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. 

Which departure should we be watching for?

You know I think SI's Peter King is as annoying as the next guy does. But, despite Sean Payton's protestations I don't know that this speculation is really all that "silly."

Sports Illustrated's Peter King ignited the blogosphere earlier this week, when he offered a video on his The Monday Morning Quarterback website, saying he could envision Payton making an early exit from New Orleans after this, his ninth season.

King's reasoning centered on Payton's mentor Bill Parcells' preference for leaving teams early before overstaying his welcome. King said coaches often develop a "wanderlust" after significant time with one organization, and Payton might be reinvigorated by going elsewhere.

"Absolutely no way," Payton shot back, unequivocally dismissing King's theory.

He wasn't quiet done expressing his distaste for the notion that he'd leave before his contract is up in three years.

"So it wasn't a report? Peter King offered his 10 things he thinks. It's silly. Won't happen," Payton said.

The basis for King's speculation is wrong.  We joke about "Grandpa Sean" a lot but he's not going to leave just for a change of scenery or for the sake of being "reinvigorated."  That really is a silly line of thinking.  Of course, coaches (typically) don't stay in one place forever but, when they leave, there's usually a reason beyond just "Welp, it's time to be gettin' on"

The conventional wisdom among Saints fans has long held that Payton will stick around in New Orleans at least as long as Drew Brees does.  According to Brees, that could be another ten years but he is clearly a crazy person.  A reasonable but generous assessment would give him another 4 or 5 years at most.  On the other hand, it may not be Brees's longevity the fans should be worried about.  

Tom Benson is 87 years old.  Recently, he's been actively spending more of his time and money building monuments to himself.   In the past few years, he has created the following.

The Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center at the Ochsner Cancer Institute

New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson today will announce a $5 million gift to expand cancer care in south Louisiana.  The donation will be used for the expansion of the Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center at the Ochsner Cancer Institute and kicks off a fundraising effort to provide more patients with cutting-edge cancer care and research options.

The Tom and Gayle Benson student mall at Brother Martin High School.

New Orleans, La. - Tom and Gayle Benson have donated $10 million to Brother Martin High School, the largest donation in the school's history. In honor of his gift,  Brother Martin will name the student Mall, the center of student activity on campus, in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Benson. Tom Benson is a 1944 graduate of St. Aloysius and says he remembers well the generosity of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. 

Below is a photo of "Benson Field at Yulman Stadium"



But it's not the only football field that will bear Benson's name. There's also one in Ohio.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Pro Football Hall of Fame received a record $11 million donation from Saints owner Tom Benson to renovate its football stadium and build a residence that includes room for retired players.

The Hall of Fame made the announcement Monday. The pledge is the largest by an individual in the 51-year history of the Canton football shrine. Fawcett Stadium will be renamed Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium after the 87-year-old owner.

And, of course, there's this.



I know it was back in September and Saints fans were all too busy buying Superbowl tickets at the time to notice. But there were a couple of things about that statue unveiling that are worth another look.  

After seeing the statue for the first time, Benson was choked up and emotional as he was given the microphone.

"Oh, that's real nice," Benson said. "I never did think this would happen. So please, thank y'all very much."

It was a side of Benson that Loomis hadn't seen before.

"It did make me emotional to hear him get emotional," Loomis said. "I was saying this to some of the executives that I've been with for a long time, I've never seen him do that before. I've seen him get emotionally angry, but never emotional like this about any kind of issue. I know this meant a lot to him, so that's gratifying for all of us."

The way that's worded might lead the reader to believe the statue was a surprise to Benson.   It wasn't.  Benson was (maybe) "seeing the statue for the first time" at the unveiling. But it was obviously something he had long been involved in planning; the same way he'd been involved in planning everything else on this list.  Interesting, though, that this one, the statue of himself, is the one at which he tears up.

Anyway, the ceremony proceeded with Bobby Jindal lying about "Benson and his wife Gayle's commitment to the state after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," (Benson actually tried to rip the Saints out of New Orleans after Katrina. The NFL forced him to come back.) Mitch Landrieu said something about "vitality."  And then Sean Patyon spoke. 

"As a head coach, I couldn't have had the opportunity to work for a better owner in our league."

Yeah, well, slim pickings with that lot, we know.  But, whatever we might think of Benson, it's true that he and Payton get along well.  We can't say the same, though, for Benson's probable successor.

Lost in the fact that the contract extension signed by Saints coach Sean Payton was rejected by the league office due to a term that would have invalidated the deal upon the departure of G.M. Mickey Loomis is the question of why that language was in the contract in the first place.

A league source tells PFT that Payton wanted to be sure that Loomis would be present to serve as a buffer between the coach and Rita Benson LeBlanc.

Here's one more recent Benson donation we left out because it doesn't appear to involve plastering his name or image on something. 

New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson and his wife, Gayle Benson, have committed a $5 million gift to the Team Gleason House for Innovative Living at St. Margaret's in New Orleans, Team Gleason Foundation officials announced Monday.

The funds will support the ongoing efforts of Team Gleason to provide people with ALS and other debilitating conditions an environment where they can live vital and productive lives with meaningful freedom and independence.

"Gayle and I couldn't be more proud of the work that Steve and Team Gleason are doing for people living with ALS. Steve inspires us all with his message of facing and overcoming adversity, Tom Benson, said in a release. "And, we wanted to be part of growing this community of productive individuals committed to living as independently as possible."

For the most part this end-of-life giving spree is Tom Benson's desperate attempt to immortalize himself in this world. But, devout Catholic that he is, we also have to suspect he's trying to pass his proverbial camel through the old needle's eye.   If Benson happens to set off on that journey before Drew Brees decides to retire, Sean Payton may be headed out of New Orleans before then too.

At least it's not a "coldcock"

The city is trying to screw a lot of people out their pensions right now.  The firefighters are a special case in that they've been going rounds over this for decades now.  Anyway... here's where things are this afternoon.

Firefighter union chief just challenged Landrieu administration CAO Andy Kopplin to a fight. "Let's lace up the gloves and step outside."
— Robert McClendon (@RobertMcClendon) December 11, 2014

"Oh my lord no" means yes

Or at least maybe

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., says she probably won't run for office again.

"Oh Lord, no," Landrieu, 59, told reporters when asked if another campaign, perhaps for governor in 2015 or the Senate in 2016, was in her future.

 "Well, let me say, I'm not going to say a definite 'no' about any of those two," Landrieu said. "I've been trained to never say no. But it is highly, highly unlikely."

She can probably have her pick of whatever job she wants on K Street. That seems to fit but would also be incredibly boring.

People want her to run for Governor. I don't think she will.  Other people want her to wait and run for Vitter's Senate seat after he inevitably becomes Governor.  That's possible.  But if she's going to succeed at that she'll have to apply some lessons learned from the last go 'round.  She seems pretty confident that she's learned a few of those, otherwise this wouldn't be a possibility.

There's also a chance, she said, she'll join her father, Moon, the former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu, in writing a book about the transition of Louisiana  from a Democratic state to one dominated by Republicans with perhaps some insights on how her party can reverse those trends.

Stacy Head thinks "I got mine" is a perfectly cogent argument

I guess that's leadership, or something.

At the meeting, Head made her case for a change to the system. She noted that most of the employees in attendance were either retirees or nearing retirement age and likely would be unaffected by any proposal on the table.

“You’re going to get yours, no matter what happens,” Head said. “It’s the people coming behind you who are truly in jeopardy.”

Earlier this year, Head asked the system’s actuary to calculate the effects of five overhaul proposals, including changes to employee retirement eligibility age and benefit calculations as well as the elimination of cost of living adjustments through so-called “13th check” bonuses during years in which the system’s investments perform at a certain level.

