A whole year

The bending reality shtick is not entirely original to our show but it doesn't make it any less of an achievement. We like to think of it as a sign that we've arrived. Anyway it's been fun and we think we're finally getting the hang of it. Thanks to everyone who has listened, contributed, and corresponded with us this year. We're going to try and have more guests on in the future... provided we can ever arrive at a more regular recording schedule.

Anyway this one has an exclusive interview with Coach Orgeron so that's a good start. It's also got the Senate election, the requisite football talk, and a little book talk as well. Plus... extras, as always. Enjoy.

QOTD

Ed Orgeron:

Orgeron hasn’t engendered a wisp of criticism since taking over for Miles, but his tenure won’t have as much to do with the court of public opinion as the field of cold, hard numbers. Win enough games, though no one knows how many that would be, and he gets to crumple up the interim tag next to his name.

He couldn’t ask for a tougher gauntlet, with five ranked SEC teams lying in wait, all preceded by months of unbelievable drama.

Somehow, Orgeron has embraced it all.

“You know, whatever,” he said. “This is college football. Whatever the day brings, we’re going to face it and be positive about it and go after it and adjust on the move.”

Maybe not the most profound thing. But you do have to respect a guy who subscribes to "You know, whatever," as a guiding principle. 

So who bought out Stuart Fisher?

Can't imagine he's walking away without having received something for his $10 investment.

The lawsuit that has held up redevelopment of the old World Trade Center building in New Orleans for more than a year has taken a bizarre turn, with the head of the company that filed the suit abruptly stepping aside and his former legal team asking to be removed from the case.

After a competitive review process last year, the city chose a team of developers who plan to turn the former office tower at the foot of Canal Street into a Four Seasons Hotel and condos. However, one of the losing applicants, Two Canal Street Investors Inc., has been trying to block those plans, arguing the city broke state law in making its selection.

At the center of the dispute has been Stuart "Neil" Fisher, who bought TCSI after its proposal already had been rejected. He’s been accused of pursuing a frivolous lawsuit with the hope of scoring a quick payday in the form of a settlement with the city.

But Fisher stepped down as president of TCSI earlier this month and says he no longer has any stake in the company, though he insists that others will carry on with the lawsuit in his place.

Actually it's not entirely clear that he's walking away.  Something has changed, obviously. But that something is not necessarily the end of this lawsuit. 

Neither side would comment on the lawyers’ decision to pull out of the case, a step that still needs approval from Civil District Court Judge Tiffany Chase, who told both sides in a status conference this week that she plans to proceed quickly with a trial over the suit.

Fisher said Friday that a new team of lawyers and a “nationally famous litigator” could be coming aboard to handle the lawsuit, but he would not name them.

Fisher has "stepped down," and his lawyers are (maybe) off the case but he's still here hyping the mystery Superlawyer to be named later?  It's suggested by the other side that this is just a delay tactic. But if it is, then on whose behalf is the case being delayed?  This isn't the first time we've had trouble understanding just who the plaintiff is in this case.

Fisher bought the company but didn't file the lawsuit. Maybe. At some point he indicated that he wasn't even the owner of the company anymore. But we weren't told exactly who is.

In an interview in March, Fisher said he is no longer an owner of Two Canal Street Investors, but he is the president and "authorized representative of the owners, both foreign and domestic." Fisher said he has a group of new investors including a Wall Street hedge fund, all of whom he declined to name.

Now Fisher is leaving.. again? But not really? And the legal team is shifting around.. maybe. I still don't know who the actual plaintiff is in this case. And I know even less about who actually owns TCSI now. Somebody does, though. Or maybe this is just one of those perpetual motion lawsuits that keeps going under the power of its own inertia.

Correction: Misspelled Stuart in the title. That happens a lot. 

Gumbo season

It's mid-October and we're all still sweating our ballses off. It looks like we're headed for another Halloween In The Tropics this year. Not sure what that means for your Sexy Ken Bone costume.

Anyway, everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about..... (shoot me please.) So this month I've been trying to make fall happen by cooking more gumbo.  A few weeks ago this chicken, andouille, and oyster deal was a major success.  Seriously. That's my favorite one I've made since the Great Turducken Gumbo Of 2011.

This past Thursday I did a gumbo z'herbes very much like the one shouted about toward the end of this podcast episode. Because, you see, there was this local uproar about people putting kale in gumbo. But that was stupid because you can totally put kale in gumbo. People do it all the time. I put it in this one along with several other types of green as well as some smoked pig tails. 



So shut up about kale already. It works fine in the gumbo.  Meanwhile the gumbo cooking hasn't helped the fall weather roll in quite the way we'd like. But we'll keep trying.

The Joe Callahan Era

Welcome to the future 

"Why'd it take you this long?"

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

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

But but but... it's just risotto recipes

I'm looking forward to the end of the 2016 campaign.  It was fun during the primaries when the Democrats were actually arguing over the outsized  influence of the corporate oligarchy and the Republicans were staging a bizarre revolt against the rotten money power that controls their party. As we stagger to the finish, though, that's all well behind us.  The Democrats have fully embraced the oligarchs and what's left of the Republican Party is no longer in revolt so much as just plain revolting.

Another annoyance about this stage of the campaign is the near total absence of substance coming from either major candidate or their surrogates.  Of course when one side nominates a lecherous quasi-fascist reality TV star, that's almost understandable.  But that isn't the only source of the inanity.  It's clear now (as it should have been for several months) that Hillary Clinton is going to be President. One would think that the focus of discussion now would be on the kind of President she will be.  One would be wrong about that.

