Something about words and actions

There's a saying about that somewhere I know I've heard before.  Maybe it applies here. 

California’s governor Gavin Newsom, for example, has announced he has “no time for climate change deniers” despite approving some forty-eight new fracking permits since April (fracking having been strongly linked to an increase in global emissions). Nancy Pelosi, having derisively dismissed the Green New Deal (“The green dream or whatever they call it”), blames climate change for both her home state’s raging wildfires and last month’s hurricane on the Gulf Coast.

Barack Obama, in characteristically elliptical fashion, took to Twitter to declare: “The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities. Protecting our planet is on the ballot. Vote like your life depends on it—because it does.” During Obama’s two terms at the head of the most powerful office in the world, US gas production increased some 35 percent while production of crude oil grew by an astonishing 80 percent — a fact the former president has actually taken to boasting about.

These examples, and many others like them, underscore the need for a new understanding of climate change denial that goes beyond mere acknowledgment of scientific reality. The fact is, while more US politicians than ever now pay lip service to the basic conclusions of environmental science, the leaders of both parties continue to preside over a consensus of complacency determined to dismiss transformative prescriptions like the Green New Deal as utopian or too expensive.

It's been a busy month thanks to... *gestures at all of everything*... so I haven't had time to finish writing about the Democratic and Republican conventions. But one theme the Democrats pushed relentlessly was Joe Biden's capacity for "empathy."  In Zoom video after dimly lit Zoom video, speakers testified about the times Joe personally had reached out to someone to let them know how well he understood their trauma, how much he cared about and validated their pain.  Almost nothing was said about what he planned to do about any of it.  In fact, one may have come away from the convention with the impression that nothing can be done.  It's a strange thing to offer to voters but it does seem to be in line with the Democratic brand.

GOMESA Went missing

Okay nevermind the title. We'll workshop it.  Here's what's happening.

An unexpected shortfall in Louisiana’s share of offshore oil and gas royalties could force the state to delay or cancel coastal restoration projects scheduled to start as soon as 2019, according to the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Officials said Wednesday that the state’s share of revenue next year from the federal Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA, will be about half of what they had expected.

Until recently, Louisiana anticipated a payout of about $175 million, the maximum allowed under the royalty-sharing agreement. The first major payment was to come in the spring.

Of that, $140 million would have gone to the coastal restoration authority. Now, the agency expects to receive just $60 million to $70 million.

That's... a lot less than expected. What's expected is nowhere near the tens of billions of dollars that are needed just to somewhat satisfactorily mitigate the catastrophic land loss we're already certain to experience in the coming decades.  Also, Trump wants to scrap the GOMESA fund in his budget plan.  This comes after we had to beat back a different plan by the Obama Administration to reallocate the money as well.  Good thing we've got nothing but time here, right?

Business as usual

Kind of interesting that the CAT died in Baton Rouge at about the same time that the BAT died in Washington.

As of late Tuesday, the plan did not include Mr. Trump’s promised $1 trillion infrastructure program, two of the people said, and it jettisoned a House Republican proposal to impose a substantial tax on imports, known as a border adjustment tax, which would have raised billions of dollars to help offset the cost of the cuts.

I often wonder if our friends in the performative liberal #Resistance would be better served to emphasize the ways in which the Trump Presidency is actually pretty normal.  Which is to say it's everything you would expect from a normal Republican administration. Which, again, is to say it's a horror show.

In fact the pretense that it isn't a normal horror show actually normalizes the horror that much more.  When Democrats pretend that supply side "voodoo economics" hasn't been alive and well throughout their own reign of business tax credits, welfare-to-work incentives and "public-private partnerships" they only obscure the nature of the abuses they've enabled.  When they rally to the defense of still more Wall Street cronyism  they cause one to wonder just what it is they're even fighting Trump for in the first place. You even hear more than a few pining for the good ol' Bush years these days.

But there's very little the current Republican administration is actually delivering that distinguishes it at all from the previous one. Trump's travel ban has been struck down repeatedly by the courts. His border wall isn't going to be funded by Congress. The only thing he's really come through on as far as his right wing base is concerned is the Gorsuch appointment. (And even that is as much Mitch McConnell's win as it is Trump's.)

Where the rubber meets the road, though, this is really just Bush all over again. There is an aggressive, reckless foreign policy. There are federal regulatory agencies captured by Big Oil and international finance. And, of course, there are big tax breaks for rich people.

Republicans are likely to embrace the plan’s centerpiece, substantial tax reductions for businesses large and small, even as they push back against the jettisoning of their border adjustment tax. The 15 percent rate would apply both to corporations, which now pay 35 percent, and to a broad range of firms known as pass-through entities — including hedge funds, real estate concerns like Mr. Trump’s and large partnerships — that currently pay taxes at individual rates, which top off at 39.6 percent. That hews closely to the proposal Mr. Trump championed during his campaign.

And, yeah, that's pretty darn infuriating. You can tell because it's helping the DNC sell #Resist^TM T-Shirts and stickers by the truckload.  But if they were actually interested in maybe making it stop, they might try being more honest about how deeply ingrained  and insidious the regime really is and has been.

They are probably gonna pass it

There was a moment during the long debate over what would become the Affordable Care Act when the Democrats had caved in so badly, when they had so shittied up an already shitty, insurance based, approach to health care reform, that some of us suggested it was time for Obama to draw a line in the sand. Make them start over. Demand a public option or threaten to walk away.

But we were unreasonable crazy liberuls and Obama never was the sort to pick a fight over anything anyway so that wasn't going to happen. Trump has a different approach.

Washington (CNN) To make a deal, you have to know when it's time to walk.

President Donald Trump ripped that classic move from his boardroom playbook Thursday night, seeking to splinter the resistance of House Republicans refusing to pass the health care bill that has left his new administration in limbo.

After days of trying to charm members of Congress, Trump gave them an ultimatum: If they don't vote yes Friday, he will move on and saddle them with the shame of failing to repeal Obamacare, a cherished GOP goal.

