It's about time

This was announced at the end of last week.  It's a welcome development but well overdue as well.

The City of New Orleans has joined six southern Louisiana parishes by filing a lawsuit against oil and gas companies over their role in coastal land loss, Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration announced late Friday.

The suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, echoes other efforts to hold the energy industry accountable for damage done to wetlands and marshes through decades of drilling and dredging.

By wearing away those natural protective barriers, the industry has contributed to making New Orleans more vulnerable to storm surge and threatens the very existence of the city, Cantrell said in a statement.

"New Orleans has been harmed," she said. "The people of our city have been harmed, and our way of life is threatened by the damage done to our coastal wetlands.”

It's taken almost six years for the city to get in on the multi-parish lawsuit which itself was supposed to be the way forward now that  SLFPA-E's suit has been dismissed for lack of #standing. But since the former Mayor of New Orleans had a sister who was on her way to becoming an oil and gas lobbyist this hasn't been a city priority.

Speaking of industry influence, I wanted to point out this very long New Yorker article that's being passed around a bunch this month.  It isn't a terrible article. But it also greatly deemphasizes the role of man made climate change and the physical destruction of the Louisiana wetlands brought on specifically by oil and gas exploration over the years.  It mentions those things. But researchers often argue industry activity has been the most significant cause or accelerant of coastal loss by far over the past century.   The consequences of fossil fuel use and extraction are becoming more and more dire with every year that passes. But the oil lobby is still doing a fair job of getting at least some of the blame diverted from their clients.

It's also interesting to see Entergy New Orleans named in the city's lawsuit. We already know relations with the utility are under some strain as of late. We're not sure what this might mean for the future.  But it's prompted some closer scrutiny of the current regulatory structure including the lawyers and consulting firms who benefit from it.  There is a can't miss article up at the Lens this week that dives into all of that.

We're not going to fix this

This is more broken record stuff from me, I guess. But the "solution" to the climate problem people may be holding out hope for is never coming. We here in Louisiana who have had a front row seat to its consequences for decades should understand better than anyone that, even in the face of a so-called "existential threat" there is no backstop. Because every threat is really just another opportunity for those who have the power to exploit it.

This is how an "existential threat" to  communities like Isle de Jean Charles is also a big money making opportunity for, yes, certainly Energy Transfer Partners, but also for the lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians who make their living enabling its avarice.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27^th, in St. Martinville, the owners of a 38-acre parcel of land in the Atchafalaya Swamp will face off with Energy Transfer Partners, the builders and operators of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, over these very issues. In next week’s trial, State District Judge Keith Comeaux will attempt to sort out the issues of eminent domain, property ownership, trespassing, destruction of property, and constitutionality of the competing laws and interests.

The company is going to win that.  Not because they have law on their side but because they, with the help of their many friends, run this shit. This is from a Lens op-ed by Anne Rolfes published over the weekend. Rolfes talks about the several lies of the oil and chemical industries in Louisiana and names some of their most prominent enablers.

How many times did those of us who oppose Bayou Bridge have to endure company reps claiming that the pipeline project would be a jobs engine? In January 2017, former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, describing herself as a paid consultant to Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s parent company, invoked the jobs promise at a public hearing before the state Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Never mind that one of the brochures that Landrieu and Bayou Bridge distributed that night pierced their own veil. The pipeline would generate all of 12 permanent jobs, the brochure revealed. Pipeline opponents spoke out, bringing that low number to the agencies’ attention. The company’s response? They edited the brochure and deleted the jobs numbers.

It's not as if someone like Mary Landrieu can claim ignorance about the stakes here. She's from Louisiana. She's seen the damage done to our coastline, she's certainly read about our cancer rates, she's seen her own hometown catastrophically flooded. But the "existential threat" to the state is not specifically a threat to her compared to the amount of money she can make allowing more vulnerable people to suffer.


Similarly, the Governors Edwards are unconcerned with threats to anything but their own prospects.

St. James Parish would be the proposed pipeline’s end point. The parish is also in the crosshairs of two methanol plants, a chemical plant called Formosa and the just announced Wanhua facility. Signs at construction sites advertise temporary rooms for rent, something that in-town workers would not need.

The Formosa facility — which, like the pipeline, enjoys the support of Governor John Bel Edwards — is a $9.4 billion dollar project, called a chemical complex by project boosters. The company’s permits acknowledge that it would operate 24/7 in its production of throwaway plastics like bags and bottles, with no plan to handle the increased waste or pollution it will cause.

