphor at a time. Also 2) Scrim is not Wile E. Coyote in this analogy anyway. He is the Road Runner. Individual attempts to apprehend him can only result in causing one to appear foolish. 

Cheramie pleaded with the public to abandon any hope of catching the fleet dog and instead asked them to text her and her team immediately with the location of the Scrim sighting and the direction he is traveling (the number is 504-231-7865).

Cheramie is also quoted in that article issuing a corrective to the (hopefully toungue-in-cheek) popular sentiment that Scrim simply be allowed to roam free from now on.  Even if he is having difficulty adjusting, it should be obvious that a comfortable home life is much safer and healthier than what he will find out on the streets. (The two bullets he took during his last adventure should be plenty enough evidence there.) 

On the other hand, it's always possible we don't have all the information.  To hear Entergy tell it, it is the stray animals themselves that pose the danger to everyone else. 

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of Entergy customers in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish are without power. Entergy confirmed to WDSU that an animal caused an electrical short and damaged equipment. The utility did not say what type of animal caused the outage that's impacting more than 12,000 customers on the Westbank.

Now I'm not suggesting that Scrim swam all the way across the river and took out a piece of Entergy infrastructure on his own.  That would be downright nutty.  But consider that he wouldn't actually have to act on his own. Not entirely. 

Local news is so important, yall.

[image or embed]

— Jeff Asher (@jeffasher.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 7:06 PM

Consider that we may only be aware of a mere fraction of Scrim's capabilities. We already know he's an escape artist. What hasn't been discussed publicly is the possibility that, once free, he has quickly reestablished himself in the underground. He's got contacts in the squirrel, rat, possum, raccoon and crow communities with connections beyond that. He speaks all the languages, knows all the customs. He can hide and operate from anywhere. 

 

Now that he's at large, his network has reactivated.  And Entergy's could go down at any moment.  

On the other hand, that's not too different from the every status quo anyway, is it?

Maybe don't run your smash and grab privatization scheme through a nesting doll of pass through grifters

Nevermind. Actually, if you're already stripping the public education system for parts, it's only natural to have as many trucks hauling it off in as many different directions as possible.

The Louisiana Legislature has agreed to pay a private company $910,000 to oversee the rollout of the state’s new school-choice program, which is set to launch next year. 

The Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget voted overwhelmingly Friday to approve a one-year contract with Odyssey, a company founded in 2021 to help states manage grant programs like the one Louisiana lawmakers approved last spring that will give households tax money to put toward private-school tuition.

The tech start-up picking up this contract is pretty much your typical middleman arbitrage operation. Back in August, we learned, that it also comes with the typical... uh.. glitches? Let's call them that for now. 

During Tuesday’s board meeting, BESE members asked about reports of problems with Odyssey-operated grant programs in other states.

For example, in Missouri, parents have complained about delays in receiving grants and problems purchasing items through the company’s platform, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In Idaho, a state review found that Odyssey approved about $180,000 in ineligible purchases by families, according to Idaho Education News. And in Iowa, the state auditor found that the education department had improperly amended Odyssey’s contract to increase payments to the company.

Not that it matters at this point.  The "smash" part of this already occurred when the legislature approved the ESA scheme to drain all the money out of public schools.  The "grab" part is just.. the grabbing.

I can't believe Taylor Swift didn't fix it

Just yesterday, we were speculating about this "accounting error" committed by someone in the Orleans Parish School District. The original T-P report we cited there claimed that staff overshot their sales tax revenue projection by $36 million "because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July." * That might be exactly what happened. But it feels unlikely. At the very least, it's got to be embarrassing for professional accountants to not understand when the fiscal year begins. Let alone, that they would look at a jump in revenue of that size and not suspect something was off. 

On the other hand, lay readers of the Times-Picayune might be forgiven for their confusion. Last week,  when we read that the board had announced a damage control plan to gradually pay back the deficit out of its (fortunately robust) fund balance, this item suggested that maybe the problem was already solved.