Maybe that's stupid. Maybe it isn't.  And I  could always be wrong,  but I think the Republicans will find the votes to pass their repeal.  Even if I am wrong and they don't do it today, there is nothing stopping them from doing it eventually.

Thus far the only roadblock in the House is a group of conservatives who, amazingly, do not believe the current bill is cruel enough yet. That's not really going to be an obstacle in the long run. It's a dispute without any real disagreement. Maybe if there were some sort of opposition actually asserting a more progressive vision, Medicare For All, for example, then there would be a sufficient counterweight on which to anchor an actual fight. But the Democrats are too cowardly to propose such a thing.

There's no serious resistance to the Republicans' desire to take health care away from Americans and replace it with tax cuts for the rich. That is, after all, what this whole thing is about in the first place. It's what the shitty bill the House couldn't pass yesterday does. And it's what the even shittier renegotiated version they'll supposedly vote on today does as well.  All of which is to say there is no fundamental disagreement among Republicans here. They're probably going to pass this.

The Senate debate will be slower and more difficult for them but,  again, I would caution against the pretense advanced by some, like Stephanie Grace here, that there are reasonable people among this extremely right wing collection of Republican Senators. Grace seems to think Bill Cassidy is going to save the day somehow. But, really, this is just the Overton Window are work. In a room full of yahoos, the yahoo who appears to be the least aggressive,  now defines the "centrist" position which serves to normalize the dangerous behavior of all of them.

Also Bill Cassidy is full of shit.

When Louisiana resident Andrea Mongler wrote to her senator, Bill Cassidy, in support of the Affordable Care Act, she wasn’t surprised to get an email back detailing the law’s faults. Cassidy, a Republican who is also a physician, has been a vocal critic.

“Obamacare” he wrote in January, “does not lower costs or improve quality, but rather it raises taxes and allows a presidentially handpicked ‘Health Choices Commissioner’ to determine what coverage and treatments are available to you.”

There’s one problem with Cassidy’s ominous-sounding assertion: It’s false.

The Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, includes no “Health Choices Commissioner.” Another bill introduced in Congress in 2009 did include such a position, but the bill died — and besides, the job as outlined in that legislation didn’t have the powers Cassidy ascribed to it.

In all likelihood the House is going to pass the repeal today. If not, then all they will have done is called Trump’s bluff and eventually everyone will come back to the table and they will do this thing they all very loudly say they want to do. And when they do, the Senate may not provide the backstop many people seem to think it will. But, as always, it doesn't hurt to call their offices.

Logical conclusion

The Trump budget proposes to blow up everything. This is literal in the sense that the proposed $54 billion increase in military spending means more things can be blown up. But that's not the only sort of destruction he's aiming at.

The spending budget Trump is set to release Thursday will offer the clearest snapshot of his vision for the size and role of government. Aides say that the president sees a new Washington emerging from the budget process, one that prioritizes the military and homeland security while slashing many other areas, including housing, foreign assistance, environmental programs, public broadcasting and research. Simply put, government would be smaller and less involved in regulating life in America, with private companies and states playing a much bigger role.

Remember also there's really nothing there to push back against the coming of the new Gilded Age. Not only does a hard right Republican Party control the Congress, but the #Resistance, such as it is, is comprised of a Democratic Party who has swallowed whole and promulgated this exact ideology for decades.  Trump is only bringing it to its logical conclusion.

The real problem, though, as it always has, lies with the faithless Democrats. Every time you heard Bill Clinton tell you, "The era of Big Government is over," this was the logical outcome.  Every Democrat who has held hands with Wall Street bankers or Silicon Valley venture capitalists has pushed the ball further in Trump's direction. Every "Public Private Partnership" trumpeted in Aspen has furthered Trump's argument.

Now Trump is here to blow everything up. And the "opposition" is too steeped in complicity to present anything like a credible counterargument.

Give us Barabbas

I don't mean to diminish this. Commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence is well and good and long overdue.  But from the President who led a vicious and unprecedented "war on whistleblowers," it doesn't make a lot of sense. There must be something else going on here but it's beyond my pay grade to parse out what it might be.

Maybe it's as simple as throwing a bone out so they don't have to pardon Snowden. The White House's statement today attempted to draw a pointed contrast between the two.

Asked about the two clemency applications on Friday, the White House spokesman, Joshua Earnest, discussed the “pretty stark difference” between Ms. Manning’s case for mercy with Mr. Snowden’s. While their offenses were similar, he said, there were “some important differences.”

“Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing,” he said. “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”

Ha ha, okay she said she's sorry.  That plus 7 years locked away in a dungeon and in and out of solitary confinement is all they wanted. A lot has been written about Manning's mental condidtion at the time of the leak. But putting aside questions of rationality, it's and act of remarkable bravery to have taken on something like this. Frankly, they should giver her Joe Biden's medal.

Notice also the other part of that statement reiterates and conflates Snowden's actions with the separate question of Russia's supposed "hacking" of the Presidential election.  It's a disturbing insinuation and is much more in line with the Obama Adminstration's dangerous and draconian hostility to government transparency, especially where it regards illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.   After all, they wouldn't want anything getting out that might "undermine confidence in our democracy."

Update:  Like I said, this is beyond my pay grade.  Folks on the parallel internet point out the obvious, though. 

Wikileaks said its founder Julian Assange “will agree to U.S. extradition” if President Barack Obama commutes whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s jail sentence.

Non-levitating train to Disneyworld

It's almost a decade now since Bobby Jindal's fantasy nightmare about levitating trains to Disneyland killed our chance at a high speed rail project in Louisiana. At that time, the newly inaugurated President Obama had raised HOPEs that a forthcoming federal stimulus bill would fund our decades long dream of commuter rail between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as part of a longer line connecting us with Houston.   But Jindal helped introduce America to the style of paranoid obstructionism that would go on to help Republicans block a substantial portion of Obama's agenda throughout his two terms. It's been fun.