Despite these problems, former Governor Edwin Edwards came out of mothballs to cheer on Formosa at a public hearing. Whether he’s on Formosa’s payroll and, like Mary Landrieu, collecting fees for backing environmentally deleterious projects, is unclear.

It's not necessary for EWE to be "on Formosa's payroll" as Rolfes puts it. He is a licensed broker in industrial real estate in the river parishes and so probably stands to benefit from land use decisions like this one. As for JBE, this doesn't even mention  the bill he signed this year criminalizing free speech against the pipeline.  Here is a blurb about that from Bayou Brief back in September. 

Energy Transfer Partners also used its “corporate privilege” to help drive a new law through the Louisiana legislature this past spring. They retained the services of some heavy-hitting lobbyists and coalesced the clout of petrochemical industry groups to push passage of HB 727, now known as Act 692.

While other states – including Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Ohio, and Colorado – have considered a similar measure to this ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) model bill, Louisiana was the only one to fully enact it. The bill designates pipelines as “critical infrastructure,” equivalent to public ports and transportation such as railroads, and public utilities like electric power generating stations and water treatment facilities. The “construction” of pipelines is now included in that definition.

And it makes “unauthorized entry,” also known as trespassing and formerly classified as a misdemeanor, onto the property of one of these facilities a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. If more than one person is involved in the planning or commission of such an offense, it becomes a “conspiracy,” punishable by up to 12 years and a $250,000 fine.

Even though sections were added to the law declaring it was in no way to apply to “lawful and peaceful assembly or demonstration” or “recreational activities conducted in the open around a pipeline, such as boating” (nor to “prevent the owner of a property form exercising right of ownership, including use”), thirteen people have been arrested and charged with felonies under this law since it went into effect on Aug. 1.

I will admit, though, I did chuckle this morning at the Bayou Brief somehow leaving out any mention of Edwards with regard to this heinous law he signed. The same article also talks about the out of state private security contractors  Hilliard Heintze, and Athos Group, ETP has brought in to harass and surveil its adversaries. But it does not see fit to mention that those companies are only able to operate in Louisiana because Governor Edwards chose to allow it. For all the good reporting that gets done over at Bayou Brief, it's remarkable how consistent they are at covering for certain politicians with whom they are friendly. Mary Landrieu's role in promoting the pipeline is also not mentioned there. In fact, looking through the (again, quite good for the most part) environmental reporting at the Bayou Brief, the reader is extremely hard pressed to find much criticism of Landrieu, or Edwards, or John Breaux, or even Chris John who until this month was the head of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association for a decade. I know these political figures all have something in common.  What is it?

Maybe that's a bit beside the point, but I do think it's a key reason we aren't going to fix the climate problem.  If we are unable to recognize the complicity of those who exercise power, if we are unwilling even to name the culprits even as they profit by our distress, how can we even begin to protect ourselves from them? 

Obviously, we can't and we won't.  We aren't going to fix the climate problem. It's like Bob Marshall says here, the game is up with regard to all of that. 

I’ve been watching the growth of this suicidal approach to the crisis through my Google alert for sea level rise, which daily sends news stories on that topic to my email account. And almost every day there are one or more stories about cities or states in the GOP column seeking grants from the federal government to “adapt” to problems already being caused by climate change, or others they see rushing toward them. They might want levees, floodwalls, elevated roads, rebuilt beaches, or the planning studies for guidance on what to do as the temperature and the water continue to rise.

But even as they now admit global warming is happening, they continue to elect congressional delegations who oppose any regulations that would reduce the emissions that are driving warming. They think it makes sense for a nation that has already lost $350 billion in the last decade to extreme weather events and fires linked to global warming to spend hundreds of millions more to “adapt” to these threats – without doing anything to prevent the disasters from happening again.

In other words, surrender, don’t fight back.

Marshall is trying to make a  rhetorical point about "conservatism" here but this sort of thing is hardly limited to Republicans. Democrats in New Orleans have been selling "resilience" and the various grifts and scams associated with that similarly fatalist philosophy for years now.  Disaster capitalism is bipartisan.

Mary Landrieu is garbage

Atrios:

Clearly the electoral woes of the Democratic party can be cured by following the lead of former senators Begich, Hagan, Lincoln, and Landrieu, all of whom couldn't win re-election. Of course, DC lobbyists Begich, Hagan, Lincoln, and Landrieu might not be all that concerned with the electoral fortunes of the Democratic party

Every cowardly piece of shit Important Person in Louisiana politics and media will praise her wisdom, though. 