In an email to The Lens, Head said that all options are on the table. But what appears for now to be the leading proposal is called Social Security integration. Unlike other systems, including the city’s firefighters’ pension system, city pension members members pay into Social Security and are eligible to receive Social Security benefits. The proposal would reduce the pension system’s payment by 50 percent of Social Security payments once a retiree becomes eligible.

There's money in it

Sometimes consultants make their money just selling some line of bullshit about how to water down your asphalt or whatever.  Other times they get paid to direct your deliberate human misery program.

The CIA contractors who helped develop and operate the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the agency used on terror suspects, including waterboarding, were paid more than $80 million, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA's interrogation program released Tuesday.

The contract was for more than $180 million, but the contractors had only received $81 million when their contract was terminated in 2009.

In other words, Obama cost these guys $100 million with his godforsaken job killing torture moratorium. 

Oh well, easy come, easy go, right?  Okay, admittedly, it didn't go so easy for everyone. Certainly not for the detainees, anyway.

Coercive interrogation methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, nudity, slaps, slamming detainees against a wall. At least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families, including the threat of raping a detainee's mother. And it gets worse.

"At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity," the report reads, documenting in gruesome detail one such example involving detainee Majid Khan.

It's still going pretty easy for the people who implemented these inspired recommendations. They're all happily yaking away on TV right now, probably.  That's pretty bad; sociopathic, whatever.  But what really worries me are the guys who were paid slightly less than half of the $180 million they expected for, "Hey let's shove some hummus up their butts!"  Because odds are they're actually still seething about not getting it all.

Thinner asphalt

Yesterday we received some cost-saving recommendations from consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal

On Monday (Dec. 8), Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration detailed how the state government -- with help from a private consultant -- is saving Louisiana $81 million during this fiscal year.

The Jindal administration paid Alvarez & Marsal $7 million to come up with recommendations for how Louisiana could cut costs and generate new revenue. The New York-based private firm released a list of suggestions in June that could supposedly save the state government $2.7 billion over several years if adopted.

The recommendations are underwhelming. We're told we should sell off some stuff, replace some lawyer with robots, charge media for traffic data, oh and this.

The Department of Transportation and Development is moving forward with plans to use thinner asphalt in road paving projects in order to save the state government money. 

Transportation Secretary Sherri LeBas said a fraction of Louisiana roads require more significant paving at this point. It makes sense to use the thinner pavement.

"I think we need to be efficient and really look at the amount of asphalt we are putting down," said LaBas.

When state Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, asked LeBas directly whether the thinner asphalt would require the state to have to repave the road again sooner than it would have otherwise, the secretary deflected the question.

Seems like something is being laid on pretty thick here even if it ain't asphalt.

Post-mortem but not post-racial

Richard Campanella has a feature column today about the legend of the Girod Street Cemetery.  When I was a kid, people used to joke that because the Superdome was built on top of this abandoned graveyard the football team who played there was cursed to forever play football poorly because the spirit world cares greatly about such things.*

Later I learned that the field didn't actually lie on top of the old graveyard but it wasn't until seeing this article that I realized neither did any part of the building, actually.  According to Campanella's graphic, the nearest the cemetery's boundary comes to the Dome is a portion of present day Champions Square and the Dome parking garage.

Anyway, the important thing for any of the still superstitious among us to note is that the process of decommissioning the graveyard did involve moving the bodies as well as the headstones which is, you know, probably good.**



But Campanella also points out that the removal process conformed to certain mores of the day.

On a dreary morning in early January 1957, a small group of religious leaders gathered inside the Girod Street Cemetery to witness the Right Rev. Girault M. Jones, bishop of the Archdiocese of Louisiana, revoke and annul the Sentence of Consecration that, according to Episcopalian canon, had made this ground sacred.

Workers then began extracting thousands of cast-iron and cypress caskets and readied them for their final journey. Racial segregation persisted even in death: black corpses went to Providence Memorial Park on Airline Drive, and the white dead, including the skeletons unearthed in the so-called yellow fever mound, went to Hope Mausoleum on Canal Street.

For some of the bodies, this was their second cross-town move, the first having occurred between St. Louis No. 1 and Girod 135 years earlier.

So, not only does gentrification hound us even beyond death so too does redlining. Or at least, in 1957 it did.


* Many of the superstitious among us could not help but notice also that the Saints, who moved into the Superdome in 1975, did not achieve their first winning season until 1987, only a few months after Pope John Paul II visited New Orleans and celebrated a Mass in the Dome.  Undoubtedly this must have exorcised whatever restless malevolent spirits still lingered.

** They missed some. Read the article. 

The Stupid Election

We just elected a Senator from Louisiana via a campaign that had nothing whatsoever to do with Louisiana.  I've never seen anything like it.

A few months ago, at an event in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to bend the ear of Senator Landrieu’s former campaign manager and a few of her staffers. “Cassidy is going to make this about Obama,” I said. “You need to make this about Bobby Jindal and Louisiana.” Jindal, depending on the poll, is either slightly less or slightly more popular than Barack Obama. Cassidy, already, had telegraphed his intention to run against Obama; why shouldn’t Senator Landrieu frame her election as a check against Jindal and an opportunity to distinguish her Louisiana record against his. That never happened.

But it’s not stupid Louisiana; to paraphrase Carville, it’s Louisiana, stupid. And that needs to be the battlecry.

Cassidy (well not Cassidy so much as the third party national organizations who bought TV time on his behalf) said nothing about what his ideas for representing Louisiana beyond disliking a President who will be gone in 2 years.  It's basically political malpractice on the Doctor's part.

Meanwhile.. somebody just got voted Most Likely To Succeed.

As she spoke to supporters after her loss over the weekend, Landrieu said cryptically that she will “continue” to serve Louisiana, without offering any details. Since her defeat, she’s been absent from the Senate, missing several votes this week.

In particular, Landrieu’s strong defense of the oil and gas sector — an industry that spends tens of millions of dollars every year on influence-peddling — could provide the Democrat with entree not only to a law firm or consulting shop, but in-house at a company or trade association.

“The most likely person to be successful is Mary,” one head of a law firm’s lobbying practice said of this year’s crop of nearly 50 House members and dozen exiting senators.

Green Lantern, though

The death of UNO is the most under-reported post-Katrina story in New Orleans. 

We are losing the University of New Orleans. The official word may be that the university is undergoing a restructuring, that it is being trimmed a little bit here and there. But don't be fooled. We are losing the University of New Orleans, and when and if that loss becomes complete, New Orleans will be the poorer for it.

Everything you want to know about the city's hollowed out middle class is right there.  If you grew up in New Orleans and, like so many of our celebrated "lifers" did not go away to college, you went to UNO.  (Yes, LSU students from New Orleans consider that "going away to college."  So long as they can withstand the Ignatius Reilly plunge into the Heart of Darkness and all.) 

If you didn't go to school there, you might have worked there. In high school you were probably taught by several UNO grads.  Certainly someone in your family or immediate circle had some connection with the school. 

But then Bobby Jindal took all the money out of it and put it into Green Lantern. 

This is who they are

Mentioned this last week but let me pull this Jarvis DeBerry quote again. It captures perfectly what conservatives (I include President Obama among them, btw) are all about.

Leading America requires declaring its goodness. And not just that. Leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law. Never mind that the law failed to prohibit the destruction of one people or the enslavement of another.

Any serious examination of our problems constitutes a failure. No one is accountable. Nothing ever gets resolved and there is never any actual justice because, "The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome," and that's all anyone ever need know.

Keep gilding that lilly

Karen Carter-Peterson has a blog now, apparently. She begins,

"The state of the Louisiana Democratic Party is unquestionably stronger than where we were just four years ago."