With the election reduced to fait-accompli status, it might be a good idea for the party assured of victory to start to work setting the governing agenda.  Let's talk now about what we'd like to see President Clinton accomplish in order to attach the popular mandate of the landslide election to our priorities. For some reason Hillary partisans aren't interested in doing this. In fact, they are doing everything they can to forestall that kind of talk.  Even now, as they've beaten the American voter into submission, the Hillary people aren't in the mood to take a victory lap.  Instead, they are still playing defense. Sloppily.

Take the recent Wikileaks releases of hacked emails, for example. It's understandable that the campaign itself considers them a distraction or embarrassment. But what about those Democrats who aren't employed directly by the campaign or the DNC? Or what about just the average voter? There's some stuff in there that most of us might find worth talking about.

In her speeches to Goldman Sachs, Hillary basically said that bankers are the best people to regulate bankers and that if you aren't getting rich in America, you must be some kind of loser.

At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Clinton said.

She also admits her own position on Syrian intervention is going cost a lot of civilian lives. 

In her remarks to Goldman Sachs, Clinton pointed to the Syrian government’s air defense systems, and noted that destroying them would take the lives of many Syrian civilians.

“They’re getting more sophisticated thanks to Russian imports. To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas.  So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians,” she said. “So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.”

That's actually an example of the "private Hillary" being better than "public Hillary." It might bode well for what comes after the election.  On the other hand, we're in a shooting war in Yemen now, apparently. So... well, we'll see.  Anyway, none of us are much surprised to learn also how much Hillary loves Wal-Mart but that's in there too.

There's other stuff but let's not catalog it all here.  The point is that, despite the protestations of the professional sycophants and hangers-on (lol risotto!), there's relevant information in these emails. They tell us what sort of President we're about to have and what she and the people around her believe. In a better world, this would be the most relevant election topic at this point given the inevitability of the outcome. Instead, thanks to Donald Trump, we're spending time in 2016 arguing over whether or not women are people.

Here's why it matters that we start to contemplate the Clinton Administration now.  David Dayen writes that the leaked emails also instruct us that by the time Obama took office in 2008, the opportunity to substantively shape the course of the new Presidency had already passed.

If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.


Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.

The wing of the Democratic Party concerned about personnel decisions made its opinion known almost two years ago. Dan Geldon, now chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Warren, met with Dan Schwerin, a top adviser to Clinton’s campaign, in January 2015. According to an email follow-up with Podesta and others, Geldon “was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers.” He was also “very critical of the Obama administration’s choices.”

Dayen goes on to argue that this year the so-called "Warren Wing" has earned some clout during the election (Bernie won 42 percent of Democrats!) and deserves to be heard in these discussions. But given the condescension toward them that drips out of some of these emails, it's not clear just how much influence they'll end up having.

The governor needs to stop being "reasonable"

The state needs to just go ahead with its lawsuit against the oil and gas industry.  The opposition is dug in and is never going to meet us halfway. In this Lens Op-Ed Anne Rolfes describes the oil lobby's recalcitrance in comparison to what she terms Governor Edwards's "reasonable" though ineffectual hope for a negotiated settlement.

Edwards would rather not sue. Time and again he has said his preference is for oil companies to meet him at the table and negotiate a settlement. This is a reasonable path, but instead the industry cries war. The oil and gas group casts the governor as a villain who has set greedy lawyers upon them.  Any mention of why our coastline is destroyed conveniently omits causation. “Save the coast,” is the vacuous cry that the oil industry has heartily promoted.

Refusing to honestly address the problems oil and gas extraction has caused is a recurring theme. Ask the industry to reduce pollution and it will roll out an opinion piece, like the one in which the Louisiana Mid Continent Oil and Gas Association depicts itself as an industry hogtied by regulation and law.

In fact, the opposite is true. The laws that regulate pollution are not enforced. When the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator of on-shore facilities,  reviewed enforcement of environmental laws throughout the nation, he found enforcement in Louisiana to be the worst. One of the reasons is cited on page 16: “a culture in which the state agency is expected to protect industry.”

The state's only recourse at this point is to press on with legal action against the oil and gas industry. The case has enough merit, anyway. Last week, John Barry wrote in the Advocate that "the industry has no actual defense." 

This has become laughable. The very existence of coastal Louisiana is at stake, Governor John Bel Edwards wants the oil and gas industry to restore the part of the coast it destroyed, and the industry responds by attacking the attorneys he wants to hire.

Of course that shouldn’t surprise anyone. The industry has no actual defense, so it needs to distract. Let’s look at the issue point by point, starting with causes of the problem.The industry’s minions blame levees for land-loss, and levees do cause damage. But industry has, too — and in some areas of the state industry is the biggest cause. Don't take my word for it.

Ask oil industry scientists. In 1972 a study by pipeline companies concluded that every mile of pipeline causes the loss of 54 acres of land, and industry has dredged thousands and thousands of miles of pipelines and canals. In 1989, a study by the Louisiana Mid-continent Oil and Gas Association, the trade association for major oil companies, examined the area of the state with the worst land-loss and concluded that "the overwhelming cause" of that land loss was industry operations. In 2001 the U.S. Geological Survey oversaw a study including industry scientists which concluded 36 percent of land loss was caused by industry. And many scientists believe industry caused a much higher percentage of the land loss.

Of course, if your strategy is to dig in and distract, it helps to have political players on your side. It helps when the Attorney General is willing to intervene in the process on your behalf. It helps when local parish officials are so cowed by oil money that they refuse to lend their voice to the cause. And it helps tremendously when a Democratic Senate candidate refuses to back the effort.