Pipelines are so good

Van Ness Feldman lobbyist Mary Landrieu wrote to the Advocate this week in support of the proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline through South Louisiana wetlands. As is standard practice in rolling out these talking points, Landrieu highlighted the project's safety.

Bayou Bridge will employ state of the art technology, displacing the far more perilous modes of truck, rail and barge/ship transportation. The pipeline will provide significant economic benefits to Louisiana, including jobs during construction, jobs at the pipe manufacturing facility near Baton Rouge and taxes paid to the state and parishes.

And then wouldn't you know, the very next day... 

A fire at the Phillips 66 pipeline near the Williams Discovery natural gas plant in Paradis continued to burn Friday morning (Feb. 10), hours after an explosion injured two workers and left another missing. The area immediately around the plant has been evacuated.

St. Charles Parish officials and representatives from Phillips 66 will talk about the pipeline explosion and fire during a news conference Friday at 11 a.m., the parish announced.

The news conference will be held at the parish's Emergency Operations Center in Hahnville and will be broadcast live on the parish's government channel, Cox Channel 6 and U-Verse 99.

According to a 2 a.m. statement from Phillips 66, the pipeline had been blocked in and the remaining product in the line continued to burn. The pipeline, which runs from Venice to Paradis, carries y-grade, or raw, natural gas liquids.

It's unclear how long it will take the fire to burn out. St. Charles officials remained at the site as of 8 a.m. Friday.

Almost immediately Landrieu's colleagues in the oil and gas apology business issued a #NotAllPipelines statement. Not everybody is buying that, though. 

"The oil industry and the elected officials they've bought off will have a thousand excuses about this accident," said Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. "They'll say that this is a natural gas pipeline, not oil. They'll say that new technology would have prevented it. But the fire and the explosion speak for itself. Pipelines are dangerous and we don't want more in Louisiana." 

This afternoon the fire was still burning but should be out shortly.  So, if you've got a really big boiling pot, now might be the time. 

As crawfish season rolls on, the prices continues to tumble. This week, the average price for boiled crawfish around New Orleans dropped 33 cents to $4.68 a pound.

Still too damn high, if you ask me. But it might be your only option for at least another month. 

Louisiana’s vast estuary coastline has historically netted a tremendous crab harvest. The state is by far the nation’s top blue crab supplier, producing an annual average of 43 million pounds. But lately state officials have seen warning signs of over fishing.

Louisiana’s blue crab fishery is certified sustainable, which means local fishermen can assure buyers their product comes from a healthy, well-maintained resource. As part of that certification process, there are benchmarks for tracking the condition of the fishery.

“When we cross those benchmarks, we have to take action so we don’t run past the point of no return,” said Jeff Marx, crustacean biologist with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Last summer, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission approved a crab fishing closure for 30 days each year in 2017, 2018 and 2019, beginning the third Monday of February.

One wonders how much healthier our fisheries might be today were it not for the past century's worth of spoilage at the hands of oil and gas exploration.  Maybe Mary can address this in her next letter.

What is this person's job title again?

For some reason The Advocate identified Mary Landrieu only as a "Former Senator" when it published this op-ed today. In fact Ms. Landrieu is employed by Van Ness Feldman, a lobbying firm with strong ties to the oil and gas industry.

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has been hired by the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman (VNF), the company announced today. Landrieu's title will be "senior policy advisor," and a release from VNF said Landrieu would "advise clients on various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters."

According to the website Open Secrets, VNF's client base includes several companies dealing in oil and gas, as well as the energy field in general — a natural fit for Landrieu, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. The company has offices in Washington D.C. and Seattle.

When an oil lobbyist writes a letter to the paper advocating approval of an oil pipeline through an already threatened section of our polluted and eroding wetlands, it's probably a good idea for the paper to disclose that relationship. Participants at a public hearing in Napoleonville last night understood it well enough.

As politician after politician lined up to throw their support behind the project, members of the crowd began to chant "How much? How much?" in reference to how much they receive in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, received the brunt of the ire.

Oil-and-gas professionals and environmental groups have sparred over the pipeline for months. The debate has occurred against the backdrop of the demonstrations in the Standing Rock Reservation against the Dakota Access pipeline, which some have attributed to the national interest in pipeline construction.

Bayou Bridge and DAPL are both projects of Energy Transfer Partners.  This week, ETP received a go-ahead from the Army Corps of Engineers to resume construction in North Dakota. 