Schools would repay the $15 million over the next few years, hopefully bolstered by increased sales tax revenue from major events in New Orleans like Taylor Swift’s recent concert series, which generated an estimated $500 million for the city, and next year’s Super Bowl, Parker said.

Oh dear, here we go again trying to shoehorn an "economic impact of tourism" promo into a serious news story. Look, by all accounts, Swiftie weekend in New Orleans was a much welcomed success for the city's service industry and tourism facing retail.  Anecdotally, we've all heard the crowd was nice. They tipped well. And unlike some of the mega-corporate events, like the Superbowl, they spent money with local small businesses.  But mentioning the $500 number in a throwaway line about the school system's budget problems creates a false impression of whatever eventual benefit may occur.

The article doesn't link to it but they're referring to GNO Inc's estimate of how much money was spent overall by visitors during the weekend. The number is likely exaggerated to begin with, because that's what GNO Inc. does. But also it appears to include the money spent on airfare, lodging, and the concert tickets themselves. The schools do realize a portion of the sales tax on hotel rooms, but they split that money with several other entities. But we're already talking there about a fraction of a fraction of that marquee $500 million number which, again, isn't even itself a figure that reflects actual sales tax revenue.  It's fun to write "Taylor Swift might help with the budget problem" but it's important to be more specific than this. 

Anyway, as of today, none of this is Avis Williams's problem anymore. She is resigning effective December 1. Frankly, who can blame her.  The $300,000 salary must have been nice for a couple of years. But, ultimately, who wants to have to deal with this job?

After a national search to replace Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr., the board hired Williams in April of 2022. This fall, Williams opened the district’s first intentional direct-run school in the modern charter era — The Leah Chase School, a win for traditional-education advocates in the city. But the decision to create the new school within the Lafayette Academy building came amid a chaotic charter renewal process. Lafayette Academy families were first promised their school would remain open, then told it would close, then received a third message, one week later, that the school would remain open, but would be managed by the district.

But critics say that Williams has made little progress in one of the key assignments she was given when she arrived. When she arrived, she was charged with downsizing the all-charter district because local schools, mirroring national trends, face shrinking enrollment. The district asked her to create a “right-sizing” plan.  

Other district superintendents, facing similar declines, have closed schools. But in New Orleans, Williams faced a particularly unique challenge, because the city’s charter schools operate on multi-year contracts and revoking them — to close schools — is only done in serious situations. Schools only come under high-stakes scrutiny at the end of their contracts.

One could argue that a cascading budget crisis is one way to cut through all the piecemeal charter renewals and force more closures and consolidations on an accelerated timeline.   But whatever the excuse, it's no fun when you are the one swinging the ax.  

Meanwhile, there's also an open seat on the School Board that needs to be resolved by a runoff election December 7.  One of the candidates there has articulated support for having the district take more schools back from under-performing charters and run them directly. The other was once on a charter board involved in a grade inflation scandal.  Those sound like serious issues for voters to consider. Unfortunately it may all be overshadowed by the accounting issue. That is, unless we can get another 10 or 20 Eras Tours to swing through the city by the time the next tax receipts are in. 

*Additional note: Today's Lens article about the Williams resignation says the "accounting error" is still unexplained. So the, "whoops we forgot what year it is" bit from the initial reports, seems to have gone away.  According to today's article, 

Some sources say the city, which is responsible for collecting taxes and remitting them to the district, contributed to the district’s poor forecasting. It’s unclear how often the city communicates tax collection estimates with the district.

So we're moving from shady and/or incompetent accounting at the School District to shady and/or incompetent accounting at City Hall.  That's more credible, I guess, given.. (gestures broadly).. but still a mystery.

Who was this for?

The entire reason there even is a Mike VII in the first place is because, when Mike VI passed on, the school had to make some firm public commitments to treating any future tigers humanely.

To this point, LSU has drawn a hard line against involving Mike VII into Tiger Stadium. In September, LSU veterinary school spokeswoman Ginger Guttner said the institution “is not in discussions to bring Mike to any games this season.” 