And we all get up and walk outside to scream/laugh for twenty minutes before continuing.

In the meantime, take a look at the back and forth between Mike Tomasky and some other people and Charles Pierce.

If the question we're really asking is as stupid as, "Should the Democrats abandon the South?" then, obviously, Pierce is on the correct side of that. On the other hand, we might be asking the wrong question.  Anyway, here's Pierce.

I sympathize with Mike. I truly do. But I still will stand with Governor Dean and the 50-state strategy, at least applied judiciously. To me, the key to the problem is to break the stranglehold of the Washington-based consultant class over what candidates will be run in what places. It wasn't the Beltway crowd who found Jon Tester in Montana, or Jim Webb in Virginia. The national party should be involved in these races only as a means by which money can be shrewdly spread around, and as a means of employing some sense of party discipline. No, Mr. Breaux, we won't be following your easily rented ass any more. We will find progressive populists, white or black, and we will run them and support them, and maybe the first five tries won't work but, sooner or later, there will be a breakthrough, and it will not be led by the next Bill Clinton and the next DLC.

For example, Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds in South Carolina and in Mississippi. He wouldn't come close to winning anything in either of those states, but there is a working-class audience there that is interested in listening to him, and that is worth respecting in our politics.

Wait, stop. Notice something?  Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.  Also, Howard Dean was fired by the Democrats as soon as Barack Obama became President.  Pierce goes on to talk about the populist tradition in the South and the importance of what, quite frankly, should be the central focus of any American political movement worth its salt. 

But it's 2014, and forging an actual alliance of working people, black and white, in the places that need it the most, is a worthwhile effort whether it fails initially or not.

But if the Democratic Party has taught us anything over the past 30 years it is that it is either unwilling to or incapable of taking that mission seriously.  But it is the most important mission in American politics and the South is its front line.  The people who are working hardest at it are either not Democrats or are working on the fringes of the party. 

Maybe the question we should be asking is whether or not it's time for the South to abandon the Democrats.

Accountability

These guys did some very very bad things.

The interrogation methods, meanwhile, were brutal — the report includes graphic details of "near drownings," beatings, and week-long sleep deprivation sessions that sometimes continued after prisoners had begun to hallucinate. Confusion and poor record-keeping kept CIA oversight and leadership in the dark about the program's operations, and staff with "no relevant experience" were put in charge of sites. In 2002, a detainee died of suspected hypothermia while "partially nude and chained to a concrete floor;" later, CIA leaders admitted they had "little or no awareness of operations" at the site in question. The CIA downplayed the harshness of "enhanced interrogations" and dodged investigations by the White House and Congress, withholding information from top officials. According to one email, it did not initially brief then-Secretary of State Colin Powell on the program details, because the White House was concerned he would "blow his stack," and it refused to say where its detention facilities were located or where it was negotiating to build new ones, in two cases telling local officials not to talk to US ambassadors about the negotiations.

But, you know, it's never a good time to "look backward." 

President Obama banned enhanced interrogation after taking office in 2009, but he was leery of prosecuting anyone involved in it during the Bush administration, saying that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." Years earlier, a CIA officer had also decided to destroy interrogation tapes that allegedly showed waterboarding; in 2010, the Justice Department completed an investigation of that incident and decided not to file charges. The Senate's reporting, however, grew out of a 2007 probe on the tapes' destruction. 

It's so bad, in fact, that the ACLU is recommending that the closest thing we can expect to accountability in this case would be if President Obama were to issue pardons. 

Today the Senate Intelligence Committee will release its report on torture during the Bush years, and we will all be reminded of what we allowed to be done in our name. With that event as a backdrop, Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, has written to President Obama, asking him to grant pardons to the torturers as a means of telling the world, and enshrining in history, the American ideal that torture is something we do not do.

I don't know about that but it does sound like President Obama would have fit in pretty well on that Eric Garner grand jury. 

According to a recent interview with the NY Daily News, at least two key eyewitnesses in the July 17 choking death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner at the hands of police described a very troubling environment when they were each interviewed by the grand jury for NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo.

While it's generally assumed that the grand jury in such a case would have taken its job with the the utmost seriousness, Ramsey Orta, 22, who filmed the tragic homicide, and Rodney Lee, 37, who manages the beauty store Eric Garner was killed in front of, painted a picture of an often condescending and generally uninterested collection of people who seemed to have little interest in indicting Officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Meanwhile, Saints receiver Joe Morgan did some very very bad things. He was held accountable.

Though the specific reason for Morgan's release is unclear, the fourth-year backup has clearly been in the doghouse this season. He was suspended by the team for two games earlier this year for an undisclosed reason. And even when on the active roster, he has been used sparingly.

Then this past Sunday, it appeared that both Payton and quarterback Drew Brees corrected Morgan for assignment errors. At one point, Payton chased down Morgan on the sideline to yell something to him. At another point, cameras caught Brees appearing to suggest that Morgan should have come back to the ball on a deep route.

So, there you go.  Justice. 

Kingpin

Here are some sunny quotations from this morning's Advocate.

While Vitter didn’t directly note his own role in ousting longtime adversary Landrieu, others have clearly noticed.

“He’s become the kingpin in Louisiana politics,” (Charlie) Cook said. “I think that he will dominate state politics for a good while.”

Ooof.  Well, maybe. We were just throwing this around on Twitter and noticed that this bit..

Word among most political observers is that Vitter was key to clearing the Republican field for the state’s 6th District congressman and in orchestrating Cassidy’s campaign. One of Vitter’s top aides, Joel DiGrado, served as Cassidy’s campaign manager after Cassidy parted ways with a consultant to Gov. Bobby Jindal. 

Isn't all that impressive given this.

@skooks he has all the money, but notable that field wasn't cleared for Cassidy to walk in without defeating Republicans in primary.
— Karl's in Charge (@karlschott) December 9, 2014

Rob Maness existed.  We're pretty sure that happened.  Also, Vitter didn't do anything to get Garret Graves elected so he doesn't control everything, apparently.

On the other hand, neither do any Democrats.

Samuels, the political science professor, said the gubernatorial run won’t be a slam dunk for Vitter, though he is currently seen as the front-runner in the race.

“Republicans will have a fight among themselves,” he said. “I don’t think the Republicans are going to concede the Governor’s Mansion to David Vitter.”

He said under Louisiana’s unusual “jungle primary” setup that pits all candidates, regardless of party, against each other from the start, it’s possible that two Republicans could face each other in a runoff — splitting the state’s GOP base in an unpredictable scenario.

“The Democrats may not have a candidate to make the runoff,” Samuels said. “The real question is what do the Democrats do.”

Also, if the answer to "what do you do?" is we sit around and wait for the indictments, then that's how you know you've already lost.
 

Not so fuzzy math

Often I think focusing on the jobs scoreboard obscures the more important story of the overall 40 year trend of stagnating wages and erosion of benefits and general concentration of wealth among the very narrow top echelons of society.

But it is a fun way of quickly exploding political hypocrisies as Oyster demonstrates here

During the most recent Bush era, which spanned eight years and included large tax cuts, the country LOST 462,000 net jobs in the private sector and gained 1.7 million government jobs. This record was praised, after the fact, by Jindal, Sen. Vitter, and Rep. Steve Scalise among many others. Why?

Because they are sworn to uphold supply-side voodoo economics, no matter the facts.

Well that bought some time

On to the next maneuver.

BP spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday that the company will “continue to advocate for the investigation of suspicious or implausible claims and to fight fraud where it is uncovered.”

He said BP “remains concerned that the program has made awards to claimants that suffered no injury from the spill — and that the lawyers for these claimants have unjustly profited as a result.”