Protesters rallied at demonstrations nationwide Wednesday to protest the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to greenlight the construction of the contested $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, says it will start work immediately. Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., to protest the project, which many fear could contaminate the Missouri River, which serves as a drinking water source for millions. Crowds also gathered in Los Angeles, Manhattan, Denver and San Francisco, where about a dozen people were arrested blockading the doors of the Federal Building. More protesters rallied in Ithaca, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Chicago, where four people were arrested after locking themselves to each other to shut down a Citibank to protest its investments in the pipeline. Many of the protesters were furious not only about the government’s approval of the pipeline, but also about Trump’s recent claims that no one had called the White House to express opposition to the project.

The White House, in fact, has not been taking public comment phone calls at all.  Your Congresspersons do, though. Most of the time anyway. Unfortunately for us, the folks Louisiana voters send to Washington mostly just want to grow up to be oil lobbyists like Mary Landrieu.  But until they get there, they still technically need to field your comments.  

Mary Landrieu loves pipelines

This week an "extremely large number" of protesters gathered at a public hearing in Baton Rouge to speak against Energy Transfer Partners' proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline across the Atchafalalya basin. This pipeline would form the ass end of ETP's infrastructure associated with the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline you may have heard about. 

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the tail end of the now infamous Dakota Access route. The Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude oil from the North Dakota oilfields to an oil tank farm in Illinois, where it would then be transported to Nederland, Texas. A newly completed pipeline connects Nederland to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil per day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands.

Climate change activists, indigenous residents, crawfishermen, rice farmers, health care professionals, conservationists, and Louisianans who live along the proposed route all showed up to protest the pipeline’s construction. The hearing lasted five and a half hours, as speaker after speaker weighed in on how the pipeline would affect them.

Speaking on behalf of the ETP was career oil stooge Mary Landrieu.  

The Bayou Bridge builders argue pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil that would otherwise use less efficient trains or trucks to get to refineries. Former Democratic senator-turned-energy lobbyist Mary Landrieu was among the proponents of this argument at Thursday’s hearing.

“I would be testifying for this pipeline [even] if I did not work for them,” she said, amid boos and jeers from the audience.

But past pipelines have proven to be less airtight than the industry claims.

A new report by the Bucket Brigade found that there were 144 oil and gas pipeline accidents in 2016. Many of these accidents were caused by corrosion or ruptures in the pipe, prompting the advocacy group to conclude the existing pipelines are in “deplorable condition.”

Even if she did not work for ETP Mary would have just gone there and talked about the pipeline. It's a personal passion of hers, apparently. 

Free Dollar Bill

Let's get in the wayback machine and revisit the Bill Jefferson follies for a moment.  Today we're going all the way back to 2009 when some of us, learning the specific nature of the charges against ol' Dollar Bill, started to ask what's the big deal.  Or at least, we wanted to know how exactly this was different from the day to day legalized bribery that happens in Washington.

If a Congressman can be convicted for soliciting bribes even if the so-called bribery payments are unrelated to the Congressman's official duties, then doesn't that mean every former Congressperson/Senator who goes to work for a lobbying firm selling his or her influence and connections is guilty of the same thing? If so, how soon can we indict John Breaux, Billy Tauzin.... pretty much all of K Street?

Those other guys continue to enjoy status as respected (and wealthy) former statesmen.  Mary Landrieu has since joined them in the pantheon of (legal, of course) influence peddlers. Bill Jefferson is still in jail.

But this week, a new Supreme Court ruling suggests that maybe he doesn't have to be. 

Both had those dramatic details that make a corruption case scintillating to the media and the public. For (former Virginia Governor Bob) McDonnell, it was a Rolex watch and a Ferrari ride. For Jefferson, it was the $90,000 the FBI found in his freezer.

But the true parallels lie in what McDonnell and Jefferson were doing that attracted the scrutiny of federal prosecutors. Neither McDonnell nor Jefferson was writing legislation or changing laws or issuing orders in exchange for gifts or money.

They were peddling their influence.

The court ruled in the McDonnell case that selling an "official act" can be illegal. But, according to the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, it "must involve a formal exercise of governmental power that is similar in nature to a lawsuit before a court, a determination before an agency, or a hearing before a committee."

That would seem to narrow the definition most people have of what constitutes public corruption and bribery and raise doubts about whether Jefferson's efforts to broker deals for a company were, in fact, an "official act."

They experts interviewed for the article suggest that the McDonnell decision is sufficiently narrow to keep Jefferson in prison. But the principle in play here seems even murkier than it did in 2009. If the Court isn't going to put McDonnell much less Breaux or Landrieu in jail, why are Bill Jefferson and Ray Nagin, even, there right now?