Anyway, it looks like we might be finally getting that rail service after all. It won't levitate or anything, but the plan is for these trains to actually go to Disneyworld.

Monday, the Southern Rail Commission distributed $2.5 million in federal funds to design, build and improve train stations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. A quarter-million went to Baton Rouge to develop plans for a train station at the old Entergy campus near the corner of Government and 14th streets.

The goal is to revive the passenger route between Orlando and New Orleans, which already has lines that run to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. There would be a separate spur for riders to commute between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

As always with this, it's not a good idea to hold one's breath. But if you are the optimistic type you might expect to see the BR-NO line up and running around 2020 or so. 

Now is not the time to punch the hippies

If you find yourself talking about the need for "unity," stop.

If you find yourself saying there are any circumstances under which you are ready to "work with" the con man, you are already failing.

If you are going through the motions of delivering empty platitudes about healing "the divisions"  you are not helping.

If you are smugly talking down to the outraged kids in the street, please shut the fuck up.

Basically if you are setting up any sort of narrative that involves the notion that anyone should "give the new President a chance" you are a garbage human.  Or at least you are someone comfortable enough to not to have to worry about, say, the end of Medicare.  See also, this entire list.

Now is not the time for "healing."  Don't punch the hippies. Let them fucking march.  If they topple a few confederate monuments along the way, that's all the better.

"Why'd it take you this long?"

It was getting to be pretty depressing watching Hillary and the Democrats embrace and congratulate every craven Republican who suddenly abandoned Trump just as he finally started to crash and burn. These Republicans are thoroughly undeserving of praise, many of them having supported, passed, and signed horrifying legal actions against women in the form of health care restrictions, limits on the availability of abortion, forced ultrasounds, etc.

By and large Democrats were letting them get away with this because it was a cheap way to make their Presidential candidate look more "bipartisan" or whatever. That was stupid.  Here is a clip of the President in Ohio today doing better.

Will the pie explode again?

President Obama is slated to arrive in Baton Rouge this afternoon to survey flood damage and talk about recovery efforts.  We're still in the process of gathering data right now, but certainly there's going to be plenty of work to do.

While the final numbers won't be known for some time, Gov. John Bel Edwards' office has estimated 60,646 houses were damaged and 30,000 people rescued; other people escaped on their own. FEMA says 109,398 people or households have applied for housing help, and 25,000 National Flood Insurance Program claims have been filed. The American Red Cross called it the worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey in 2012.

Now a new analysis offers another set of numbers. Ezra Boyd of Mandeville, who holds a Ph.D. in geography from LSU and runs the website DisasterMap.net, said Monday (Aug. 22) that as many as 188,729 occupied houses and 507,495 people -- 11 percent of the state's population -- were "affected" by the flood.

Last week, the Advocate reported the estimated cost of the damage at $20 billion. The same analysis suggests that "far fewer" than 50 percent of the homes affected by the flood were insured. Here's why that's a problem.

The federal disaster declaration triggers assistance for those whose homes and businesses have been damaged or displaced. Those who don't have flood insurance can still qualify for grants up to $33,000 for repairs. Temporary housing assistance will also become available

That's not going to cover rebuilding (and mandatory elevation) expenses in, dare we say, most cases. Unless more money is found (and we mean a lot more money) a regional economic recovery isn't likely to happen at all.. much less take only one year as this LSU economist seems to say. 

It could take a full year for southeast Louisiana to recover from horrific flood damage sustained during last week's historic rain event, according to one of the state's most trusted economists.

“You can count certain things (right now), such as the number of homes that were flooded, business that were flooded, public facilities such as schools that may have been flooded … then you start asking, ‘what are the real issues that are going to be coming over the next year?’” said economist and professor Jim Richardson to LSU University Relations.

Richardson, also a member of the state's Revenue Estimating Conference, said recovery expenses could generate a boost to local economies in the first year.

He predicted businesses would bounce back the quickest.

“Businesses, for the most part, will get back up and running quickly," he said. "Perhaps not some small businesses in areas badly hit like Denham Springs … but national chains will have resources and additional dollar amounts to get (going again).”

That seems pretty optimistic considering everything we've learned over the past decade in New Orleans. (Are we really even "recovered" now?  That's a different post.)  Furthermore, Richardson appears to be describing a consumer driven "recovery" where flood victims have access to the funds and credit necessary to do the consuming. Will they, though? There are problems. First among these problems is, Louisiana's congressional delegation sucks.

Louisiana's delegation could find itself seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for unmet needs just a few years after several of its members spurned such requests in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012. And the delegation, which has few senior members, will be calling for cash from a tight-fisted Republican Congress during an exceptionally heated election season that will end with at least two and possibly three of its members leaving Capitol Hill.

The second thing is, Congress itself also sucks.

In major disasters, the assistance offered under the Stafford Act, which provides funds to both individuals and local government agencies to cover some of their costs, is often only one part of the equation. As of Friday afternoon, FEMA had already approved more than $7 million in individual assistance, which includes money for housing and other needs.

The rest is provided through supplemental funding from Congress, which dedicates money through programs like Community Development Block Grants to meet additional needs.

That extra money is going to be needed to cover costs that aren't met by insurance and to provide for other needs, such as providing vouchers to contractors who can gut houses.

But its availability is dependent on the willingness of lawmakers to go along with the plan, something that's hardly a sure thing.

For just one example of the gridlock in Congress, take the ongoing fight over funding to combat the spread of the Zika virus. In February, the White House requested $1.9 billion to battle the mosquito-born virus, which is present in Florida and could threaten other states, but fights over provisions tacked onto the bill have left it in limbo.

Thirdly... did we mention that our delegation sucks? Because they suck in specific ways that might cause others to have no sympathy with their appeals for help given their own behavior. 

Call it logrolling or one hand washing the other, a generally recognized fact in Washington is that if you want something for your district, it pays to agree to the same thing for another guy’s district.

