"Government approved protest"

 The best kind of protest, as everyone knows.

House Bill 127, sponsored by Rep. Mike Bayham, R-Chalmette, received final House concurrence in a 83-15 vote. The measure is now pending approval from Gov. Jeff Landry, who has called for harsh punishments against protestors. 

The proposal expands a state criminal statute that outlaws obstruction of a highway, road, railway, airport runway or navigable waterway by adding a conspiracy component.

Under current law, the crime is considered a misdemeanor punishable with a $250 fine, six months in prison or both. It applies to anyone who physically performs an act, such as protesting or placing an obstacle on a street, that makes it harder for vehicles to pass.

Bayham’s bill increases the fine to $750 for the misdemeanor act of obstructing a road. It adds a new provision to specifically go after protest organizers by applying the statute to anyone who conspires or assists others in a demonstration that blocks or slows down traffic. 

There was no debate ahead of final passage for the bill on the House floor Tuesday.

In a previous floor debate, Bayham said his bill would still allow people to lawfully assemble for a government-approved protest, and he added it would protect public safety by preventing protests from slowing down emergency vehicles.

I dunno. All this seems bad to me.  Can't really say what to do about it. All the options appear to have become illegal. 

The larger context of all of this is we're entering a period of greater austerity. This will be on a level not recently experienced by the middle class American kids who were raised to think they had some sort of stake in the greater societal project and therefore a credible say in how it is directed. But the line separating the circle of people who matter from the larger number of people who do not is being drawn in tighter than it has been in a long while.  You can't ask this many previously comfortable people to go quietly into that. The only way to enforce it is through stepping up the capacity for state surveillance and state violence.   

Didn't happen overnight, I know. For a while, it was possible to paper over the erosion of the social infrastructure by buying off strategically significant segments of the population with pretty stories and hollow treats. But we're getting the part where there's enough pain deliberately dealt out to enough people that we have to change the strategy from carrots to sticks. And so that's where we are.

Louisiana's dominant political party maintains its grift

The state Republican Party re-elected Louis Gurvich as its chair after yet another year of squabbling between his faction and a group more closely in the orbit of Eddie Rispone. This time the opposition is accusing Gurvich of verbally abusing a staffer, which is probably true, but also not the real reason they're opposed to his chairmanship. 

Gurvich denied the allegations against him. In a speech Saturday, he said the party’s financial problems preceded his election as chairman in 2018 and that Republicans had robust fundraising over the past two months.

He did not directly address the allegations that he had mistreated a former party employee, though in his remarks Saturday, he compared himself with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative who was outraged when he found himself being accused of sexual assault after being nominated to the country’s top court.

Several top Republicans in the state have been upset with Gurvich’s leadership. Eddie Rispone, a former gubernatorial candidate and a Republican mega-donor, has openly criticized the party’s leadership on several occasions.

“No one wants to contribute to the party because it’s not run properly,” Rispone said Saturday.

Is the party being "run properly?" Well that depends on a lot of subjective criteria. They do hold both houses of the legislature, both US Senate seats, all but one of Louisiana's US House seats, and every statewide elected office other than Governor.  On the other hand, they haven't yet figured out how to divvy up the spoils of all that plunder without being jerks about it. 

And that's what these chair elections are all about.  See a few years ago, these same factions had it out over whether or not Republican candidates should hire former chairman Roger Villere's consulting firm and how much they should pay him.  This year they are at it again, likely over the same sort of territorial grudge, regardless of how they want to explain it. 

Taking a stab at Rispone, Gurvich said he wouldn't let a "wealthy businessman wrest control" of the state party and downplayed Bayham's GOP bona fides, saying he consulted for Jay Dardenne, a Republican who serves as Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards' chief budget architect.

Oh yeah you really wouldn't a "wealthy businessman" getting control of the party.  That's definitely why you need Louis Gurvich around.  

Gurvich’s desire to be the LAGOP’s top leader might seem an unusual move from his weekday responsibilities as president of the Uptown-based New Orleans Private Patrol, but the private security business is in Gurvich’s blood. A third- generation entrepreneur, Gurvich’s family came to Louisiana in the late 1920’s when J. Edgar Hoover, the young director of the Bureau of Intelligence — later known as the FBI — personally transferred Gurvich’s paternal grandfather to the city. Gurvich received multiple degrees in business and law from UNO, Tulane University and Loyola Law School and entered the 87-year-old family business in 1991.

Anyway, now that Gurvich is back, what's next for the state GOP power brokers besides trying to hide all the money from each other? 

Acknowledging his narrow victory, Gurvich, who will lead the party through the next election for governor, said the stakes are too great to let to party devolve into infighting. 

"We are here to save a country, nothing less, make no mistake. Our enemies are powerful, they are a driven by a Marxists ideology," Gurvich said. "My promise is that I'm here for every one of you."

LOL, your "enemies" are almost entirely out of power in this state and they are driven by a neoliberal ideology of privatization and patronage not too different from your own. But keep that grift up. It's going well for you.

Some real soul searching going on here

Turns out Eddie Rispone, despite having spent the past several months scheming and maneuvering and spending a fair amount of money in an effort to become the next chair of the state Republican Party, has suddenly discovered he's too busy.  