The 5th Circuit ruling consolidated two issues: the validity of the entire settlement and whether businesses must show the spill caused their losses. BP had asked the Supreme Court to review both decisions.

Stephen Herman and James Roy, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said the high court’s action marked “a huge victory for the Gulf and should finally put to rest BP’s two-year attack on its own settlement process.”

“With its order, the Supreme Court held — as had the lower courts — that BP must stand by its word and honor its contract,” they said in a statement.

It's fine, though.  BP can keep playing this game for decades if they want to. They don't have to win every fight. Just have to keep dragging along until it all passes into history. 

The Torture Report is (partially) public today

Here you go

It's the Dome Siren, a piped-in air raid alarm-style noise played at ear-splitting intensity each time an opposing team gets ready to play a third down.

It's a new game "innovation" this year, and is nearly universally reviled. Apparently designed to rally the "12th man" to create "fan impact plays," fans and the media are instead in an uproar over it. Many are saying the siren is so counterproductive, so disruptive and annoying, that it's actually helping opposing teams.

"It's created a Pavlov-like feeling of dread in me when I hear it," says Karl Schott, of Lafayette. "It's a signal announcing the other team is about to achieve a first down. Should be called the 1st down siren."

Wait.  Sorry. Wrong torture report.  Here's the one I'm talking about.

The torture methods were far more brutal than originally reported. The “CIA applied its so-called enhanced interrogation techniques in near non-stop fashion for days or weeks at a time.” Detainees were forced to stay awake for up to 180 hours while “standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.” Some were kept in a “dungeon” that was completely dark and were “constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste. ” At least one detainee was told he could only leave CIA custody “in a coffin-shaped box.” The government also rectally force-fed detainees.

The part about detainees being made to walk past a statue of Tom Benson after their torture has been redacted.  

Moon Shot

Doomed

As Brig. Gen Duke DeLuca wrapped up his 32-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in August, he contemplated the key to Louisiana’s massive, 50-year, $50 billion effort to prevent the southeastern portion of the state from being swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico.

DeLuca, an expert on the many threats facing the coast, said: “It will take a moon-shot type of investment in the science.”

Many in Louisiana’s coastal scientific community believe DeLuca’s description is right on the mark, capturing the undertaking’s daunting uncertainties.

The mission could not have been set on a more challenging landscape, at a more inopportune time.

I'm sure Senator Cassidy will take the massive government project seriously. 

What's the matter with Lakeview?

Here's The Lens's precinct by precinct map of Orleans Parish election results in the Senate race.  Here is a quick and dirty guide to the next election. Take this with you and drive around the little red area at top left. Write down the names on all the yard signs you see. Don't vote for those people.

System in name only

One of the more memorable events to follow upon the Federal Flood was the candid admission by the Corps of Engineers that the flood control defenses it had constructed around New Orleans comprised a "system in name only."

In a sweeping new study of the causes of the disaster in New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged today that the levees it built in the city were an incomplete and inconsistent patchwork of protection, containing flaws in design and construction, and not built to handle a hurricane anywhere near the size of Katrina.

"The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only," said the draft of the nine-volume report.

The region's network of levees, floodwalls, pumps and gates lacked any built-in resilience that would have allowed the system to remain standing and provide protection even if water flowed over the tops of levees and floodwalls, the report's investigators found. Flaws in the levee design that allowed breaches in the city's drainage canals were not foreseen, and those floodwalls failed even though the storm waters did not rise above the level that the walls were designed to hold.

Following upon this post-mortem, the Corps redesigned and reconstructed the "system."  Most of that rebuild is now complete. (It is still insufficient to truly meet the area's needs now and in the ever-worsening future but that is another story.)  Meanwhile, the local levee boards were restructured and reformed in the expectation that they would be responsible for maintaining and operating the new system upon its completion.

What happens when one end of that system fails in its capacity to maintain the standard of the whole? 

On Saturday, voters in St. Bernard Parish raised this question above the level of mere hypothesis. When the Corps hands over responsibility of the system to the local authorities, the Lake Borgne district will see its costs nearly double with no clear method of raising additional revenues.  One would think the necessary funds could flow in from another part of the flood protection system. But, politically, this is still a system in name only.

Because New Orleans, St. Bernard and East Jefferson sit on the same sinking delta, storm surge invading one parish can flow into the others.  That’s why the corps designed the new system as a perimeter defense — a chain of interlocking levees and floodwalls stretching from Kenner to Caernarvon.

The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East was established specifically to oversee operations of the three levee districts that maintain this system. But state law prohibits taxes raised in one district from being used in another.

The more populated parishes of Orleans and Jefferson have surpluses. But St. Bernard has struggled to meet the demands of the southern end of the system.

Mitch's free press

This is interesting but not in the way you might think.

The City of New Orleans is asking a judge to bar NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune from "disclosing any information" or "contacting any individuals identified" in a police report about a Texas woman's allegations that she was raped by a security guard in a French Quarter hotel after Mardi Gras this year. The woman has also joined the city's request.

The city cites concerns about privacy and an ongoing investigation and claims the news organization should not have been permitted to view the report.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune is opposing the city's request, noting the public's legitimate interest in the workings of the New Orleans Police Department, which is operating under a federal consent decree and recently was harshly criticized by an Inspector General's report on investigations into sexual assault and child abuse. NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune does not usually name victims of sex crimes and has not named the woman in this case.

What's interesting is that Mitch actually went to a judge to get them not to publish something.  Usually he just asks them nicely over lunch and that works out fine. 

Leaving so soon?

That's the Superdome sometime in the fourth quarter yesterday. It's only slightly more empty than was the Superdome just after halftime.  Where did everybody go?  One assumes the majority of them had arrived on Sunday afternoon having blocked out enough of their schedule to account for the game's duration.  Did something come up?   The Mr. Bingle parade was on Saturday.



I really don't know what everyone suddenly thought they were missing.

Maybe the problem is too many Saints fans don't understand football.  Maybe they've gotten so used to the past eight years of (mostly) yelling and being obnoxious and.. exhibiting "swagger" over the exploits of a (mostly) competitive team that they've forgotten there's more to football than that.  A lot more, actually.

Personally, I've had a lot of fun watching this year's team play. They're hilariously unpredictable. Their record is terrible but they're still in contention. They've lost four consecutive home games (historically significant in its own right) but the Superdome fan experience has rarely been as entertaining for... a number of amusing reasons. I'm going to expound on those later on in a separate post.

But, speaking specifically about yesterday, people need to better understand the value of hanging around to watch the wheels come off.  Sure, losing feels different than winning but it is no less interesting. And, if you're in the stadium, there is still plenty to see and do.

To begin with, these player's aren't going to boo themselves.  Well, OK, some of them are, actually.

In Strief’s eyes, he and his fellow Saints (5-8) deserved nothing less as they took a 41-10 pounding from the Panthers (4-8-1), who hadn’t won since Oct. 5.

“I don’t blame any fan for being disappointed not only (for) this game, but (for) this season,” Strief said. “I do not blame them for that whatsoever. We have to come and play; we have to come and give them a reason to cheer; we have to give them a reason not to boo. End of story.”

Referring to the home season-ticket sellouts the Saints have enjoyed in each of his nine seasons with them, Strief added, “We get unending support in this city — unending. So people who pay good money to come to a game and watch us and are disappointed, (go ahead and) boo. Absolutely we deserve it. That’s on us to keep that from happening.”

Guys, Zach Strief says the team needs you there to boo and jeer at them! Why would you let them down?   They also need you there to throw things.