Caroline Fayard, also a Democrat, noted that she is an attorney but said that she doesn’t think suing the oil and gas companies was the solution to restoring lost land.

Lawsuits are expensive and time-consuming, she said, and provide no guarantee of results.

Fayard, by the way, is the daughter of a wealthy civil attorney whose fortune derives from involvement in various high profile environmental lawsuits. Specifically it derives from his ability to subtly play both sides of the fence in these scenarios. Most recently, American Zombie detailed how this worked during the BP settlement process.  The Fayards also benefit from their cozy relationships in state and national politics.  But much more on that later. Suffice to say for now that it's laughable to see Caroline positioning herself against the governor's lawsuit here. Especially so when in her campaign appearances and literature she emphasizes her role in the BP negotiations. Here, for example, is a push poll where Fayard's candidate bio describes her as "a civil justice attorney and small businesswoman who took on BP and helped negotiate the state settlement."  But  Senators have a different set of priorities than trial attorneys sometimes. Or at least they're paid differently.

In Louisiana they're also paid to deny that humans (specifically humans in the fossil fuels business) are responsible for climate change. At the forum,  according to the Advocate, "Fayard also said that climate change is real but did not pin blame." Unfortunately, as we've noted previously, this is also the governor's ridiculous position. Apparently, this is what the conventional wisdom of state politics tells us it means to be "reasonable."  John Bel really needs to stop that.

Voter suppression

Today was the last day to register for new voters looking to participate in November's elections in Louisiana. The Presidential race still isn't expected to be close here. (Which may explain why the major Republican Senate candidates, state GOP insiders, and Steve Scalise are all standing by Donald Trump even now.) But there are state and local elections to consider as well. 

So there's ample incentive to register. Unfortunately the Secretary of State's office is doing everything it can to discourage that.

Secretary of State Tom Schedler plans to give each voter a sticker of the famous “Blue Dog” saying "I voted."

Schedler and the family of George Rodrigue, the New Iberia artist of the "Blue Dog" paintings, unveiled the art for the sticker Monday at the Press Club of Baton Rouge.

“The 'Blue Dog' has become synonymous with Louisiana,” Schedler said.

Among the many Rodrigue works that include the iconic pooch is a painting President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, commissioned by the Democratic Party during their term in 1990s. Rodrigue's first "Blue Dog" was as part of a collection of ghost stories.

The Secretary of State’s Office printed about 4 million stickers, which should be enough for everyone who votes early, starting on October 25, or casts their ballot on November 8. The stickers cost $21,000 to print.

Louisiana had about 2.97 million registered voters at the end of September. Registration for the upcoming election closes Tuesday at 11:59 p.m.

Another SELA Mardi Gras

The last update from S&WB that I'd paid any attention to came several months back during the spring. At that time, we were told that the SELA drainage work on Napoleon Avenue would be completed "by the end of the year."

The long-awaited end of the Napoleon Avenue drainage-canal project is now expected to be the end of the year — all of it — and landscaping on the neutral ground should be done next year, officials with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told neighbors Thursday night.


The section of Napoleon from South Claiborne to Carondelet Street is all but finished already, said engineer Ron Spooner of the S&WB and John Fogarty of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during a town-hall meeting at the St. Stephen Catholic Church school cafeteria. The box canal has been completely installed, and Boh Brothers contractors are now finishing up replacing curbs and sidewalks that were removed during construction.

In recent months, their progress has been evident.  Most of the culvert is finished and buried.  The intersection at Camp Street has reopened. Others are tantalizingly close to completion.  At the same time, though, they clearly have a lot of work left to do.



So today I happened to glance at the project site to find that the completion date has quietly been moved to July 2017.  Get ready for another parade season in the construction zone.

UPDATE: Thanks to the Advocate's Jeff Adelson for checking up on this. 

@skooks 2 - The July 2017 date is because they won't be laying sod on the neutral grounds until after Mardi Gras.

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

@skooks 3 - Waiting to do the sod means they won't have to close the neutral ground for the parades.

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

RIP Mike VI

Roscoe was a good boy

LSU's live tiger mascot Mike VI is dead, LSU officials announced Tuesday.

The 11-year-old Bengali-Siberian tiger died after his health declined significantly from a rare, incurable cancer diagnosed in May.

He had a friend named Jeff


 

We were trying to film our own Daisy ad

Over the weekend we had to go to Ocean City, MD to attend what, I guess, you'd have to call a destination funeral. It was a strange experience staying on the beach in a summer resort town during the fall on a less than celebratory occasion. Also there was a muscle car convention in town so, throughout the weekend, we were never far from the sound of revving engines and smell of burning rubber. Oh and on the last day the remnants of Hurricane Matthew passed over us and threatened to flood our drive out of there.

So, yeah, weird times.  On the morning after our first night in town, we did witness a nuclear device detonated just off the coastline there. Hope everyone is ok.

Columbus Day is kind of a big deal

This article is from last year but it's a great Columbus Day read. 

Columbus’ landfall in the Western Hemisphere was the opening of Europe’s conquest of essentially all of this planet. By 1914, 422 years later, European powers and the U.S. controlled 85 percent of the world’s land mass.

White people didn’t accomplish this by asking politely. As conservative Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington put it in 1996, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

All we did was build nice things for rich people

When all you do is build nice things for rich people, you run the risk of creating a glut in the market for nice things for rich people.