The Mary Landrieu Rule

LSU is cracking down on binge drinking at student tailgate parties.

Fuentes-Martin said there would be no “common-source containers of alcohol,” like “tiger punch, jungle juice,” or other unlabeled drinks where people aren’t informed about the contents.

There would also be no glass containers allowed anywhere on campus, and no drinking games that encourage rapid consumption of alcohol.

To be fair, things have gotten a bit out of hand in recent years.

What's it like to be Mary Landrieu?

What must it be like to devote one's life, career, and passion to vigorous defense of the corrupt unjust status quo? Besides lucrative, I mean.

And the 2015 award for outstanding achievement in the field of corruption goes to...

Mary Landrieu

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s move from elected office to lobbying firm has landed her on the conservative Washington Examiner’s list of top “revolving-door moments” of 2015.

The “revolving door” phenomenon in politics is often scrutinized for shuffling government officials between the public sector and lucrative jobs in the private sector, giving special interests more influence in the process. Washington has made efforts to curb its effect, but it’s still quite common.

Landrieu, a three-term Louisiana Democrat who lost her re-election bid against Republican Bill Cassidy in 2014, can’t officially lobby Congress until 2017, but she can work as a consultant and lobby the administration. In May, she signed on as a consultant with Van Ness Feldman, a firm that represents several clients in the energy industry. She landed the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a group of coal companies, as her first client in October.

Letters

Hello, The Advocate.  There's something wrong with your website today.  It keeps crashing my browser, anyway. So don't click on this link.  The reason I put it there, though, is it's an op-ed about education policy written by a paid "strategic advisor" to a national charter school advocacy foundation.  Maybe you should have included a disclaimer.

Terrible person is still terrible

Congratulations to Mary Landrieu.

The partnership behind a shuttered “clean coal” power plant has enlisted former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to push for a revival of the federally-backed project.

Newly filed disclosure forms show that Landrieu will be working for the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a group of coal companies.

It's her first lobbying client since joining law and lobby firm Van Ness Feldman in May.

The coalition was formed to research and develop “near-zero emissions coal technology” that stores carbon dioxide underground. That project, called FutureGen 2.0, would refit a coal-fired power plant in western Illinois to inject emissions into a subterranean pipeline.

The technology behind so-called "clean coal" is suspect. As an energy or environmental policy it is wasteful and counterproductive.  But as a commercial concern, it makes for a pretty good scam.  When Mary was an elected representative of the state of Louisiana we could at least hem and haw about the compromises she habitually made with destructive fossil fuel producers on our semi-behalf.  But now all she does is collect their money.  What a nice person she turned out to be.

How is Bobby doing?

Well let's see, he picked up an important endorsement from one Republican.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential campaign has won a key endorsement from a high-ranking Iowa Republican.

Iowa Speaker Pro Tem Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, said in a statement Monday that he has decided to back Jindal because of his “strong Christian principles” and conservative positions on issues like guns and abortion.

“After much thought, prayer, research and discussions with my wife I have decided to make an endorsement in the presidential race,” Windschitl said in a statement.

Oh but wait, another prominent Republican says she favors Bush. 

As for Jindal, “he would be a terrible president,” she said. “He’s virtually paid no attention to our state in the last four years and simply promotes himself.”

But (Mary)Landrieu did have some kind words – for other GOP candidates.

She said she was impressed with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

On Rubio: “I think he embodies that kind of spirit of hopefulness that American really longs for in their leadership.”

On Kasich: “I like John Kasich … He’s not a Republican that pretends there are no poor people in America.”

But she had the kindest words for Bush.

“I always have been impressed with Jeb Bush. He’s been really a phenomenal leader on education reform,” she said. “I think he would be very good as a leader because the country really needs that kind of thought.”

Win some, lose some, I guess.  

Note: Mary Landrieu is a professional lobbyist for the Walton Family Foundation. Education privatization reform is their specialty. It's also Jeb Bush's pet issue.

Oil lobbyist supports oil lobby agenda

Remember back when Mary Landrieu was still a Senator and she set up a futile last minute run at forcing a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline?  The conventional wisdom at the time was that Mary was desperately trying to save her failing reelection campaign by appearing to "fight for Louisiana jobs" one last time. I didn't really buy that argument.  To me, it looked like Mary had already come to terms with her retirement from the Senate. The Keystone gambit, in that context, was really just resume padding for K Street.  If that is what it was, it worked.  

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has been hired by the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman (VNF), the company announced today. Landrieu's title will be "senior policy advisor," and a release from VNF said Landrieu would "advise clients on various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters."