Photo: After #Panthers TD, beer can thrown from stands nearly nails refs #Saints pic.twitter.com/vFfGrTKuYD
— Michael DeMocker (@MichaelDeMocker) December 7, 2014

This toss, combined with the children participating in the halftime punt, pass, and kick exhibition.. oh.. and the lady who made the "cash catch".. constituted the highlights of the day for the home team's passing game.

I also noticed the first paper airplanes I'd seen launched from the terrace in a while.  (Unless we count this glut of gliders brought on by a stupid "card stunt" before the Dallas game last season which we won't because they were just asking for that one.)  Saints fans aren't as good at those as I remember.  We're out of practice. You guys should have stayed to work on that.

Hell even Ralph Malbrough took off early citing some sort of old man wisdom he claims to have picked up somewhere.

NEW ORLEANS - My mom and I have had Saints season tickets for 25 years and for the first time ever we left a New Orleans Saints game in the third quarter. When the Carolina Panthers scored to make it 31-3 I turned to her and said, "I've seen enough to know I've seen too much." And to the exits we went.

I stayed though.  I'd seen enough to know that I was seeing something I had not seen in a long time and I wanted to stick around so I could remember what that was like.

It was interesting!  Menckles kept banging on the wall long after we were the only two fans remaining in our section.  I had a headache but I didn't tell her to stop.  It seemed appropriate.

Sometime midway through the fourth quarter they finally stopped cranking that terrible third down siren effect every Saints fan hates.  But there was a stretch of the third quarter where they were playing it at full volume to a mostly empty and dead silent Dome that was the height of sublime humor.  Dome teams are often accused of using the PA system to pipe in artificial crowd noise in order to disrupt opposing offenses.   Yesterday the Superdome figured out a way to pump in additional irony.  It enhanced the experience.

Judging from that empty Superdome, Saints fans could use all the good humor injections they can get right now.  There's something sort of snotty or entitled about leaving a game early.  At the very least it belies a limited understanding of the entertainment you have paid to observe.

It's a strange thing to just expect that your team should win all or even most of the time.  At the pro level, there is so little difference in talent between the "good" and "bad" teams that what separates the wins from the losses is often just a string of coincidences. That's not exactly true, of course. There are marginal differences in talent among pro players and teams which we can talk about.  But it's more true than people often admit. A lot of this stuff is just random.

But that, in itself, is what makes it so much fun. Being a fan is about rooting for your team to win, yes, but it's as much about appreciating the absurdities that determine whether or not they can.  Drama can be comedy or tragedy. But the genre shouldn't inform us directly about the quality.   And with three games left to play, the 2014 Saints could still qualify as either!   This is one of the most bizarre programs I've ever had the pleasure of sitting (all the way) through.  And, especially if the Falcons lose tonight, I see no reason why that should change.

Update:  Besides, the sooner the football season ends, the sooner the math season begins.  And nobody wants that. 

Late election day round-up

I love voting. In fact, if I were writing one of those stupid Movoto listicles of Top Reasons to Live In Louisiana, voting would definitely be in the top five. Right there along with food, music, humidity, the general feeling that we're all going to be murdered/poisoned/swept away into the ocean probably sooner than later. It's exhilarating.

Voting is great. In Louisiana we vote often. 2014 opened with a citywide election in New Orleans and is closing with a statewide race. Next year we will vote on Governors.  It doesn't matter whether or not you like any of the candidates. In fact, that might actually be better.  After all, it's fun enough to open up Twitter and type, "Hey @BillCassidy, fuck you for looking like Beavis and saying we shouldn't retire til we're 70. You also look like the Chicken Lady"





But it's even more fun when you get to have your "Fuck you" officially recorded by the Secretary of State's office from where it is then communicated out through the mass media and presented to the candidates themselves. And they definitely notice. We get to do this all the time here.  According to this flier, the animals would vote if they could.



I don't know why more people don't jump at every opportunity.

Secretary of State Tom Schedler said he expects about 1.2 million — or 40 percent — of the state’s 2.9 million registered voters to cast ballots.

“Based on early voting statistics and historical data, I believe turnout will reach 40 to 42 percent for tomorrow’s general election,” Schedler said.

The Nov. 4 open primary vote saw 1.47 million votes cast or about 51.5 percent of registered voters. Though Landrieu led the field, 56 percent of the votes cast went to a Republican candidate.

But last month, Louisiana was part of national election and was poised to play a role in which party would control the U.S. Senate. Decisive GOP wins mean that when the new Congress is sworn in next month, Republicans will control both houses. With that, the rest of the country pretty much lost interest in what happens here.

So it's apparently a slow day out there.  Ask them if they'll let you vote twice. 

Seriously, if you're going out to vote today, there's not a whole lot on your ballot.

Locally there's this school millage continuance. People don't seem to understand it well.

The confusion of people even fairly familiar with the unique situation of New Orleans public schools further illustrates the complex system of dozens of independently run charter schools and the handful of traditional schools — and who has control of them.

This is important because whoever controls the buildings is responsible for ongoing maintenance and the condition of the facilities where students are educated. Few would dispute that students stand a better chance at a quality education when not learning under leaking roofs, moldy ceilings, peeling paint and in classrooms with unreliable heat and air conditioning. The city has a bad reputation for educating students in such decrepit facilities, but it’s often unclear who should be held accountable for making improvements and held liable when something goes wrong.

The short version is, it allows money that had been used to pay off a bond issue to keep being collected for facilities maintenance.  But what that also means is that it authorizes the RSD to collect and control money it did not previously collect and control  at a time when, really, the RSD should be going away.  So what you're really looking at there is more of a fight over territory than it is a "think of the children" matter.

On some ballots, you will find a Public Service Commissioner's race. This one is also confusing because 1) Despite what Eric Skrmetta's ads say, President Obama is not running for PSC.  2) Despite what lazy people in the media say, Skrmetta's opponent, Forest Wright, is a businessman invested in solar energy and not "an environmentalist." 3) Somebody working for Wright in a tangential fashion was mysteriously firebombed at his home recently.  The case has not appeared in the press since.  One imagines it will be solved at some point.. or not!

Bill Cassidy (probably) has never firebombed anybody. But it's looking more and more like he did, in fact, lie on his LSU-HSC timesheets and that this basically amounts to Medicaid fraud. This could have future ramifications for him and also for LSU... although it could also come to nothing.  Remember they still haven't done much about the firebombing guy yet either.

There are also some judges.  Some people don't like voting for judges but I do.  I think we should vote for every public office imaginable, including Head Football Coach.  Anyway, there's stupid drama in some of those races too if you would like to read about it.

Congratulations to former Governor Edwin Edwards for coming back and keeping us entertained this election season.  He's probably not going to win that congressional seat.  That's sad for us because it means we're sending Garret Graves to Congress.  Probably not so sad for EWE, though, because who wants to go to Washington DC at his age.. or any age, really?  Someone should give the Governor a radio show or something, though. It would be nice to keep his sense of humor in circulation.

Finally, I feel really bad for Mary Landrieu.  She's nowhere close to perfect.  She listens to her friends in the oil industry before she listens to the rest of us.  But, if this really is the end for her, you'd have to give her an overall grade of Could Have Been A Lot Worse.  She's been an especially effective advocate for Louisiana after the Katrina flood, from which we are still recovering.  The Times-Picayune's ringing endorsement of the Senator last month lays out some of the highlights.

The entire state has benefited from her hard work in the Senate.

In 2006, she accomplished something Louisiana leaders had tried for decades and failed to do. She persuaded Congress to force the federal government to give Louisiana and other Gulf states a share of lease revenues from offshore oil and gas wells -- which by 2017 will provide an estimated $500 million each year for restoring our coast.

Sen. Landrieu was instrumental in writing and passing the Restore Act, which ensures the vast majority of BP fines for the 2010 oil spill will go to coastal restoration -- and that Louisiana will get the largest share. She worked successfully across Gulf state and party lines. Her leadership role in the aftermath of the oil spill cannot be overstated.