Mike VII, an 8-year-old Bengal-Siberian tiger that became LSU’s official mascot in 2017, has never attended a football game. Previous Mikes have been placed in a trailer and taken to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium, and some have even traveled to away games. The university announced it would stop the tradition when it adopted Mike VII as a cub.

And they have done that. The tiger enclosure on LSU's campus is very much along the lines of what you might find in any reputable zoo exhibit.  Mike has room to move about and swim and relax in the open. If you at least accept that there will be a tiger in captivity there (and, yes, I understand that many will not, which is fine) then it's reassuring to know that he's being well cared for rather than paraded around like a circus animal. There's nothing in your "tradition" that demands you do anything different.

Shockingly, it turns out this reasonable position is shared by an overwhelming majority of LSU football fans. 

In The Advocate's online poll, which was an unscientific survey, 90% of respondents believed a tiger should not have returned to Tiger Stadium. Nine percent supported bringing back the animal, and 1% felt indifferent. About 1,500 people participated.

“As somebody who grew up with the memory of what it used to be, it kind of sterilized that memory a little bit,” said Justin Giglio, an LSU graduate who lives in Prairieville. “That wasn't what I enjoyed about what it used to be. The part of me that does agree with maybe we shouldn't be doing this to a tiger anymore, that feeling was definitely maximized. I felt bad for Omar.”

We felt bad for Omar, the tiger being lugged around the field in a cage.  And we felt a little bit bad for Mike VII too. The Governor's stunt, cry as he might about "respecting tradition," can only be seen as a direct slap to the face of our very good kitty.  Both of these tigers, and the entire LSU alumni (a community to which Jeff Landry does not, in fact, belong) deserved better.

Democrats: "guess we're gonna have to get more fascist"

 We tried going "anti-woke" and we're all out of ideas.

In the last four years, mainstream Democrats have: nominated a former prosecutor for president; elected an ex-NYPD officer to run New York City; campaigned on deporting more people; funneled money and weapons to regimes committing war crimes; overseen the beatings and arrests of people demanding police reform; sent more police officers to wallop students protesting for Palestinian rights; ratcheted up the War on Drugs; worked with major corporate retailers to arrest more shoplifters; filed racketeering and conspiracy charges against police-reform protesters in Atlanta; made it easier to arrest New Yorkers and Californians with mental illness; defended the use of solitary confinement; supported a landmark Supreme Court case to let cops arrest unhoused people; tried to imprison one of the world’s most famous rappers; promised to build Donald Trump’s border wall; ran endless ads about Trump’s criminal record; and applauded as the president chanted “Fund the Police!” during his most-watched yearly address. 

And yet, after an election last week in which voters all but screamed that the Democratic Party is moving in the wrong direction, centrist and conservative pundits have drawn the opposite conclusion: The Democrats are, somehow, still too soft on crime.

I wonder if they'll try going even further right this time.  What have they got to lose?

Maybe don't run your schools through a nesting doll of scam bureaucracies

You have to read past this headline about layoffs at the Rooted School. It just conveys management's side of the dispute, saying they're just forced to downsize due to a school board accounting error. Read several paragraphs into the story until you arrive at something closer to the actual issue. 

Teachers and staff at The Rooted School have been bargaining for a contract since forming a union in 2022. The four staff members who were let go were union members and UTNO has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board related to their firings.

The charge accused Karpinski of letting the employees go before bargaining with them and offering them a severance agreement directly rather than going through the union. The complaint also says that the school violated employees' rights because the severance agreement includes a confidentiality clause and a non-disparagement clause.

And, of course, due to recent events in national politics, the Biden NLRB is in lame duck status now.  (Senate Democrats still have a chance to do something about that!  But, rest assured, they simply do not care enough to try.) So, in all likelihood, the laid off workers are at the mercy of dueling bureaucracies and their suspect administrators. Today's update in that dispute finds the School Board firing back, (mostly) on the correct side for now. 

The Orleans Parish School Board on Tuesday pushed back on claims by a New Orleans charter school that it was forced to lay off teachers due to an accounting error by the district.