That split between the high and low markets represents a key issue for the city. James Amdal, a senior fellow at the University of New Orleans' Transportation Institute who has studied the Warehouse District, said both the undersupply of lower-income housing and the oversupply of higher-end properties result from development patterns since Hurricane Katrina.

"Citywide, it seems as if affordable housing has become an absolutely critical in-demand commodity, and there just isn't any," Amdal said. "I think it dates to Katrina and post-Katrina and no one really understanding or knowing what needed to be done. Everyone decided that the low-hanging fruit was upper-middle, upper-class housing."

Not only did we focus on the upper end of the spectrum, we actually used funds designated for affordable housing development to do it.

We found short-term listings that appear to be in four developments subsidized with HOME Investment Partnership funds, one of several federal programs that fund affordable housing:

• Bienville Basin, on the site of the former Iberville public housing complex near the French Quarter
• Blue Plate Lofts, at the foot of Jefferson Davis Parkway in Gert Town
• The Muses Apartments in Central City
• A house at on Carondelet Street in Central City

Most of the listings were for an entire apartment.

This doesn’t mean that tourists are recovering from nights on Bourbon Street in low-income housing. The developments have a mix of market-rate apartments, affordable housing and, at Bienville Basin, public housing.

“My rent was $1,400 a month,” wrote Mark, an AirBnB host whose listing appears to be in Bienville Basin. “Let me know when that’s affordable.”

$1,400 is not affordable for anyone who actually lives here.  But it appears to be well below the price point at which the nice things for rich people are profitable for their management companies. In that Advocate article about the "cooling" of the rental market we find a Cotton Mill condo manager bellyaching that she recently had to take only $4,500 a month from a tenant.

Unfortunately it is this upper bound "crisis" and not the affordable housing problem that is likely to generate a policy response.  The market for nice things for rich people had been held afloat thanks to our gross public subsidy to the film production industry. It also appears to have benefited from the unrestrained encroachment of short term rentals.   One can easily envision policymakers acting to relieve the "glut" by either restoring the Hollywood South tax credit, further liberalizing STRs, or both.

As for helping the rest of us afford a place to live... well there really isn't much in the works.  The mayor's much praised affordable housing plan, for instance, is heavily dependent on so-called "inclusionary zoning" requirements.  But inclusionary zoning is an insidious and ineffective approach  based in trickle-down economic theory.  Basically it supposes the only way to build more affordable housing is to first build more nice things for rich people.

Inclusionary zoning is a fatally flawed program. It’s not just that it doesn’t produce enough units, or that the apartments it creates aren’t affordable, though both observations are undeniably true. The real problem with inclusionary zoning is that it marshals a multitude of rich people into places that are already experiencing gentrification. The result is a few new cheap apartments in neighborhoods that are suddenly and completely transformed.

Any political leader who asks us to believe in bullshit solutions like this isn't really trying to help. Instead they're looking for easy ways to appear to help which won't piss off their real friends.  Here's what happens when they actually try to help in ways that make their friends uncomfortable.

New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head on Friday joined a small but growing crowd objecting to Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s plan to build a “low-barrier” homeless shelter in Central City and calling for a new location with more comprehensive services.

The low-barrier shelter concept, pitched as a cornerstone of the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness, has evolved since it was first proposed more than a year ago.

Stacy and Latoya Cantrell (who also opposes the shelter) are worried because a charter school executive told them it's located too close to his territory.  So much for inclusionary zoning, in spirit, anyway. The homeless shelter doesn't do anything to subsidize or finance any nice new high end apartment developments so it's a no-go. We're trying to build and maintain a nice city for rich people to visit where nobody actually lives. The dip in the market for luxury housing stalls that a bit. But I'm sure the leadership team will come up with some way to help.

The city we always wanted to be

Who did we rebuild it for? 

Vacation rental services like Airbnb say they offer anauthentic experience, a chance to live like locals. In New Orleans, where rents have outpaced wages over the past decade, that means tourists can rent an apartment in a development built with tax dollars for affordable housing.

The Lens found nine rental listings that appear to be located in developments that received city funding to offer affordable housing. About half appear to be in a mixed-income development located at a former public housing site.

Unexpected travel weekend

Good luck to everyone in the path of a scary storm this weekend. Seems kind of silly they're still trying to play a football game in that as of this morning.

Normcore wars

Oh isn't it so quaint how plain and mild the VP candidates are. Except actually both of them are horrible people running on the tickets of indefensible monsters.

While Trump has favored isolationist rhetoric, both  running mates sounded distinctly neocon themes in the context of the Middle East. Lee Fang noted that “Mike Pence broke in a big way with the top of his ticket on foreign policy during the debate, declaring that his administration would be prepared to ‘strike military targets of the Assad regime.'” Zaid Jilani pointed out that Pence and Kaine “surprisingly agreed on establishing ‘safe zones’ in Syria for beleaguered civilians,” while both also “failed to mention the troop commitments such zones would take to defend.”

Kaine and Pence also agreed on some domestic issues. Alice Speri wrote about how they both enthusiastically support community policing because “It sounds great. It means basically nothing.”

We noted that, in a debate that barely focused on the two vice presidential candidates themselves at all, Kaine ended up somehow straddling some wide moral chasms: He repeatedly noted his missionary work in Honduras, while ducking Hillary Clinton’s warm relations with military coup leaders there and their U.S. enablers; he spoke about carrying out executions even though it violated his personal convictions.

Pence probably "won" the debate in the useless, perverted sense that we tend to score such things.  He needled Kaine's dorky, practiced one liners. He lied freely and assuredly while Kaine failed to seriously challenge him.  He even got to ramble on for an extended period about how his faith informs his extremely disturbing anti-abortion rights position  without facing a rebuttal from the compromised and ineffectual Kaine. 