She also wrote provisions into law allowing community disaster loans to be forgiven by FEMA -- which eliminated $391 million in post-Katrina debt for parish governments. And she successfully fought last year to undo exorbitant flood insurance rates that would have been devastating for Louisiana families.

On top of all that, let us never forget Mary's finest hour.

President Bush faced increasingly bitter complaints today from local and state officials in the battered Gulf Coast region as he struggled to exert control over a disaster that almost surely claimed thousands of lives.

Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a Democrat, said today that she was so angry about federal failures and second-guessing that if she heard any more criticism of local efforts, even from the president, she might "punch" him.

Unfortunately it looks like the pundits proclaiming the long inevitable reddening of the "Solid South" were right. That and the avalanche of money from outside.  Oh and Cassidy's inability to say anything besides "Obama" over and over.

It sucks. Mary sounds tired. Who can blame her?

But look. Vote. Send them your little "fuck you." It helps, believe me.

And then curl up with a bottle of something and, of course, your election results map, and cry it out.

At least the Saints are still in it. 

Enjoy it while you can

Here is the first line from this week's SI cover story on Anthony Davis.

Anthony Davis returned to New Orleans after the best performance of his professional career and discovered that no one had seen it.

NBA superstars don't stay in markets where nobody can see them.  Go see a Pelicans game while this guy is still here. 

Different publications are supposed to do different things

There's a certain stripe of business school buzzworder who wants them all to be the same company for some reason.  This seems like a recipe for failure to me. But what do I know. I'm just some dumb reader.  All I'm supposed to do is click the ads and share to Facebook, right?

Anyway Jonathan Chait's comments on the demise of The New Republic are pretty interesting.

But the conflict between Hughes and most of the staff of The New Republic is not about technology. Foer and the staff, with the exception of Wieseltier, are comfortable with modernity. They are joyous bloggers, and willingly submitted to the introduction of cringe-worthy Upworthy headlines to their stories and other compromises one must make with commercial needs.

The problem, rather, is that Hughes and Vidra are afflicted with the belief that they can copy the formula that transformed the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed into economic successes, which is probably wrong, and that this formula can be applied to The New Republic, which is certainly wrong.

Update:  But that's all just media business stuff.  Let's not lose sight of how absolutely crappy this venerated publication could be. 

Oh, by the way, Obamacare works

It's, of course, not the universal care program we still need. But this moderate health insurance cost control reform we passed a few years back actually does what it is supposed to do and people benefit from that.

Nearly eight in 10 people who buy health insurance through the federal online marketplace can get coverage for $100 per month or less, after subsidies, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Louisiana consumers can choose from six insurers for coverage in 2015, up from five insurance companies a year ago, the report shows. Louisiana consumers also have more plans to choose from, an average of 44 statewide compared to 33 in 2014.

Nearly 102,000 in Louisiana enrolled for health insurance through the federal marketplace for 2014

Meanwhile, we're about to elect a Senator whose entire campaign was based on the fact that he is a doctor who wants to take this away from us.  Because we hate stuff that works.

Bobby Jindal's Louisiana

See we used to have this affordable, quality state university.

University of New Orleans president Peter J. Fos on Thursday recommended closing seven degree programs and eliminating the Department of Geography as part of an ongoing effort to strengthen and restructure the university after years of declining enrollment.
The programs recommended for closure include:

• B.S. in Early Childhood Education
• M.Ed. in Special Education
• Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction
• Ph.D. in Special Education
• M.A. in Political Science
• Ph.D. in Political Science
• M.A. in Romance Languages

Fos also recommended a number of other cost-saving measures, including: requiring department chairs to teach a minimum of two courses in the spring and fall semesters to lower dependence on adjuncts instructors; eliminating 10 instructor positions; reducing the adjunct budget by $1 million; and cutting four positions from the Earl K. Long Library.

But then we stopped spending money on that and gave it all away in tax breaks for rich people so they could help us do this.

In a year of flops for Hollywood, 2011’s “Green Lantern” was a memorable bomb, barely making back its $200 million production budget at the box office.

Happily for Warner Brothers, the studio didn’t have to put up all of the money.

Louisiana taxpayers promised $35 million through a generous subsidy program that covers 30 percent of a film’s local costs. And if state cost-benefit analyses are to be believed, the state recouped only about $8 million of its investment.

By way of comparison, Louisiana sank more into “Green Lantern” than it is putting into the University of New Orleans this year.

The thing to understand about the film tax credit is that it's not just a giveaway to film producers (although they do have the option of just taking a direct paytment.)  It's actually a big tax rebate for wealthy elites who have access to the secondary market on the credits. 

Film productions don’t have any corporate tax liability because they are set up as limited liability companies that simply make payments to actors, crew and vendors. Profits from a film are taxable, but they go to the film’s investors, who are usually based elsewhere.

As a result, most productions sell their tax credits to someone who owes taxes, which is legal under state law, usually getting about 90 cents for each $1 worth of tax credit. Buyers, many of them wealthy movers and shakers, get 100 cents on the dollar from the state, creating a group of influential middlemen who benefit from the program.

In Louisiana, "wealthy movers and shakers" typically means a lot of people who will probably end up in jail or at least in civil court at some point.  Which is why this story has been so much fun to follow.  Lord knows we here at the Yellow Blog have been talking about it for years. 

But really, you should just read that Advocate piece.  They pretty much cover everything, including a side bit on the many scandals involving the program.

Since (Mark) Smith’s 2007 indictment, at least eight other people have been charged with crimes related to the film incentive program. They include Wayne Read, who was sentenced to four years in prison for selling bogus tax credits to several members of the Saints, among others, and Michael Arata, a prominent attorney married to one of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s top aides, whose trial is set for January. More indictments appear to be in the works.

Of course my personal favorite will always be the Kevin Houser as "Uncle Rico" Saints players episode.  It's been fun.  But has it been worth it?  We'd probably get some interesting responses to that out at UNO today.

"Shoot 'em"

The Downtown Development District's conversion of Gallier Hall into...a Pink Floyd show... but with less drugs... and at Epcot Center, probably... really does draw out the most lovely sorts of "art patrons."

New Orleans police separated the protesters from the LUNA Fete spectators, some of whom were upset by the disruption and yelled back. "Shoot 'em!" one woman shouted.

The Parcells era Saints

Larry Holder finds lots of neat stuff in Bill Parcells' biography about his relationship with Sean Payton and, thus, the influence he's had over the way things have developed in New Orleans over the course of Payton's tenure here.  Most surprising is how close Parcells seems to have come to actually accepting the job of substitute coach during Payton's 2012 suspension.  The weird bit would have been that he wanted to hire additional staff. 

Parcells strongly considered taking over as Payton's temporary replacement as head coach before the NFL barred Payton from the Saints' facility for his season-long suspension connected to the bounty scandal. Even former Giants great Lawrence Taylor pushed Parcells to take the job. The Saints gave Parcells permission to contact Al Groh, then at Georgia Tech and former Jets and Virginia head coach, and Eric Mangini, an ESPN analyst at the time and former Browns head coach, about joining him as Parcells knew no one on the Saints' staff. Saints general manager Mickey Loomis was described as being reluctant about Parcells coming in. "Who knows what Loomis really thought," Parcells said. "I don't have any idea. I don't know Loomis; I only met him once. But guys like me threaten guys like him." Ultimately, Parcells decided not to take the job. Taylor even called Parcells with disappointment saying, "Coach, I had never known you to (expletive) out on anything."

I wonder if that's a way of writing that Loomis actually nixed this. 

So it's on to indictment season, then

Sabato declares Mary dead.