That point may have been lost on three Louisiana congressmen when they voted against a $50.5-billion relief package for the victims of Superstorm Sandy. The 2012 storm ravaged coastal communities in New Jersey and New York. Now they’re in the position of needing the same sort of aid for their own state. How will that play out?

The three lawmakers, all Republicans, are Rep. Steve Scalise (currently the House majority whip); Bill Cassidy, who moved up to the Senate last year; and John Fleming. They’re all likely exemplars of another Washington truism: fiscal responsibility is great, until it’s your own district that’s getting fiscally hammered.

Despite so much cheery crap you may have read over the years about how the New Orleans economy "bucked the trend" during the recession because it had "resilience" and because hipster entrepreneurs showed up to make apps and open juice bars, the actual recovery.. such as it was.. depended on billions of dollars worth of federal spending. This meant FEMA reimbursement, new flood control projects, and hundreds of millions of dollars in community block grants.   

In the aftermath of Katrina, the federal government gave New Orleans a $411 million pot of CDBG disaster money. Designed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as “flexible grants to help cities, counties, and states recover from Presidentially declared disasters, especially in low-income areas,” such money comes with relatively few restrictions beyond guidelines that projects must “principally” benefit areas or groups wherein a majority of people live in households with low-to-moderate incomes. In New Orleans, with a median income of $37,079, that means funded projects must principally benefit households with an annual income between $18,500 and $42,000.

When Ray Nagin told us about "this economic pie that's getting ready to explode" in New Orleans, he knew the federal stimulus was coming.  We can have a separate discussion about whether the CDBG money really did "principally benefit" people with low-to-moderate incomes. (It didn't. But, again, that's another post.)  But we can say that it did stimulate the economic activity we typically associate with Post-K "recovery."  If the political will isn't there to, pardon the image, make it rain again, none of that other stuff is going to happen this time.

Here is a letter Governor Edwards submitted to the President today. In it he asks for, among other things, these items:

A reduction in the state's cost share for damages from 25% to 10%

$125 million for the Army Corps of Engineers in order to complete the Comite River diversion

Expedited emergency relief highway funding

A waiver of the state's $100 million annual obligation to pay for federal hurricane protection systems. (A big deal of granted)

And, finally, an as-yet unspecified amount in CDBG-DR funds.  This one is the real key and the one that will have the hardest time fighting its way through Congress. But if we want to make the pie explode again, that's how it will happen.

Who is to blame?

Not sure what it is the Advocate wants here... besides a few clicks, I guess. So bad on me for linking to it in the first place. Not that you haven't read it by this point. You have. Anyway, in the middle paragraph quoted here, they pretty much refute their entire editorial.

The optics of Obama golfing while Louisiana residents languished in flood waters was striking. It evoked the precedent of the passive federal response to the state’s agony in 2005, a chapter of history no one should ever repeat.

The president acted prudently in officially declaring a disaster for the flooded part of the state, a key step in advancing federal aid. We’ve been heartened so far by the active involvement of Craig Fugate, head of Federal Emergency Management Agency, a far cry from FEMA’s hapless Michael Brown in the days after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was slated to visit Louisiana today to assess the damage.

But a disaster this big begs for the personal presence of the president at ground zero. In coming here, the president can decisively demonstrate that Louisiana’s recovery is a priority for his administration – and the United States of America.

Unlike the week-long bickering, doddering, cluelessness of the Bush Administration after Katrina, the feds responded to this year's emergency immediately. The President declared a federal disaster making individuals and local governments in 20 parishes eligible for aassistance. National guard has been active in search and rescue. FEMA is here doing work. DHS is here doing work.  The Governor says he has no complaints.

.@LouisianaGov: "I'm not complaining in any way about our federal partnership." #laflood

— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) August 18, 2016

Hell, the Advocate editorial board even says in that article, they are "heartened" by all of this. But.. you know.. those darn "optics." Adrastos believes he sees the problem here and who am I to disagree?

If the Advocate editorial board deigned to read their own reporting, they would know that emergency response efforts are ongoing. This is all about an ultra conservative Obama hating editor seeing a chance to take a shot at him. The prime suspect is former Picayune and current Advocate editor Peter Kovacs who went on CNN to toot his own horn. On the behalf of Peters everywhere, I’d like to apologize for his malakatude.

On the other hand, maybe optics are a thing. Or, at least, maybe perceptions matter more than facts do to some people. Evidence of this might be found in a most discouraging conversation I had about the flood yesterday. Maybe I'm just not very good at explaining things. But the person I was talking to certainly didn't have much grasp of the facts.. or even the basic geography of the flood as it made its way through places within thirty miles of where we sat. Whatever I said about the weather event itself or the communities affected by it, I kept getting the same questions over and over. "Didn't all these people know it was going to flood?" "Don't they have insurance?" And, "Why is their drainage so bad?"

These aren't the sort of questions you get when someone wants to understand what's happening.  They're the sort of questions you get when someone is already thinking about the "optics" of who or what is to blame. Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do about people like that. But it's worth noting, not only that they exist, but that they live and walk among us. Some of them even edit our newspapers. But since we're being asked, let's try and address some of it.  We've already noted that Peter Kovacs would like to blame the President. But who else are we blaming?

Some of us are blaming climate change.  And that's fine so long as we acknowledge that we can't really establish a verifiable causal link. But here is what we can say.

On Monday, climate researchers and weather experts were in what’s by now a familiar posture — explaining that, no, this event wasn’t “caused” by climate change, but then again, it’s precisely the sort of event that you’d expect to see more of on a warming planet.

“Climate change has already been shown to increase the amounts of rain falling in the most intense events across many parts of the world, and extreme rainfall events like this week’s Louisiana storm are expected [to] grow increasingly common in the coming years,” wrote the Weather Underground’s Bob Henson and Jeff Masters.

“Louisiana is always at risk of floods, naturally, but climate change is exacerbating that risk, weighting the dice against us,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher at Texas Tech University, told The Washington Post. “How long will it be until we finally recognize that the dice are loaded?”