Not that any of this matters. Most people didn't watch. And the thing most people who did even remember about it is a jokey hashtag. America's two dads can now be safely returned to their storage containers. Only a month of this depressing election to go. Hang in there.

October 20 or bust?

So they went ahead and moved the short term rental vote just as they hinted they might. 

Following years of debate and several studies, the New Orleans City Council was set to vote on a framework for regulating short-term rentals advertised through platforms like Airbnb. The vote was scheduled for Oct. 6. Today, the City Council announced it's moving the matter to Oct. 20.

But if the Council misses its Oct. 20 deadline, that could table the issue for good, at least until the next administration steps in.

What a fun thing to have as a central focus of the campaign during the next round of municipal elections. 

Coach O, we'll hardly know ya

Gonna be so sad when LSU inevitably disappoints Orgeron again because the boosters are gonna demand a Big Name Guy.

The Tigers had signed him to a football scholarship out of South Lafourche High in 1979 and brought him to training camp as a freshman lineman. But homesickness soon drove the small-town kid back to the bayou.

His father, in the construction business, put him to work the next day.

“I was digging ditches by the side of the road,” Orgeron says. “People would drive by and yell ‘You quit.’ It was the worst time of my life.”

A former high school teammate — quarterback Bobby Hebert — persuaded Orgeron to join him at Northwestern (La.) State, where they both had successful college careers.

For years afterward, whenever Orgeron drove across the Horace Wilkinson Bridge and saw the LSU campus along the river, he told himself: I’m gonna make it back there someday.

Maybe not quite as sad as having to put down Mike. But, well, it's a similar situation.

Low barrier

This week, the mayor announced plans for a new "low-barrier" homeless shelter on Erato street at S. Derbigny just uptown from the Calliope overpass. The shelter is a good idea and deserves to be supported. Not everybody thinks so, of course.

The new shelter, which Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration plans to build at 3101 Erato St. in the B.W. Cooper neighborhood, is just two blocks away from two public school buildings. They are Sylvanie Williams College Prep and the shuttered Booker T. Washington High School, which is expected to reopen in the near future.

Critics worry that piling many of the city’s homeless in one space could pose a threat to students and residents because the shelter would be open to all comers, including people who are mentally ill or struggling with alcohol and drug addictions.

“What we are saying is: Our children are a top priority,” said Ben Kleban, an Orleans Parish School Board member-elect and the founder of the charter management group that runs Williams. “Safety for them is a top priority. And this shelter, by design, will concentrate some of the most in need … in a neighborhood that is already in need of services.”

"Think of the children!" says Ben Kleban even though there is no reason to believe any children would be harmed by there being better services available for the homeless population.  Kleban, by the way, is an OPSB "member-elect" as a consequence of having been unopposed in one of what could have been a pivotal slate of school board races.   Yet another reason these elections matter. The barriers for entry to these offices shouldn't be quite so low.

That's not how any of this works

Here's a pretty scary Vox article about the "lack of political will" to do anything significant about climate change. 

In Paris, in 2015, the countries of the world agreed (again) on the moral imperative to hold the rise in global average temperature to under 2 degrees Celsius, and to pursue "efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees." To date, 62 countries, including the United States, China, and India, have ratified the agreement.

Are any of the countries that signed the Paris agreement taking the actions necessary to achieve that target?

No. The US is not. Nor is the world as a whole.

The actions necessary to hold to 2 degrees, much less 1.5 degrees, are simply outside the bounds of conventional politics in most countries. Anyone who proposed them would sound crazy, like they were proposing, I don’t know, a war or something.

So we say 2 degrees is unacceptable. But we don’t act like it is.

And that is legitimately worrisome. Read through the rest of that if you don't believe me. Global temperature are now the warmest they've been in 115,000 years. What Dr. Vox there is terming a failure of "political will" is likely to result in catastrophe after catastrophe over the course of the next century.   It's a systemic disaster and a moral outrage.

But is it a surprise? It shouldn't be. That is, it can only surprise you if your concept of politics adheres to the notion that "political will" can be applied to bring forth universally beneficial solutions.  But despite what someone like...say Clancy DuBos would have you believe, politics isn't about "both sides" coming together to find The Good Policy That Works For Everyone.

Instead it is about conflict. Conflict exists, not because "partisans" are cranky or tribal, but because they represent disparate and irreconcilable interests.  Politics is the process of fighting out who takes the brunt of each policy decision. In this context, climate change isn't one problem everyone will agree to solve.  It is a scenario under which we fight over who gets hurt most in which specific ways.

I've written about this before, most recently here where I argue Louisiana's coastal master plan will never be about "saving the coast" as much as it will be about figuring out who endures the heaviest cost of the retreat. In any case, there's never going to be a moment where "the political will" materializes to bring us all together to solve the problem of climate change. This isn't what politics does.

Mysteries of the #LASEN cosmos

There are more candidates running for Senate in Louisiana this year than most voters would probably care to contemplate.  Astronomers estimate the actual number may be too high to bother trying to count. The interesting thing about that, though, is that when we break out the higher mathematics necessary to describe such an election, we approach a universe where every candidate cancels some other candidate out.

“The Fleming-Maness mini-primary won’t matter unless one of them breaks away,” veteran campaign strategist Roy Fletcher said about the two major GOP contenders for the party’s super-conservative wing, U.S. Rep. John Fleming, of Minden, and retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness, of Madisonville.