According to the website Open Secrets, VNF's client base includes several companies dealing in oil and gas, as well as the energy field in general — a natural fit for Landrieu, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. The company has offices in Washington D.C. and Seattle.

The proper context for understanding Mary's actions toward the end of the Senate campaign was she was, at that point, auditioning for a job in the oil lobby.  Similarly, the proper context for understanding her actions now is she is currently employed as an oil lobbyist.

WASHINGTON – Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has signed onto a group of former Democratic lawmakers opposing the Obama's administration's international agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program.

Landrieu is listed as a member of the all Democratic advisory board for Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. Also on the board are former Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana;  Mark Begich of Alaska and former Reps. Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Gary Ackerman of New York and Peter Deutsch of Florida.

Oil is pretty cheap right now. The global market for petroleum is a complicated animal to describe but the most common belief among analysts is that the Iran deal is likely to drive prices downward as Iranian exports increase.  The Iran deal itself is also a complicated matter but the general consensus there is that it makes for a decent alternative to bombing more people.  That's also probably not the best news for Mary's clients. And they're who matter to Mary.

Moistness of Water/Catholicism of Popes Dept.

Yeah, democracy, whatever.

The idea that U.S. presidents look out for the wealthy and powerful over the mass of ordinary Americans is nothing new. But a new study claims to confirm that assumption with hard data while seeking to spur a conversation over the flagging health of American democracy.

Echoing a much-discussed paper out of Princeton last year that argued the U.S. is no longer a proper representative democracy, the book, "Who Governs?" is an exploration of presidents, public opinion, and manipulation.

James N. Druckman from Northwesten University and Lawrence R. Jacobs from University of Minnesota make the case that presidents from both Republican and Democratic parties mainly serve and are guided by the wishes of the wealthy and political elites and exploit public opinion in order to serve those ends.

The duo turn to previously confidential documents from presidential archives, interviews with White House officials, and previously unquantified data to argue that "elites do most of the deciding," since presidents purposefully aim to "shirk citizen control."

This research focuses specifically on the Presidency. But you may have noticed your local governance mileage does not vary. I've rambled on at length twice this week already about the ways in which the Katrina recovery has been an exercise in wish fulfillment for political and economic elites.

Nowhere has the neoliberal agenda been more fully realized locally and nationally than in the realm of education reform. David Sirota wrote this two years ago but it lays things out pretty plainly.

For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist-profiteers disproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.

That sounds like a policy designed to benefit wealthy elites at the expense of middle class workers like teachers not to mention the damage to a public service as fundamental to democracy as public education.  How much political muscle can you muster for that sort of enterprise?  A lot, it turns out.

A few weeks ago we learned that Mary Landrieu is going to work for the Walton Family Foundation promoting more charters. 

In an interview, Landrieu, who lost her bid for a 4^th term last December to Republican Bill Cassidy, said the position will enable her to continue advocating for one of her priorities as a senator -- helping encourage school reform. Landrieu points to the creation of dozens of charter schools in New Orleans as an example of "positive reform" that generates innovation and more learning options for students.

Mary's brother Mitch often talks up the "success" of the New Orleans charter movement during his many travels.

When Bobby Jindal takes a break from his many travels to announce his Presidential campaign in New Orleans this month he will likely emphasize his support for the charter movement. He has called it a "lasting legacy" of his tenure as Governor.  It's also a "lasting legacy" of perhaps more serious Presidential candidate Jeb Bush's time as Governor of Florida.

So the charter movement is pretty much the "bipartisan" feel-good issue of our time. At least for our ruling elites it is.  And, of course, they are the only people who count.

Mary is doing OK

Good to see her keeping busy. 

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has been hired by the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman (VNF), the company announced today. Landrieu's title will be "senior policy advisor," and a release from VNF said Landrieu would "advise clients on various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters."

According to the website Open Secrets, VNF's client base includes several companies dealing in oil and gas, as well as the energy field in general — a natural fit for Landrieu, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. The company has offices in Washington D.C. and Seattle.

That isn't very surprising. We've all figured Mary's Senate career was prelude to a future in oil & gas lobbying since pretty much forever.  She'll be well taken care of.

Actually, she's already doing well.  Last month it was announced that she had agreed to accept money from the Walton Family Foundation in order to advocate for more charter schools.

"I'll be working directly as a strategic adviser for the Walton Education Foundation promoting reforms in public schools, promoting choice and expansion of high quality charter schools," Landrieu said. "Most people are recognizing that New Orleans is one of the most exciting models for variety and choice that are producing new options and opportunities for educational success."