So just like we can't say "Global warming is false because it gets cold during winter," we also can't say, "This specific thunderstorm clearly happened because of global warming." But we can talk about how events like last weekend's are more likely to happen than historical statistics suggest they have been. And we can say that evidence links this to climate change.

About that event, by the way. See what happened was, it rained a lot.

The Louisiana Flood of 2016 was triggered by a complicated, slow-moving low-pressure weather system that dumped as much as two feet of rain on parts of East Baton Rouge, Livingston and St. Helena parishes in 48 hours. The record two-day rainfall in those areas had a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any year, the equivalent of a "1,000-year rain", according to the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center, based at the Slidell office of the National Weather Service.

In the two-day period ending Saturday at 7 a.m., several parishes saw rainfall amounts equaling a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, a so-called 100-year event. They included including parts of Tangipahoa, East Feliciana, Washington, Ascension, Lafayette, Iberville and St. Martin
.
The flood's atmospheric origins can be traced to a mid-level low pressure system and a weak, surface-level low that got their start over the Big Bend region of the Florida Gulf Coast on Aug. 5. That's when the National Hurricane Center warned that storminess over Florida might drop into the Gulf of Mexico and form a tropical depression.

So is it reasonable to expect everyone to be insured against a "1,000 year rain" event?  Nope. But that's what we have this federal disaster declaration for.

The federal disaster declaration triggers assistance for those whose homes and businesses have been damaged or displaced. Those who don't have flood insurance can still qualify for grants up to $33,000 for repairs. Temporary housing assistance will also become available

Which, to be clear again, is why it's great that the Obama Administration is, in fact, doing its job in response to the emergency.  And, yes, I know that's not going to be nearly enough money.  There will be plenty of time to work on that too.

Also it should be obvious that two feet of rain in 48 hours is going to overwhelm almost any urban pump and drainage system. The massive pump and drain system that keeps water out of New Orleans boasts a capacity of 29 billion gallons per day.  In theory, even those "world class" utilities would have had to run at maximum efficiency to keep up with the deluge. They wouldn't have. In any case, it's just not reasonable to suggest that the flood was an engineering failure much less negligence or lack of civic foresight as I suspect the person I had to explain this to yesterday was implying.

It is reasonable, though, to ask how the next such event might be mitigated. Maybe there isn't anything we can do to stop the next 1,000 year flood from happening six months from now. But there might be ways we can prepare for it that hadn't occurred to us previously.  Maybe this I-12 lawsuit seems silly at first glance.  But maybe there is something to be learned from it too.

Finally, was there really any doubt that President would be along for a visit sooner rather than later? You know as soon as that is a safe and sensible thing for him to do.

Edwards said a presidential visit could cause additional problems for flood recovery efforts. Obama's motorcade requires many roadways to be shutdown -- and many local streets are still closed because of the flooding. Also, a presidential visit puts a strain on law enforcement. First responders shouldn't be pulled away to deal with Obama, when they are needed for search and rescue missions still, Edwards said.

In the meantime, we'll just have to make do with the opposite of safe and sensible. 

CNN is reporting that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, will travel to Baton Rouge on Friday to tour damage from catastrophic flooding in Louisiana.

Trump supporters have called on him to visit Louisiana to see the flood-affected areas first-hand, but his campaign has not announced a scheduled visit.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' office responded to news of Trump's visit with a statement encouraging him to spend his time here volunteering or donating money to the relief effort.

"Donald Trump hasn't called the governor to inform him of his visit. We welcome him to Louisiana, but not for a photo-op," the statement read. "Instead we hope he'll consider volunteering or making a sizable donation to the Louisiana Flood Relief Fund to help the victims of this storm."

Maybe Trump will visit with Peter Kovacs too.  You know, just for the sake of "optics."  

So what do we do now?

There are, mercifully, only a few months remaining in Campaign 2016. We're into the worst phase of it now where passions and rhetoric are at their most intense even though any opportunity for most of us to take meaningful action to affect things has already passed.*  All that's left to see is a sad sequence of escalating expressions of desperation and powerlessness. All that's left to actually do, though, is observe the circus and try not to get into too many fights on the internet.  

We're pretty sure we know how the national picture is going to wind up.  Most likely Hillary Clinton will be President. The Democrats have a fair (though not great) shot at taking the control of the Senate. The House will definitely remain very strongly Republican. For all the hype we've heard about "Political Revolution" on the left or the "end of the Republican Party" on the right, the 2016 result is likely to leave us with more or less a continuance of the status quo.  So it's all a big let down, right?  Not necessarily.

Sure, if we view the election cycle through the narrow perspective we're offered by cable news; as a set dramatic narrative; it's a bit of an anti-climax.  But real life doesn't follow these false structures. There's no beginning, middle, and end to the news. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens. There's no grand finale. There's always only the question of what happens next.  So what does happen next? Maybe now is a good time to start thinking about that.

During the Democratic National Convention last week, Rolling Stone put out this interview with Jane Sanders. Here, she talks about seeing Bernie's supporters at the convention.

I've had a lot of reactions to it. We met with the delegates the first day, and there were 2,000 people there, and it was really heart-wrenching. I couldn't not let tears come down. I tried not to, but all I could think was, We let them down.

[Tearing up] We did everything we could, but we didn't win. And they were so sad about it. People have been making it sound like they're mad, and they should just get over it. No they shouldn't! They shouldn't just get over it! What do you expect? How do you turn on a dime? We understand that. We understand that we earned their support and their trust. Now Hillary Clinton has to earn their support and their trust. And we will hold [the Clinton campaign] accountable because we are endorsing her. We are that much more committed to making sure [she follows through on her promises], instead of saying, Oh, it's politics as usual, people change. We're not going to let that happen. Not without a big fight, if anything. If the Democratic Party starts backing away from the platform, ever, we will fight like crazy to support the work that all of these millions of people did.