Eddie Rispone, the Republican businessman who lost a bid to unseat Louisiana’s Democratic governor in 2019, is suspending his campaign for chairman of the party, weeks after saying he wanted to take over after seeing the party outworked and outspent during the governor’s race.

Rispone said in an interview he has “major obligations” in his personal and business life that would prevent him from devoting enough time to party chair.

Can't even spare them decency of coming up with a convincing lie. Boss move.  

On the other hand why bother when he's got Mike Bayham around to make stuff up for him. 

Mike Bayham, the secretary of the party, said Rispone “got a taste of unfortunately how fratricidal this party is.” Bayham has previously said the party needs a “culture” change, pointing to an attack mailer against him in his race for re-election to the Republican State Central Committee, whose origins weren’t disclosed.

“The guy is a serious businessman,” Bayham said. “I think he didn’t fully appreciate how much herding of cats there would be involved. When you’re chairman of the party you answer theoretically to over 220 (central committee) members.”

See the thing is Rispone, who spent the 2019 gubernatorial election on television cartoonishly praising Donald Trump in front of as many pickup trucks as he could find, is just too good for this party.  And since the "culture change" he's hoping for has more to do with who gets paid to make ads than anything else, maybe he's got a point.

Eddie Rispone: Perpetual outsider

One of the state Republican Party's long time major fundraisers and "kingmakers" who hilariously ran for Governor in 2019 as an "outsider" is going to run for the party charimanship as.. a self-described outsider. 

After successfully electing several candidates to the committee in December, Rispone is now looking to take even more control over the Louisiana GOP, running for chair of the party.

“It was never my intention to run but recognizing the substantial challenges we face as a body and as a party, I believe we need someone with major business and large organizational skills to ensure the party can be the most effective in helping elect conservatives in the future,” Rispone said in an email to party officials.

Remarkable that he can keep up that pose. Even now after having "recruited" (i.e. bought and paid for) a number of candidates to turn over seats on the central committee, Rispone continues to insist it was  "never my intention" to run for chair.  Until it was. 

Eddie also complains about having been "outworked and outspent" during the Governor's election. There's actually some truth to that. But it's Rispone's own fault. He and his campaign decided the way to win was to hide behind the President and a barrage of TV ads rather than appear at a runoff debate or god forbid actually talk to any real live people. But now Eddie says he's the guy to change this culture? 

Anthony Ramirez, who ran Rispone’s communications during the 2019 governor’s race, said after reviewing the results of the race, “we saw that the Republican party was clearly outworked on the ground.” And after poring through attendance records, they discovered nearly 40% of the Republican State Central Committee didn’t attend a single meeting last year.

See that? Republicans don't even want to talk to each other.  And who can blame them, really? Read the rest of this article and see how they treat each other.  

After stepping down as party chair in 2018, (Roger) Villere dove into political consulting work through CRV Consulting, who he runs alongside Phil Capitano, the former mayor of Kenner who was arrested this summer after police said he used his vehicle to ram the back of a woman’s car during a dispute over allegedly stolen property. Villere and Capitano also run the Louisiana Conservative Republican Coalition, which is registered as a nonprofit and which doles out endorsements to Republican candidates. It endorsed Capitano in his bid for re-election to the Republican State Central Committee this year, but Capitano was unseated by Keith Conley, a longtime Jefferson Parish government official.

State Rep. Mark Wright, a Covington Republican, said Villere’s group sent a mailer endorsing his opponent for the Republican State Central Committee, using “the Republican party seal or something that looks exactly like it.”

The picture coming into focus here is one of a good old fashioned dispute over territory and patronage.  You wanna run for something in Louisiana as a Republican?  Well here is the list of people you need to hire or bribe or both. Villere and Capitano and  want to be those guys on the one hand.  Rispone is installing his own people on the other. (There are others vying for position as well including Lenar Whitney apparently.  You'll just have to read the article.)  

The Villere faction is backing current chair, New Orleans private security mogul Louis Gurvich, over Rispone.  It doesn't take much reading between the lines here to see why.  Eddie "refused help" from Villere.. which is to say, he didn't pay him for anything.

“I have made up my mind I’m going to be against Ripsone,” Villere said. “I thought he was a poor candidate (for governor) … You need a party chair who can bring people together. Why would you elect a party chair who refused help in the runoff and didn’t bring people together in his own race?”

And, of course, the pro-Rispone side's motivations are just as petty and personal. 

As part of the race for state central committee – typically low-profile, low-wattage affairs that are decided by a few dozen votes – Bayham said he was hit with an “ugly” mailer that attacked his weight, which he says was sent by someone other than his opponent. (Spending on Republican State Central Committee races doesn’t require disclosure under Louisiana’s ethics laws, like other campaign spending.)

“This is what this party does. We cannibalize ourselves because this is about control and contracts and not about defeating the Democrats,” Bayham said. “We have to see who is going to finally change the culture of this party. Is Louis prepared to do it or is an outsider like Rispone prepared to do it.”

Villere said in an interview he had “nothing to do with” the mailer attacking Bayham, calling it “reprehensible.”

There's that "outsider" characterization again, though. It sure is doing an awful lot of work.