Is she lying or just out of touch? If anything, "people are recognizing" that New Orleans's experiment with charterization is problematic at best.

Charter school supporters and advocates frequently point to the broad choices that families have when seeking a school in New Orleans, where most of the 82 public schools are charters and most accept applications from across the city. But the concept of choice butts against the reality of supply and demand in a city where many schools rate only average or below.

Nearly 12,000 children in New Orleans chose their desired schools through the city’s mostly unified enrollment system this spring — but only half got their No. 1 choice, according to recently released results.

About 30 percent got their second, third or up-to-eighth choice, the most applicants can rank. The remaining 20 percent or so were not matched to any requested school; half of them will stay at their current school and the other half will go through the second round of the enrollment process.

Many others are becoming frustrated with what is looking more and more like a deliberate shell game.  

OneApp, the centralized enrollment system for the New Orleans schools, is supposed to make it easy for parents in the city to have their choice of schools. But parents aren’t going to have real choice just because they filled out the OneApp application. For example, you can’t see a school’s discipline guide before you register your child. And if I want my child to go to a school that has recess, art or educates the whole child, I have very little choice at all. I can try for one of the high-performing charters—the magnet schools that existed before the storm—but which are now even harder to get into than they were before Katrina. Parents of special needs kids, by the way, have even less choice, because so few of the schools will accept their children at all. What OneApp does is ensure that the various charter operators get the enrollment that they were promised. No matter how bad the school is, or how terrible the climate, we’re going to make sure that you get those kids.

And no one disputes that the way for this experiment was cleared by the firing of  7,500 New Orleans teachers in 2005 even before the flood waters had receded from the city.

WASHINGTON (PAI) - The quest of 7,500 fired New Orleans teachers and school staffers for back pay and damages - union members summarily let go through a state takeover after Hurricane Katrina smashed their city and their schools almost a decade ago - ended May 18 in a loss at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Without comment and with votes unreported, the justices turned down the teachers' appeal of a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling denying them class action status to sue for millions of dollars as a result of the firings.

Before the losses at the two Supreme Courts, in D.C. and in Baton Rouge, the teachers and staffers, members of the American Federation of Teachers, had won in lower courts.

The teachers represented a significant slice of pre-Katrina middle class in New Orleans.  But that's "old" New Orleans.  We're replacing that now with.. whoever can afford to buy all these $700,000 houses and not actually live in them. Who needs all those boring old wage earning families anymore. All they do is take up too many choice seats in the One-App lottery anyway.

Indeed, the "school reform" movement nationwide is frequently criticized as a union busting initiative first and an education reform movement... you know.. somewhere down the line, maybe.  Mary Landrieu received fairly solid support from organized labor throughout her career in politics right up to last year's bitter end.  That must not have meant a whole to her.

My favorite aspect of last year's Senate election were the multiple opportunities I got to hear people who had personally met her talk about what a truly great person Mary Landrieu was.  I don't mean to pick on Lamar here. He wasn't the only one talking this game. But here's a sample.

I’ve met Mary Landrieu several times over the course of the last few years, but most of what I knew about her was based on what I’d read in the news. I just wish y’all could have seen and heard the Mary Landrieu I met today at lunch, and I hope you’ll take my word: This woman is fearless and righteous. I may disagree with her on some things, but I will never discount her love and passion for the people of Louisiana. I will never again question her bona fides as a champion of civil rights, because it’s absolutely impossible to fake what she expressed to me today. She spoke from the heart about racism and sexism and the need for all of us to come together. She talked about the toxicity and divisiveness of our political and media culture, how it manufactures outrage and discourages cooperation, compromise, and compassion.

That's actually a sidebar in the post. The point of that article was Lamar was going to vote for Mary even though he doesn't agree with her all the time.  Nothing wrong with that.  If we waited for a candidate we actually agreed with about most things, we wouldn't vote at all.  But, if we go around pretending the candidates we've settled for are likeable humans (or, in the case of 18 year US Senators, humans at all anymore) we're making the same mistake.

Elections aren't about who you like. They're about supporting whichever terrible person will be less likely to completely squash you as soon as they get the chance. Over the course of four senate election cycles that terrible person was Mary Landrieu. When she lost last year, we were made ever so slightly the worse off because of it.  But she's doing fine now. Don't waste any time worrying about her. She obviously could not care less about you.