That goes a long way in explaining the past week’s narrative when Fleming’s campaign touted a poll showing him up to 14 percent, nipping on the heels of the establishment Republican candidates – U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, of Lafayette, and State Treasurer John N. Kennedy, of Madisonville.

It’s a gambit that seemed to pay dividends when Fleming was included but Maness, who polled 4 percent, was left off the stage in the CABL/LPB debate that will be televised statewide on Oct. 18.

Maness might cancel out Fleming. David Duke might cancel out Maness. The two Democrats might cancel each other out. The front runners.. are there front runners? Is it possible that nobody comes out of this black hole alive?   Actually, we're saving that for a different post.  Today we learned more about what some of the lesser candidates are doing to try and defy gravity.

Troy Hebert is one such lesser candidate.  His strategy appears to involve pretending to sue people.

U.S. Senate candidate Troy Hebert, no party, said he filed a lawsuit today in state court to block one of the televised Senate debates because he said the criteria to participate was "unconstitutional.

Hebert, former commissioner of the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, sent members of the media a news release and a copy of an unofficial petition seeking a preliminary injunction. But as of early afternoon, the suit had not yet been filed, according the the clerk's office for the 19th Judicial District. 

Hebert called a press conference to talk about his not yet lawsuit which he used as a platform to talk about how badly "the system is rigged" against "the 'lil man'" which is probably true although Hebert's own standing as the "'lil man" is dubious.  Even so, despite this being an obvious stunt, he does raise an interesting point.

Last week, the good government nonprofit Council for a Better Louisiana announced it had set its criteria for its Oct. 18 Senate debate which will air across the state on Louisiana Public Broadcasting stations. Candidates had to have raised at least $1 million and polled at at last 5 percent in an independent poll.

In a way, Hebert is suing (if he actually files a lawsuit) to protest the notion of a "money primary" where candidates are determined to be viable based on the clout of their donor list.  If he were at all sincere, it might be a laudable windmill to tilt at.  Although, the Supreme Court has already ruled that money is speech so it's hard to figure he's got precedent on his side there.

What's really interesting about this is that it isn't even the only lawsuit announced by a Senate candidate today. 

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, has sued the author of a book that contained allegations he was involved with prostitutes in Jefferson Davis Parish who were later murdered, according to his attorney, Jimmy Faircloth.

Boustany, a U.S. Senate candidate, filed the defamation suit against Ethan Brown and the New York publishing company Simon & Schuster Monday (Oct. 3) in state court in Lafayette. Brown's book, "Murder on the Bayou," cited several anonymous sources who said they had knowledge that Boustany was a client of three sex workers in Jennings. Boustany has vehemently denied the accusations and blasted his chief competitor in the Louisiana Senate race, state Treasurer John Kennedy for peddling the story to the media.

Boustany must think he is Hulk Hogan or something. Pretty sure S&S has the resources to withstand the nasty SLAP lawsuit. It probably won't get very far anyway. But that's hardly the point. Boustany, like Hebert, is just posturing.

You have to feel bad for Hebert, though. The cosmic mysteries being what they are and all, it's pretty amazing that a U.S. Senate candidate can't even announce a lawsuit on a given day without it being overshadowed by a different candidate's lawsuit. What are the odds, right? Astronomical, I'm sure. But that's another consequence of having so many people in the race. In the same way the vastness of the universe increases the probability that life exists on other planets, the size of the field increases the chances of something like this happening. Still, in either case, the evidence of intelligent life anywhere is yet to be discovered.

Programming update

City Council is talking about maybe postponing action on short term rentals that had been scheduled for Thursday. This article doesn't say exactly why. It only cites Jared Brossett saying he isn't in a hurry.

According to several council members' offices, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and his staff have taken a hands-off position recently and have not been pushing for specific policies. That could complicate efforts to hammer out an agreement, particularly since the administration would be responsible for enforcing any rules.

Brossett said he doesn't see a need to rush the process. Even though the council technically faces an Oct. 22 deadline to take action on the recommendations from the Planning Commission, he said the issue could always be brought back up again if that deadline is missed.

The mayor might be backing away in light of recent stories where members of his family have been found to be renting "whole home" Airbnbs. Or it could be something else.  There was a Twitter rumor this morning that the whole thing could get pushed back beyond the next municipal election. That sounds kind of nuts. But it would make the campaign a little more fun with STRs in the mix as a major issue.  

Selfishly, I kind of hope they do put it off this week.  I suddenly have to be out of town on Thursday and had hoped to be on hand to see the inevitable circus meeting.

13 games!!

We thought we'd open the show this week by having Lester Holt moderate a debate between former Saints head coach Jim Mora and himself from twenty and thirty years ago. It may be diddly poo but that's no worse than the actual debate was.

Nowhere to nowhere

On Monday, they're gonna go and make a bunch of speeches over the Rampart streetcar. Not much more to say besides this.

Leo Watermeier fought the streetcar idea at first, but now that it's a reality, he's softened his position.

"Hey man, I wish them well, I'm glad the construction is over," Watermeier said today. "I hope it's a success. I don't see how it is going to be a success. You know, still it is a streetcar that sort of goes from nowhere to nowhere."

We are going to lose

The short term rental controversy is a perfect illustration of the divide that exists between the elite classes in government and politics and the great majority of us among the governed.

For us, the housing crisis in New Orleans is real.  Rents are too damn high. Incomes are stagnant. We look around our neighborhoods and see more and more properties converted into de-facto hotels and wonder which bridge we're going to end up living under.