Board members said Rooted School used the district’s miscalculation as an excuse to lay off four employees when in fact the school is grappling with its own financial problems. The main source of the school’s troubles is that it erroneously collected $600,000 over three years by keeping students on their rolls who had left, and now the school must pay back that money, the board members said.

Which brings us to that "accounting error."  Are we sure that's what this is? 

New Orleans public schools are getting millions of dollars less in local tax revenue this year than district officials projected, and schools across the city are bracing for the fallout from the apparent accounting gaffe. 

Typically, the district tells schools in March how much money they will have to spend for the upcoming school year, based on property and sales taxes it expects schools will receive. Schools then budget accordingly, and receive payment in piecemeal from the school district each month.

But three months into the school year, district officials said their projections were likely inflated. That was because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July.

What sort of accountant actually does this?  On accident?  Maybe that's really what is going on there. But, remember, the district, under this superintendent, is under various pressures to downsize schools and divest from its facilities.  

Overall, the 2024 premium increased from $7.9 million to $12.3 million. The district’s total insured value (TIV) also increased from $1.9 billion to $2.4 billion, due to building upgrades and the increased costs of repairs, Story wrote in an email.

The exact per-pupil costs are still being finalized, Story wrote. “But based on the premium increase amount you can estimate it to be near $280, he said. This of course depends on system-wide enrollment,” Story wrote, noting the current market is “a mess.”

The district’s Total Insured Value cited by Story in his email appears to include vacant buildings in the total policy cost. To save money, the district is already looking at ways to reduce total value for vacant buildings and to shed vacant swing space that won’t be utilized.

“We are already looking at ways to modify our program for FY25 to reduce TIV for vacant buildings, swing space that won’t be utilized and other opportunities in an effort to mitigate large increases in premiums,” Story wrote.

As of the beginning of this month, only one school appeared to be on a path toward closure this year. But that was before the "error" was discovered. 

The last thing our public schools need now is another hole in the money bucket. But it does appear as though leaks are starting to spurt out from all sides.

Animals in the news

Congratulations to Scrim. Far and away the number one local hero of 2024. 

Zoning, code enforcement, permitting and other prosaic municipal matters could wait. The first order of business at Thursday’s City Council meeting was to acknowledge the civic contributions of a runaway dog named Scrim, who became a furry New Orleans folk hero.

As Council Vice President JP Morrell put it, Scrim “really did exemplify the resilience that is New Orleans.”

The good feelings didn't last too long, though, as councilmembers almost immediately broke into a territorial dispute over bragging rights. 

Lesli Harris laughingly said that “this is like one of my most exciting council days ever,” before she laid claim to Scrim as “the official mascot of District B.”

District A Council Member Joe Giarrusso, however, immediately contended that Scrim’s territory had extended into his jurisdiction as well.

We're gonna have to see his voter ID. Or, failing that, maybe his "municipal ID."

This article also says the dog was presented with, " a framed proclamation and a sack of dog goodies."  When I bust out of jail and take two bullets while out on the lam for 6 months, City Council better give me a dang medal.

Anyway, everybody loves Scrim. We even dedicated our Jack-O-Lantern this year in his honor. Look at this good boy.

 

Meanwhile, turning our attention the wild animal kingdom, the New Orleans menagerie of oligarchs has been (slightly) rearranged.

Michael Sawaya, the president of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, will succeed Ron Forman as president and CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute, New Orleans’ cherished collection of parks, museums and environmental attractions.

A 40-year-veteran of the hospitality industry, Sawaya, 64, was chosen as Audubon’s new leader on Wednesday by the Audubon Nature Institute board of directors. His selection follows a six-month search that attracted nearly 500 candidates from around the country.

They went on a nationwide safari to find the heir to Ron Forman's grift. What are the odds that the guy they were looking for was here all along!

And, hey, look at the price they got.  