It’s rare for us to completely write off an incumbent. In fact, we only did so in one race this cycle, when we moved Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R) reelection bid in Pennsylvania to Safe Democratic a month before the election. Sure enough, Corbett lost by nearly 10 points.

Landrieu is basically in the same boat, and it would be an absolute shock if she won. So we’re moving the Louisiana Senate runoff from Likely Republican to Safe Republican.

What comes next will say a lot about how serious people are about this LSU timesheet business.  It looks like a legitimate point of inquiry. But that's a different thing from saying much will come of it which I rather doubt.

Still, if you're interested, if Senator Cassidy has to step down then the Governor has to call a special election.  The Governor... likely David Vitter by that time.. will also have vacated his own Senate seat in early 2016.  But because that term will have less than a year remaining, he can just appoint a temp to fill out the rest of it. I'm not clear on whether or not the temp can then run for that seat in 2016.

Anyway, the point is there is a possibility (slim as it may be) that we could end up with two completely new Senators in the next couple of years. So much for "clout", I guess.

The rent is too damn high

Also, you're paying more for less.

The majority of renters in New Orleans are economically over-burdened, paying increasingly higher rates for substandard housing, according to a report released Wednesday (Dec. 3) by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.

The segment of the population spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities -- the threshold at which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development identifies people as experiencing financial hardship -- increased to 58 percent in 2013, up from 54 percent the year before.

And the quality of that housing has been called into question with 78 percent of all rental units in the city found to be in need of significant repairs, according to the most recent American Housing Survey conducted in 2011.

In the first paragraph of the report we learn, once again, that gentrification isn't just a natural thing. It's a result of the city's intentional policy decisions.

New Orleans is a city of renters. Fifty-five percent of the city’s housing stock is composed of rentals, but unfortunately thousands of tenants live in homes with physical conditions that are unsafe and unhealthy. The substandard conditions of these units affect the families who live in them but also contribute to neighborhood blight, affecting homeowners’ property values and the quality of life overall. The City’s code enforcement process rarely offers relief, as all of its efforts are directed at vacant, blighted homes instead.

Why is the city ok with allowing (or promoting) gentrification?  I mean you'd think that they'd give out "resilience" awards for helping to keep residents who are facing poverty and squalor afloat.  But of course that's not what that's about.

The real key to successful 21st Century urban development is making sure there are nice things for rich people. After all, how are you gonna be "Hollywood South" if you can't accommodate Hollywood?

Then there are all the other people touched by film in uncounted ways — for instance, people who rent their homes out as film sets or lodging. A website called Key to NOLA caters to the industry with short-term, high-end rentals, some going for as much as $5,000 a month.

The city still hasn't said what it wants to do about short term vacation rentals pricing residents out into crappier and crappier living conditions... if they want to do anything at all about it, which seems doubtful.

Let's replace all the levees with cat litter

No reason not to. Nobody's drowned in a flood because cat litter failed to protect them yet, right?

Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Ethel Julien on Wednesday stymied an effort by three of the city’s largest employee associations seeking to block key provisions of Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Great Place to Work Initiative from taking effect. Julien, who denied a temporary injunction against the city, said that the lawsuit was premature because no city employees had yet been harmed by Landrieu’s overhaul to city personnel rules.

United States of nostalgia

This is from a Jarvis DeBerry column last week.  He's writing about his disappointment in the President's remarks about Ferguson.  But really this is a lament about the dumb nature of the job of being President.

"First and foremost," the president said, "we are a nation built on the rule of law."
 
You could make a stronger case that this nation was built on stolen land; that it was built with stolen labor; that the descendants of those who had their labor stolen are yet struggling to have their humanity recognized.

You could, but the president of the United States cannot.  Leading America requires declaring its goodness. And not just that. Leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law. Never mind that the law failed to prohibit the destruction of one people or the enslavement of another.

DeBerry's thoughts echo those of Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote this in The Atlantic.

In the case of Michael Brown, this is more disappointing than enraging. The genre of Obama race speeches has always been bounded by the job he was hired to do. Specifically, Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. But black people, the community to which both Michael Brown and Barack Obama belong, have the distinct fortune of having survived in significant numbers. For a creedal country like America, this poses a problem—in nearly every major American city one can find a population of people whose very existence, whose very history, whose very traditions, are an assault upon this country's nationalist instincts. Black people are the chastener of their own country. Their experience says to America, "You wear the mask."

In 2008, Barack Obama's task was to capture the presidency of a country which historically has despised the community from which he hails. This was no mean feat. But more importantly, it was not unprecedented. And just as Léon Blum's prime ministership did not lead to a post-anti-Semitic France, Barack Obama's presidency should never have been expected to lead to a post-racist America. As it happens, there is nothing about a congenitally racist country that necessarily prevents an individual leader hailing from the pariah class. The office does not care where the leader originates, so long as the leader ultimately speaks for the state. On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring.

It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would speak "for the state" and also speak truthfully.  It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would tell us anything other than a comforting lie.

Why don't we expect better of our leaders? It's not a new question.  In his new book (which I've been talking a lot about, I know), Rick Perlstein looks at the last time Americans seriously asked it of themselves. The Invisible Bridge covers the mid-70s period dominated by Watergate and the gradual rise of Ronald Reagan from fringe nut to Presidential contender.

Among Perlstein's more intriguing themes is the country's yearning for nostalgia as a means of escape from the difficult questions of the day.  When confronted with harsh questions about corruption and injustice in American life, the public gravitates toward the most comforting lie.  In Perlstein's telling, voters seek a kind of comfort... a belief in their essential goodness.. first from Jimmy Carter but later in more colorful, heroic fashion from Reagan.  

Here is an interview with Perlstein conducted by Thomas Frank where they talk a little bit about this.  It's difficult to read this book and not find multiple parallels between that time and ours both in the political and popular cultures.  Here's a passage where they talk about pop culture retro fetishes.

Well. So the culture of nostalgia in the ’70s — I mean, everything from “Happy Days” going on the air in 1975 to Bette Midler having a huge hit with the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” to all these restaurants like the Ground Round and Shakey’s that kind of promise this 19th century kind of…

Yes. The vogue for the 1890s—what was up with that?

…vaudeville experience. Yeah. Or “The Sting” which is about the 30s but has music from the 1890s. And then, the signal example being “American Graffiti,” which literally, the tagline of the movie was: “Where were you in ’62?” And invites people to kind of imaginatively place themselves before the 60s happens. Which was part of the huge appeal of the POWs. This idea that they had somehow skipped the 60s. And they are these perfect innocents. So, yeah, they were like these Rip Van Winkles. They devote a whole hour of the “Today Show” to explaining to the POWs what had happened in their absence. But we’re the POWs. We want to be them. We want to miss the 60s.

Now, where the disaster rhetoric and the nostalgia rhetoric come together most profoundly is something around which I organized an entire chapter which is this fascinating movie which actually did better box office than “Gone With the Wind” — “The Exorcist.”

What year was that?

’74, January of ’74, in which people are waiting in lines around the block in the middle of this really vicious winter in New York. You have this symbol of our perfect innocence, our daughters, our young daughters, who are basically possessed by demons, which of course was happening all the time. This was the winter of Patty Hearst.

And to make a long story short, the plot of the movie is that science and modernity avails us nothing to fight these demons. If you remember, there’s this kind of faithless priest who is a psychologist, and the mom takes the daughter to all these doctors who have all these fancy machines and they’re not able to do anything. And finally what restores her to sanity is this ancient orthodox priest, this medieval rite. The exorcism. And then the last scene is really striking, because you have the mom, who I’ve heard is based on Shirley MacLaine, who is this kind of liberated, pants-wearing Hollywood liberal actress. And her daughter, in the last reel when she’s exorcized, she hugs the priest who has found his faith again, the young priest, and mother and daughter are wearing outfits that make them look like Jackie Kennedy in 1962.