Okay, so, spoiler alert: Hillary Clinton will not "follow through on her promises" made to the Sanderses at the convention. But when she does not do that, this is no more the end of history than election day is. More things happen after that. So what next? 

We are focused on the issues, and we're winning momentum. And I think some people might not understand that. He had no choice but to step down. His feeling was that Donald Trump is too dangerous to not defeat. So his choice was to endorse — but, at the same time, fight like hell to keep the revolution alive, and keep alive the issues that we all stand behind. So we need [our supporters]. We need them engaged, and we need them to participate.

Don't think that matters? Look again at your not-at-all dead Republican Party and its iron grip on the legislative branch. To help with that, here's one of those explainer cartoon deals posted to The Nib by Andy Warner. It's about how badly House districts across the country are gerrymandered. More to the point, it's about how a carefully organized and nationally coordinated campaign capitalized on the "Tea Party" insurgency to solidify the Republican grip on state legislatures and Congressional districts across the country. If the forty something percent of Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders this year are looking for something more productive to do than merely "falling in line" behind the party they're trying to change, a good way to start would be finding candidates from among their ranks for state and congressional offices now. 2018 is not so far off.

But don't take my word for it. Here's what President Obama told the convention on Wednesday. 

Democracy works, America, but we gotta want it, not just during an election year, but all the days in between  So if you agree that there's too much inequality in our economy, and too much money in our politics, we all need to be as vocal and as organized and as persistent as Bernie Sanders' supporters have been during this election. We all need to get out and vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, and then hold them accountable until they get the job done.

That's right, feel the Bern!

If you want more justice in the justice system, then we've all got to vote, not just for a president, but for mayors and sheriffs and state's attorneys and state legislators. That's where the criminal law is made. And we've got to work with police and protesters until laws and practices are changed. That's how democracy works.

Here in Louisiana, chances are already slipping by.  Last week, Stephanie Grace pointed to a pair of open Louisiana house seats where the sole candidate who qualified to run for each will win by default. Granted those particular Jefferson Parish districts aren't exactly ripe pickings for young socialists. The Orleans Parish School Board may have been a different story. Unfortunately we won't find out this year as three of those seven seats are uncontested.  Anyway, the larger point is that opportunities exist to make a case simply by making a challenge.  The right gets away with that sort of thing all the time. David Duke isn't going to be elected Senator. But his entry into the race already has pundits talking about "what it means" that his candidacy exists at all.  The only way to know if you have a voice is to try speaking up once in a while.

Of course not everyone is required to run for office in order to have a voice or a stake in public policy. (Many of the elitist twerps who spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton last week seem not to understand this but that's a topic for another post.)  We all have our roles to play in "the discourse." Some of us protest in the street. Some of us write angry letters to the editor. Some of us get into fights on the internet. Some of us might even show up at the City Planning Commission next week as they take up an issue that directly pertains to our quality of life. At least, that's what Susan Guidry says.

Pending before the New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC) are nearly 200 pages from its staff outlining changes to the city's zoning codes, a framework for short-term rentals as they're being used now through websites like Airbnb. The staff report suggests four types of short-term rentals: "Accessory" or owner-occupied homes renting out two spare rooms or three rooms in half a shotgun double; "Temporary" homes rented for no more than 30 days a year; "Commercial" vacation homes in commercially zoned corridors; and "Principal Residential" rentals, or entire homes in residential neighborhoods.

Whole-home rentals would require a conditional use permit under the proposed zoning laws and would be subject to density restrictions. Four rentals would be allowed per residential block in Bywater, the French Quarter, Marigny and Treme. Three per block would be allowed in most other residential areas, and two per block in Lakeview, New Orleans East and Algiers. Non-residential or "commercial" neighborhoods would have no restrictions. The CPC objected to whole-home rentals in a previous staff report, but another draft put them back on the table at Mayor Mitch Landrieu's request.

Once the CPC votes on the latest recommendations, their fate lies with the New Orleans City Council. District A Councilwoman Susan Guidry told Gambit whole-home rentals pose "the biggest threat to the quality of life of our long-term residents." Head says those types of rentals should be "heavily regulated." Guidry and Head own rental property in New Orleans. Both say they have no plans to use them for short-term rentals.

Not to get too far into an STR digression in this post, but also see this Next City op-ed that expounds on Guidry's statement.  And then go down to the public meeting at CPC on August 9 if you are free that day. Take your neighbors with you if you have any left. Maybe what you have to say will make a difference. Whether it does or it doesn't, though, there will be the question of what to do next. Be ready for that too.

*Apart from voting on Election Day which, I agree with Atrios here, isn't as big a thing as you may like to believe.

It is very hot

Summer in New Orleans is always bad. When it's not raining, it's hot. Right after it rains, it immediately gets wet hot which is the worst kind of hot. Except for the times it occasionally rains fire. 

Anyway, if you think it's unusually hot even for us, even for now, you aren't imagining things.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March April May June 2016 was the hottest March   April   May June on record, going back 136 years. It was a staggering 1.28°C 1.11°C 0.93°C 0.79°C above average across the planet.^* The previous March April May June record, from 201020142015, was 0.92°0.87°0.86°0.78° above average. The good news, such as it is, is that unlike previous months, June 2016 didn’t shatter the previous record; it just edged it out in a statistical photo finish. But don’t let that distract you from the important issue: The Earth is way above average in temperature, and overall that temperature is increasing all the time.

Last night the Republican convention one of the featured speakers was West Virginia Senator Shelley Capito. Senator Capito spent her time on stage railing against President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's approach to regulating fossil fuels.

President Obama arrogantly proclaimed he would slow the rise of the oceans. He introduced and implemented sweeping environmental regulations without Congress' approval and without any consideration for the economy. These unilateral actions are ill-informed and frankly unconstitutional.

Actually it's not that at all. If anything, Obama and Hillary aren't doing nearly enough.   

But for some who study climate change the only shame is this: Obama’s plan does not go nearly far enough. It’s meek and dangerously self-congratulatory, sapping the movement of urgency while doing almost nothing to maintain the future habitability of the earth.