Let the lameness begin

The Louisiana Democratic party officially nominated or endorsed or whatever they're calling it John Bel Edwards today  for .... zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Edwards's campaign is a dead issue from the beginning. The only story here, in fact, is that the nomination probably means that we can stop speculating about that never-was-gonna-happen Mitch campaign.

Members of the Democratic State Central Committee also said they wouldn't be making the endorsement if they thought another Democratic candidate was going to get into the race.

There has been a lot of speculation about whether New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu -- who tend to perform better in gubernatorial polls than Edwards -- would run for governor. He hasn't officially said that he won't run in the race.

We can stop worrying about that, right? Good because... oh what, Mary? 

Mary Landrieu did stop short of giving an official endorsement for Edwards.

"I will be making my endorsements very shortly," Mary Landrieu told the Democrats.

Ha ha. OK. What are the odds that she turns around and endorses Angelle? 

Left to the waves

Almost a decade's worth of hard work post-Katrina trying to get Louisiana its fair share of offshore oil revenues is about to be pissed away.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is proposing that off-shore revenue sharing -- slated to begin in 2017 -- be scrapped with a plan that would provide "broad natural resource, watershed and conservation benefits for the entire nation." The proposal is part of the president's $4 trillion budget, unveiled Monday (Feburary 2).

The revenue sharing, part of 2006 energy legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., was expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually for Louisiana for coastal restoration.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, who defeated Landrieu in the 2014 Louisiana Senate race, immediately promised a fight on the two Senate committees with jurisdiction over the revenue sharing legislation -- Appropriations and Energy. Last year, Landrieu chaired the Energy Committee.

"I will do everything in my power to use my seats on these committees to not only block the President's raid on oil and gas revenues, but fight to increase Louisiana's share of offshore revenue," Cassidy said. "Funding for coastal restoration must remain a promise to Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states."

Ha ha, freshman Senator Bill Cassidy will do everything in his power to help.  Great. 

Mary Landrieu made oil revenue sharing a top priority after Hurricane Katrina. Mary, like most Louisianians Republican and Democrat alike,  reasoned that, since Louisiana has borne the nearly immeasurable costs of an eroding coastline and increasingly catastrophic flooding in order to provide "the entire nation" the benefit of extracting the state's fossil fuels, we ought to be reimbursed for our trouble.  At least a little bit.  It's a big mess, all of this, and it will cost us at least $50 billion just to keep it in check.

For a while, we even got the rest of the country to agree with us on that small point.  Until 2015 when, I guess, Katrina is "over" so, hey, good luck!   I'd say maybe we should sue somebody but Governor Jindal and Congressman Graves have already told us that's a bad idea.

Pay to play

A big part of the Steve Scalise/David Duke story that isn't being emphasized right now is the "pay-to-play" nature of state politics. In this case, it's specifically about the people you have to pay tribute to in order to play in Jefferson Parish and in the First Congressional District but it happens all over the place.  I've got a ton of fun links from the past few days I hope I have time to put together into something coherent later on.  

But that's not what this post is for.  Instead, it's to point you at Dambala who has been trying to show you how pay-to-play works with regard to the BP claims process for a few years now.  It helps when they just write out what they're up to.

Branding vs party building

Louisiana Democrats don't have a lot to look forward to as far as next year's gubernatorial election is concerned. Maybe that's not an entirely unhealthy situation for them.  It could be an opportunity to start over, rebuild a party from the proverbial grass roots, focus on the things that matter to the poor and working class Louisianans they claim as their traditional constituency.

This would mean finding candidates who agitate for living wages, for eliminating corporate welfare from the state budget, for restoring a healthy Gulf Coast, for affordable health care for everyone, for reliable flood protection and affordable flood insurance.   This is an opportunity to find people who are actually doing this work and put them on the ballot.  Maybe you won't elect a Govenrnor this time around, but you might build something more like a party that can deliver real results in the future. The Louisiana Democratic Party as currently composed is moribund; corrupted by money and oil; useless to anyone outside of a shrinking circle of elites.  Burn it down and start over.

Of course, the "party insiders" are hoping to do exactly the opposite of this.

If Mary Landrieu were to enter the race for Louisiana Governor, she would join an already crowded field of established political heavyweights, including Senator David Vitter, Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne, former Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, and State Representative John Bel Edwards. Currently, Vitter is the presumptive frontrunner, and Edwards, who announced his candidacy in February of 2013, is the only Democrat in the race.

“There is only one way next year’s elections become competitive for down-ticket Democratic candidates,” a prominent Democratic official told me, also on the condition of anonymity. “We need a Landrieu at the top of the ticket, preferably Mary.

 Sure, good luck with that.