Again the throwback.

The throwback. So again, you have the disaster being redeemed by the nostalgia. Which is Ronald Reagan.

Anyway I don't want to reproduce the whole thing here but there is this last exchange which really brings the whole thing home.

Is anyone nostalgic for the ’70s?

I am. And for the following reason: If you read my preface, I explain that Americans at the level of popular culture, at the level of grassroots politics, were thinking very hard about what it would mean to have a country they didn’t believe was God’s chosen nation. What would it mean to not be the world’s policeman? What would it mean to conserve our resources? What would it mean to not treat our presidents as if they were kings? That was happening! And the tragedy of Ronald Reagan most profoundly wasn’t policy — although that was tragic enough — but it was robbing America of that conversation. Every time a politician stands before a microphone and utters this useless, pathetic cliche that America is the greatest country ever to exist, he’s basically wiping away the possibility that we can really think critically about our problems and our prospects. And to me, that’s tragic.

As long as we're willing to accept the comforting lie, as long as we believe that, as Deberry puts it, "leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law," our political apparatus is never going to allow us to think critically about our problems.

Body cameras are for them not for you

Congrats on agitating for this innovation.  Now we have a situation where police can not only kill you with impunity but they are also always filming you.

Keystone vs Keystone Light

Congratulations, Senator Cassidy.

Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-La.) reelection bid has been in trouble for a long time. It was in trouble before the Nov. 4 election, when polls showed her likely to lose a head-to-head match-up against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R). It was in trouble after that election, when she performed worse than polling predicted and when her weird, long-shot strategy of getting approval for the Keystone XL pipeline failed completely. And it is in trouble now for many reasons, not the least of which is the most important: The people who have already voted in the race are more heavily the sorts of people likely to vote against her.

The National Journal offered an overview of the early voting problem this morning, pointing out that the vote from Republicans was higher than in November, and the vote from Democrats lower. And back then, GOP candidates combined for 56 percent of the  vote, and Democrats 43.

No shock there, since we all knew that Mary Landrieu's campaign gave up weeks ago.

As lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week in a flurry of lame duck activity, one last Democrat has yet to lose her reelection campaign: Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. She's not going down without a fight, but Louisiana Democrats remain skeptical she can pull it off.

"The Democrats on the national level are basically throwing in the towel on Mary. That's how people are reading it here," said Ron Nabonne, a New Orleans-based attorney and political consultant for over 30 years.

Landrieu finds herself in a political netherworld: she hasn't lost, but many Democrats are going through the motions until the Dec. 6 runoff with Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy. The Democrats' campaign arm has pulled funding, while the national GOP is still hard-charging. A Bloomberg analysis found that Cassidy and his allies paid for a whopping 96 percent of all the TV ads in the first week of the runoff election. Landrieu ads accounted for a mere 4 percent.

All the bandwagoners ditched.  The people who watch these things closely understood it was pretty much over.

A former Louisiana Democratic operative said Landrieu's goose was cooked.

"She just can't win. It's just not mathematically possible," said the Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The way you win statewide in Louisiana is you get 95 percent of the black vote, a good African-American turnout, and 30 to 33 percent of the white vote. And she's at 20! ... Where does she gain? If you put her at 23 percent now, how does she gain 10 points with white voters in a month?" 

As a long time Saints fan, this is exactly the sort of situation I find appealing. When your team is pretty much eliminated from serious contention in November you might as well spend the remainder of the season having fun with it.  Leaving aside the fact that Bill Cassidy is the political equivalent of an NFC South opponent, now is the time for Mary to admit that the math isn't going to work out in her favor.  Now is the time to let push back against the various stripes of plumb ignorant (and, yes, racist in many cases) folks who are asking us to vote for Cassidy because he said "Obama2ndAmendmentObamaBarackObama97%ObamaCare" a bunch of times on TV. 

If you're gonna go down anyway, you might as well go down swinging.  If you're just tuning in during the last week, you might be fooled into thinking that's exactly what she's doing.  Over the course of the past week, Mary's campaign has:

1) Rolled out an attack on Cassidy based on his likely fraudulent LSU timesheets filed while he was serving in Congress.

2) Turned in a lively final debate performance.  She hit particularly hard on questions about Social Security and about drug testing for welfare recipients.  Cassidy said "entitlements" were going to "devour" the budget.  Mary's answer was, basically, "No, tax cuts for rich people do that."  Later Cassidy referred to mandatory drug testing as an "opportunity for accountability."  Mary really lit into him and the entire premise of the question over that. Those two responses were probably her best moments of the entire campaign.  (I know that's not saying much.)

3) Finally taken the President out of mothballs and allowed him to issue an endorsement.

Too little too late?  Actually it's worse than that.  A sudden flurry of aggressive attacks and appeals to "the base" in a campaign's final week are actually just part of the conventional wisdom playbook.  What you're seeing now is just a pep rally meant to make sure the turnout doesn't crater among the people who were going to vote for Mary anyway.

The real runoff campaign happened a few weeks back.  Here is what that consisted of. Imagine a giant flashing billboard which reads:

MARY LANDRIEU IS A FRIEND TO THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY AND WOULD LIKE TO WORK FOR THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY IN SOME CAPACITY IN THE NEAR FUTURE. PLEASE SEE RESUME ATTACHED. I'M ON LINKED-IN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

I know this because the day after the primary I interviewed for a job consulting for the Landrieu campaign. It went like this.

Me: Hello, Mary.  It looks to me like this thing is pretty much in the shitter right now.  But, as Bill Cassidy might say, let's consider it an "opportunity for accountability."  My idea is to just say what we think and throw whatever we've got at the guy regardless of what the special-focus triangulation poll data might suggest people will think. Here is an animated conceptualization of my vision for this campaign going forward.



What do you think?

Mary: Well... that's nice.  But what I really want to talk about is this oil thing I've got here.

Landrieu called for a unanimous consent vote to move to debate on a bill that would approve construction of the 1,660-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Texas. The measure, which Landrieu co-authored with Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, passed in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June.

"I could not think of a better bill that symbolizes what we're trying to do in terms of jobs, economic security, energy security and looking to the future in our country than this bill," said Landrieu.

Me: Ok but, beside the fact that none of those things are true about this pipeline... why not let's tell the voters how a vote for you might be different and better for them than from a vote for the other guy.

Mary: I really like oil.

Me: Um.. well... okay but see so does the other guy. 

Landrieu and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) are spearheading the effort to get the Keystone bill through the Senate. The House passed the same Keystone bill last week, with Landrieu's opponent in the runoff — Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — its chief sponsor.

And on top of that voters understand that Republicans are basically the Oil Party. Whether you mean to or not, you are giving them Keystone Light when they can just have Keystone.  Let's try to find a  better way to distinguish you from your opponent.

Mary: My opponent, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), wants to replace me as the senior Democrat on the Energy committee. She is "all for windmills and alternative energy, and doesn't support the oil and gas industry" which is a shame because does she know that oil is a beautiful thing that comes from the Earth?

Me: Well.. hold up.. you're running against Bill Cassidy. Remember?

Mary: No, that can't be right. He's running against Barack Obama. It's in all his commercials.  I hope he wins. That Obama guy sounds really bad. 


Anyway, I didn't get the job.  And now I'm pretty sure Mary is about to lose hers.  Not that she'll be out of work for long.  There's another Senate seat opening up in 2016 after David Vitter becomes Governor... if you believe in long shots.  In the meantime, I'm sure someone can find her something to do. These guys probably already have a resume on file.