Meanwhile our "representatives" look around and see their friends and family making the most out of their investments.

Underscoring how complicated the issue has become in New Orleans, a second member of Mayor Mitch Landrieu's family confirmed that he has a short-term rental on his property, even as another Landrieu relative opposes the practice.

Mark Landrieu, the brother of the mayor, acknowledged Thursday he hosts people in a short-term rental on his property that rents for $80 a night. He also rented a home he owns near the Fair Grounds on Airbnb during Jazz Fest.

In an interview, Mark Landrieu said he's a supporter of people being able to rent out homes to people visiting New Orleans, and said he hopes the City Council will approve regulations next week that are fair to Airbnb hosts and their neighborhoods.

The political class, meaning the elected persons, their families, and their professional associates as well as the so called "business and community leaders" who move in their social circles do not identify with us. They don't know us so our voices are not the voices they hear and respond to on a day to day basis. When Stacy Head says she hears "a consistent drumbeat of requests to move tourists into other neighborhoods than the French Quarter and the CBD,” she's not lying about that.

The political class and their friends and family are fine with STR liberalization. They own property that can be Airbnbed. 

New Orleans Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell operated two short-term rentals out of his former downtown law office that were listed on Airbnb until at least May, according to a public profile set up on the website. The rentals were illegal under the city's zoning code, as are thousands of other rentals across New Orleans.

One of Cantrell's rentals, a two-bedroom featuring four twin beds, rented for $245 per night, according to the short-term rental aggregation website Alltherooms.com. Reviews on Cantrell's Airbnb profile page indicated his other rental was a one-room studio with a small kitchen and bathroom, though it's unclear what Cantrell was charging for rent because both listings have since been removed.

Cantrell lists his name on the Airbnb website as "Hey, I'm Cantrell!" But from the reviews on the website, it appears Cantrell employed a property manager at the law office to handle visitors. The three-story building is at 309 Baronne St., about three blocks from Canal Street.

Cantrell, who is the father-in-law of City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Our friends and family have to be shoved out of the way so they can do that. But our elected persons don't know, hear from, or care about us.  And that's why we're going to lose.

Diversifying our economy

In Louisiana we're expanding from obscene public subsidies for oil exploration into obscene public subsidies for movies about oil exploration. 

The movie “Deepwater Horizon,” which opens today in theaters across America, is a rare example of a locally shot film that actually tells a story set in Louisiana.

It's gotten kudos for its meticulous rendering of the events leading up to the 2010 explosion that took the lives of 11 men on a BP oil rig 50 miles off the coast, setting off the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

But it is also the most expensive film ever made in the state, at least from taxpayers’ perspective. Under the state’s generous film-subsidy program, Louisiana issued tax credits totaling almost $38 million to Lionsgate, the producer.

That sum eclipses what was given to the previous record-holder, “Green Lantern.” In 2011, the year of that film’s release, the box-office flop got slightly more state aid than the University of New Orleans did.

First we pay for them to make the disasters happen. Then we pay for them to profit by exploiting the fact of the disaster. I'd say, at least the latter half is ostensibly "greener," but since we still subsidize oil production too, it's more like they're getting us coming and going.

Update: Clay saw the movie and reviewed it for us. 

That's all he actually has

It was never clear just how Tom Benson was going to buy out his heirs if he couldn't offer them something of comparable value. No one is saying the dealerships and other investments are worthless. But the great part of Benson's wealth comes to him via the football team.  So there really  isn't anything he can offer the kids that would be fair.

Which is why the NFL rejected the most recent settlement proposal.  Benson was, essentially, trying to pay for the Saints with the Saints.

Recent court filings show the NFL's finance rules won't allow Benson to use his personal wealth — including the controlling, voting stock in the Saints — to back the proposed promissory notes. Under that kind of a deal, the trusts could move to seize Benson's personal assets, including the controlling stock, if Benson were to default on the notes.

Turns out the NFL frowns on "Loomis math." And who can blame them? Their profits are based on collecting obscene sums in television advertising revenue while bullying state and local governments around the country into subsidizing the bulk of their costs.  There are a few other businesses that compare that. But Tom Benson only owns shares in one.

Cross training

Sometimes, in this state, the Treasurer, or Attorney General, or the chair of some legislative committee will try and play Governor for a stretch. It only seems fair that the Governor should get to play Attorney General a little bit in return.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said he plans to sue Attorney General Jeff Landry for blocking state legal contracts over language meant to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace.

Edwards announced the legal challenge Friday (Sept. 30), following a meeting with Landry in which the two officials were unable to reach agreement on whether state contracts should include language that protects LGBT workers.

"I believe he is on the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of history," Edwards said in a press conference.

Landry has rejected at least three dozen legal contracts for a variety of state government agencies because they include language preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

It's early but

The weather sort of hinted at maybe wanting to be fall eventually. So we made gumbo just to try and help it along. That's chicken, andouille, and a pint of oysters which goes really well with a smoky sausage.



Anyway, it will probably be 90 degrees again next week but that can't really hurt us anymore. Not this year.

Looks like Joe Alleva wants to call the plays

Thanks for the advice, buddy.

As for offensive change, Alleva understands that LSU might run similar or the same plays on Saturday against Missouri, but playcalling is what he's watching. University leaders fired Miles, along with offensive coordinator Cam Cameron, on Sunday. Steve Ensminger, previously the tight ends coach, is the interim offensive coordinator.

"Steve Ensminger will use a lot of the same plays, but plays are when you call them," Alleva said. "If you call play-action pass on first down, maybe it has a chance to succeed. Third-and-1 and you call play-action pass, it has a chance to succeed."