“The actions are practically worthless,” said James Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and first warned congress of global warming in 1988. “They do nothing to attack the fundamental problem.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he wrote, when asked if the plan would make continued climate activism unnecessary. Obama’s plan, and for that matter the proposed plan Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, he continued, “is like the fellow who walks to work instead of driving, and thinks he is saving the world.”

Hansen suggested a gradually rising fee for fossil fuel extraction, collected at the port of entry or, in domestic cases, the place where the material actually comes out of the ground. “As long as fossil fuels are allowed to (appear to be) the cheapest energy, someone will burn them,” he wrote in an email to msnbc. “It is not so much a matter of how far you go. It is a matter of whether you are going in the right direction.”

It sure would be nice if Hillary actually were the indomitable anti-carbon monster the coal and oil lobbyists writing RNC speeches make her out to be.  Maybe then we'd actually be doing something about the weather today instead of sitting here complaining about it.

Nothing will do that

This is a very good Tom Frank article. Like everything Frank has put out this year, including his newest book, it calls necessary attention to the corrupt relationship between the Democratic political establishment and economic elites on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

And so President Barack Obama did an interview with Business Week in which he was congratulated for his stewardship of the economy and asked “what industries” he might choose to join upon his retirement from the White House. The president replied as follows:

… what I will say is that – just to bring things full circle about innovation – the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying.

In relating this anecdote, I am not aiming to infuriate because the man we elected in 2008 to get tough with high finance and shut the revolving door was now talking about taking his own walk through that door and getting a job in finance. No. My object here is to describe the confident, complacent mood of the country’s ruling class in the middle of last month. So let us continue.

On the morning after British voters chose to leave the European Union, Obama was in California addressing an audience at Stanford University, a school often celebrated these days as the pre-eminent educational institution of Silicon Valley. The occasion of the president’s remarks was the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and the substance of his speech was the purest globaloney, flavored with a whiff of vintage dotcom ebullience. Obama marveled at the smart young creative people who start tech businesses. He deplored bigotry as an impediment that sometimes keeps these smart creative people from succeeding. He demanded that more power be given to the smart young creatives who are transforming the world. Keywords included “innovation”, “interconnection”, and of course “Zuckerberg”, the Facebook CEO, who has appeared with Obama on so many occasions and whose company is often used as shorthand by Democrats to signify everything that is wonderful about our era.

This is the key to understanding what's broken about American politics. It works only to promote the interests of the wealthiest class of elites to the greater detriment of just about everyone else.  But, as always, this core crisis of western democracy gets pushed further and further toward the back pages the closer we get to the election which is now at the part of the cycle where everything is about stagecraft criticism and Pokemon memes. At least Frank is still writing about things that matter.

At the same time, though, I find it strange that he hasn't yet figured out how the crisis ends.. or that he assumes it can end at all. 

It’s easy to see the problems presented by a cliquish elite when they happen elsewhere. In the countries of Old Europe, maybe, powerful politicians sell out grotesquely to Goldman Sachs; but when an idealistic American president announces that he wants to seek a career in venture capital, we have trouble saying much of anything. In Britain, maybe, they have an “establishment”; but what we have in America, we think, are talented people who deserve to be on top. One wonders what kind of a shock it will take to shake us out of this meritocratic complacency once and for all.

Frank has been writing about these issues for most of his career. So why is he still waiting for an event that will "shake us out of this meritocratic complacency once and for all"? One would think he'd figured out by now that nothing will do that.  Pundits like to impose long, well threaded narratives onto descriptions of news and politics but real life events don't fit together so neatly. The news isn't part of some grand novel. It's just a bunch of things that happen.

All of which is to say there is no "once and for all." There is only muddling through and trudging on according to whatever path best suits the people with the power to influence decisions. The Brexit vote may be, as Frank says, "a blunt and ugly rejection of some of (Hillary's) cohort’s most cherished ideas," but what does that matter? That fit has already begun to be put down.  Brexit may not even end up happening. And if and when it does, who will be hurt most? Probably not bankers and venture capitalists.

None of this is to say that Frank's analysis is wrong. It's spot on. Nor do we mean to say that it doesn't matter.  Quite the contrary.  Public policy implemented for and by elites has profound negative impacts on us all. But invariably the costs of every "shock" produced, be it a war, a financial collapse, or an ecological disaster are borne by the rest of us. The foundational power relationships that allow the ruling classes to go on ruling are never put right by any of it. So goes the history of pretty much everything.

Can that change? Who knows?  Does it mean there's nothing to be done at all? I hope it doesn't mean that. But as long as we keep lying to ourselves about an impending resolution via magical judgment "shock" imposed by the universe, we're probably barking up the wrong tree. Because what progress ever comes of fetishizing an apocalypse anyway? There are enough every day disasters to worry about as it is.

Only about eight years too late

Maybe it's too far in the past now, but probably there are a lot of people still hanging around who can actually remember the things that happened during the Obama Administration.  A major theme during this now long lost time was the President's perpetual search for a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" with Republicans which would have cut Social Security and Medicare by billions of dollars.

It was a dream that persisted throughout Obama's term frustrated only by a Republican controlled congress so hard-headed and reactionary that they never could bring themselves around to collect a gift from their IslamoKenyaSocialitler nemesis.

So the whole Presidency has been one long push. Which, under the circumstances, amounts to a win for consensus elites who all agree that Social Security is "doomed" eventually. Of course there are some simple things we could do to save and expand the program.  Maybe we could have gotten that started eight years ago if President Obama actually gave a shit. 

But he wanted a "Grand Bargain" instead. Thank God he didn't get it.  It's a shame, though, that everyone wants to give him credit for hopping on the bandwagon now that it doesn't matter what he does anymore.  But, then, he was President so long ago, I guess people have forgotten.  

How will we all die under President Trump?