In his new role, which begins Jan. 1, Sawaya will earn $525,000 a year in salary and benefits, according to Audubon officials. That’s far less than Forman’s $800,000 annual compensation package but more than the nearly $433,000 Sawaya made at the Convention Center in 2023, according to a legislative audit.

The "non-profit" zoo that is heavily subsidized with public funds will now be paying its CEO only half a million dollars instead of nearly a million.  Personally, I still hope they feed them all to Valerio.

Finally,  speaking of big cats ,in order to get around being shitty to one tiger, Governor Landry is forcing LSU to go out and get a whole burner tiger. Unsurprisingly the source is disreputable.

The owner of a live Bengal tiger slated to appear at the LSU-Alabama game Saturday has a history of having his big cats escape as the result of employee errors. 

The university and Gov. Jeff Landry’s office won’t say who would be responsible for any accidents involving Omar Bradley, a 1.5-year-old tiger that’s being transported from Florida for the game. Landry and Surgeon General Ralph Abraham have pushed to return a live mascot to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium.    

After the Illuminator confirmed that a live tiger will appear in Baton Rouge at the LSU-Alabama game on Saturday, WBRZ reported that the tiger is being supplied by Mitchel Kalmanson, who has a long history of federal citations for mistreating animals.

Sounds pretty exciting. Can't wait to see how that goes. It's good of Governor Landry to take time away from his busy work throwing more children in jail and making poor people pay higher taxes to focus on this. Are we sure he knows what he's doing, though?  

Landry’s initial request was for LSU to bring its own live tiger mascot, Mike VII, to games. Previous tigers have attended LSU football games, most recently Mike VI in 2015. LSU announced it was discontinuing this tradition when it adopted Mike VII in 2017 out of humane concerns. 

Landry did not attend LSU but claims to be a lifelong LSU football fan. 

“Our hope is that maybe we can get this tiger to roar a couple of times, and that’ll indicate how many touchdowns we’ll have, and it’ll be more than Alabama,” Landry said Friday in an interview with Fox News. 

Previous Mikes have been provoked to roaring by beating on his cage and taunting from the costumed Mike the Tiger mascot, a practice LSU discontinued.

Who is this for? Which piece of shit Landry donor is pushing this hard to bring back an animal cruelty ritual we all finally moved past a decade ago? Even if you buy into this far enough to be all, "yay the tradition is back!" and are totally cool with the cruelty of it, how do you not still see it as a slap in the face to our beautiful boy Mike VII?

We'll see if the cheer squad wants to be involved in all that this time around.  If not, maybe the Governor could get in the cage and try poking the tiger with a stick or something. 

Can't use the ring to do good, Frodo

There's a bunch of baby brained takes from Democrats today. Some of them, I suppose, are introspection in good faith, but many of them, I am certain, are not. But bypassing that for a moment, one thought I will offer is the kind of tactics that work for the right, don't work for the "left" (including left leaning liberals) and shouldn't.  

You aren't going to be effective at building and winning working class power with marketing tactics. This isn't a product that people need to be tricked into buying. Democrats don't need a slicker podcast or a stable of influencers that appeal to isolated demographics. This is not about smart guys sitting in a room devising ways to move the hogs in the right direction.  That's what con artists do.  Right wing politics is a con job.  Participatory democracy is not.

Something something something "the master's tools" etc.

Epilogue

 Much more on this to come, hopefully.  But the tl;dr is something I already put up on X The Everything App a few weeks ago.

Right now there is no viable political party or project capable of, or really even intent on, solving any of our many societal problems. At the same time, though, there are numerous political projects dedicated to parsing out exactly who deserves to suffer the most and why.  

This morning you're already seeing the Democrats, who just ran a hard right campaign against a hard right opponent, cast about to place the blame for that failure on everyone but themselves. It's still an open question as to whether they settle on "Americans are just to evil and racist" or "There's too many people doing woke."  Maybe there's some synthesis there that will allow the party to ignore working class voters some more. Anyway, once this exercise is done the professional Dems will be taking all the money they made on their billion dollar campaign and headed out to brunch. They'll be fine. Someone else will deserve to suffer.