The choices right now are

1) Superbug

(CNN)Superbugs could kill one person every three seconds by 2050, the equivalent of 10 million people a year, according to the final report last week from the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, established in 2014 to keep the world from being "cast back into the dark ages of medicine." 

The authors highlight the increasing burden of resistance and call for greater awareness of the problem, including the need for public campaigns beginning as soon as this summer.

2) Loose nukes

The term "wake-up call" is a tired cliché, but it is appropriate in the case of Command and Control, the frightening new exposé of America's nuclear weapons mishaps by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. (Click here to read an excerpt and my detailed review.) In short, Schlosser delivers a book full of revelations that left me agape. While we still worry in the abstract about Iran and North Korea and Pakistan, it's easy to forget that we still have thousands of our own ungodly devices on hair-trigger alert at this very moment. And even if we never drop or launch another nuke on purpose, these weapons are, in his words, "the most dangerous machines ever invented. And like every machine, sometimes they go wrong."

That's what the book is about. Through hard-fought documents and deep digging and extensive interviews, Schlosser reveals how close we've come, on numerous occasions, to a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war in which there are only losers. Command and Control will leave many readers with a deep unease about America's ability to handle our nukes safely. Schlosser's hope is that this unease will beget a long-neglected debate about "why we have them and when we use them and how many we need." But his book is no screed. He delivers an engrossing page-turner. Would that it were fiction.

That interview with Schlosser is from 2013. But since we're talking about Hiroshima today, it's worth a look.

3)  Robot uprising

One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post.

Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit."

China is investing heavily in a robot workforce.

In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations" but denied that it meant long-term job losses.

 4) Trump Drunkeness

In his speech at an energy conference, Trump called for cutting regulations and for building the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has blocked.

"I'm drunk on Trump," proclaimed John Olson, a North Dakota unbound delegate and attorney representing oil, natural gas and coal companies.

It's probably that one.

Why the Democratic Party won't change

This is a worthwhile op-ed by Louisiana AFL-CIO President Louis Reine railing against the soon to be ratified Trans Pacific Partnership.

Labeling the TPP a "trade deal" narrows the debate to a false "pro" versus "anti" trade frame. It allows supporters of corporate giveaways that masquerade as trade policies to declare inaccurately that unions on principle, regardless of what the provisions are, are opposed to trade. And it ignores the reality that corporate-driven trade has been used to try to permanently enshrine a whole host of harmful economic policies, virtually all of them "trickle down" — not just in the United States, but around the world.

But we have learned from decades of stalled wages that make it hard to do simple things like send kids to college or enjoy a family vacation: trickle down trade doesn't work any better than any other trickle down policy. The game is rigged. It enriches corporate CEOs and leaves hard-working families with crumbs, often struggling to pay for basic necessities.

That's why millions of Americans from all sides of the political spectrum oppose the TPP and are working hard to stop it in its tracks. Our focus this election year is rewriting the rules of our economy so that working families can live a decent life. Our economy can create broadly shared prosperity and rising wages, or it can continue to create spectacular wealth for the few at the top who write the rules to benefit themselves. The TPP is one more set of rules that the CEOs and Wall Street wrote to benefit themselves. If it becomes law, it will be an obstacle to a better, fairer economy for America and for the world.

Unfortunately, TPP is a fait-accompli.  The President is enthusiastic about it. Despite her equivocations during the heat of a campaign, the next President is also clearly supportive. It's easy to say the Democratic Party needs to change its neoliberal "free trade" outlook if it wants to continue to rely on the support of the people they habitually betray through trade policy.  But that's not true.  Not as long as AFL-CIO continues to "fall in line" behind Democratic candidates no matter what they do. Politics is mostly inertia. And we really can just go on like this forever as long as the important people continue making each other feel important.

Wage insurance

This slight hint of something was the most intriguing moment of the State of The Union speech this week. Barely anyone noticed. It's good to see somebody followed up.

In February 2015, longtime wage insurance advocate Robert Litan, then a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, suggested that the policy could be more efficient than straightforward job training programs when it comes to helping workers acquire key jobs skills.

“Indeed, economic research has established that, in the absence of a major career change, the best way to get new training is on the job rather than through some government training program, where job prospects are highly uncertain after one finishes,” wrote Litan. “In effect, wage insurance acts as a subsidy for employers to help pay the cost of training new hires, while cushioning the economic pain suffered when unemployed workers take new jobs paying less than what they were earning before layoffs."

But Eisenbrey says he opposed one wage insurance scheme that was proposed during the Bush years because he saw it as a way of shoving needy people into jobs that “would otherwise be inappropriate."

“Basically the idea was to force you to do this, to dangle it out there and say, ‘Make a decision quickly when you are first taking unemployment insurance, or you’ll lose the ability to get wage insurance.’ And obviously the idea was to get people to take lower paying jobs,” said Eisenbrey.

Since Obama isn't putting forth any details, and since he really barely even mentioned this Tuesday night, it's hard to know what, exactly, he had in mind. But if I had to guess, I'd say he's thinking of something much closer to the Bush era proposal than a truly radical innovation like, say, a universal basic income would be.

Later in the speech Obama talked about teachers who have to buy their own supplies and manufacturing workers who have to put in longer hours as signs of "optimism" rather than signs that something is very wrong. In Obama's concept of political economy everything is always working out for the best.

As though Bobby Jindal were just some bad dream

Looks like a big reason Obama is visiting is he wants to talk about making the hurt go away. 

But one of the specific items that was likely discussed as the president made his first official visit to Baton Rouge: Obama plans to propose a new Medicaid expansion measure that would give states like Louisiana credit for the federal money they have missed out on because they have waited to expand Medicaid.

Today in tweeted pics

Everything you need to know about how that Obama-Netanyahu meeting went, in 1 picture https://t.co/QArgBIUO8I pic.twitter.com/xWKc1OmDNu

— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) November 9, 2015

Meanwhile

Game on #lagov pic.twitter.com/HTRvuBo9rq

— Greg Hilburn (@GregHilburn1) November 9, 2015