Football is pretty simple, really. We sure to pay these guys a lot of money to sit around and hit the "Ask Madden" button.

Losing pace

The mayor's office worked hard to put a positive spin on these 2000 affordable housing "opportunities" but that's not really the point of this report.  The point is to remindividual us that it's not enough.

Even as the city works to address the shortage of affordable housing, the percentage of people who spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent ticked up by almost 3 points in 2015. That means housing advocates need to look closely at the net amount of affordable housing that is available, not just the extra units the city helped bring online this year.

Such a large increase in affordable housing comes at a cost. The city allocated about $17.3 million for housing programs in 2016; Morris said she is hoping for more funding next year.

“That’s another reason why the report card is timed the way that it is, so the community can go into budget season understanding what needs to be prioritized,” she said. Landrieu will present his proposed 2017 budget in mid-October.

Housing is becoming less affordable. It's not time to stop and congratulate anybody.

See that wasn't so hard

Looks like they figured out how to fund relief efforts in Flint and in Louisiana without having to burn the whole country down after all.

Negotiations resulted in the Senate attaching $220 million for Flint on an unrelated water infrastructure bill that it sent to the House last week. The lower chamber, Scalise said, plans to authorize $170 million in aid to Flint with the expectation that details will be hammered out in a congressional conference after the Nov. 8 election.

"I am convinced there is going to be help for Flint in the lame-duck (session). They've been waiting for help, they deserve help and I'm very happy it's going to come," Reid said.

The funding bill also includes emergency funding to fight the Zika virus.

Louisiana officials have described the $500 million as a "down payment" to help the thousands of residents and businesses wiped out by the devastating mid-August floods. Gov. John Bel Edwards has estimated damage to total as much as $8.7 billion. Thirteen people lost their lives and FEMA has received thousands of applications for emergency aid.

The "down payment," it is hoped by the governor, will be a first step toward an eventual $2.6 billion package. I'm still pretty skeptical as whether that will be enough in any case.  But let's keep our fingers crossed, for now, that we even get that much.

Can Governor Landry please leave us alone?

Fake Governor Landry is busy making policy happen.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has blocked at least 37 state government legal contracts because they include language meant to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace, according to state documents and interviews with state officials.

The contracts affect legal issues surrounding the state's ports, potential medical malpractice awards for patients and oversight of state bonds, among others, according to a review of documents and interviews with the agencies involved.

The Louisiana Division of Administration -- part of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration -- said it has tracked at least 26 contracts with private lawyers for a variety of services that Landry rejected because of the nondiscrimination clause. The Department of Insurance -- which is run by Republican Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon -- submitted 11 legal contracts the attorney general has also blocked because of the nondiscrimination language.

Through the lobbying efforts of Actual Governor Edwards, New Orleans was recently awarded the right to host the 2017 NBA All Star Game originally set to be held in Charlotte.  The game had to be moved in protest of the State of North Carolina's official intolerance toward LGBT persons. Is Governor Landry trying to undo Governor Edwards's work now? Sure looks like it.

Meanwhile, Landry was in Washington D.C. this week. Here's what he's up to there. 

Attorney General Jeff Landry took his crusade against New Orleans' so-called "sanctuary city" policing policy to Capitol Hill Tuesday (Sept. 27), accusing Mayor Mitch Landrieu of turning the metropolitan area into a "magnet" for undocumented immigrants.

"Sanctuary policies not only jeopardize the ability to protect our citizens, but they also allow illegals to commit crimes then roam free in our communities," Landry, a former Republican congressman, told a GOP-led House committee on border security.

Landrieu, a Democrat, dismissed Landry's reproach as a political stunt.

"This waste of public time and money by Attorney General Landry to put on a political show in Washington, D.C. is shameful," Landrieu communications director Tyronne Walker said in a statement. "While Landry was grandstanding this morning, the NOPD was hard at work keeping our streets safe and ensuring our police department advances non-discriminatory policing."

Why does Governor Landry hate New Orleans so much? And what can we do to make him leave us alone?  Maybe we should build some kind of wall. 

This land is our land

These guys think it's their land but the judges do not sound convinced.

On the question of whether doing maintenance work on the statues gives the monument supporters some kind of legal ownership, Higginson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, asked repeatedly if there is any precedent for using the legal doctrine underlying that argument in that manner. The judges seemed unconvinced by Jones' replies.

"You talked about exploring legal theories, but it sounds very much like you don't know one, and I don't hear one," said Higginbotham, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan.

It's possible the judges could still leave the injunction in place although it doesn't sound like they are leaning that way.  If they do, it could be another year before the monuments come down. 

Nobody actually lives at Phyllis Landrieu's house

Might be some clue as to why the mayor insisted we reconsider "whole home" rental restrictions.

For just $750 a night, you can stay at Phyllis Landrieu's house on St. Charles Avenue. The 3200-square-foot house sleeps 14 people in four bedrooms, according to a listing on the short-term rental website Airbnb.com.

Unless it's a bed-and-breakfast operation, renting out a home for less than 30 days is illegal across New Orleans. The standard is 60 days in the French Quarter, though the city has seldom enforced the zoning law that bars the practice.

Landrieu, a former Orleans Parish School Board member and Mayor Mitch Landrieu's aunt, doesn't occupy the house. She received approval earlier this year to demolish it and another building next door to make way for a 10-unit condo building. As it operates now, her listing would be illegal under proposed regulations the City Council will consider next week.

Or it might be incidental. But, certainly, ten $750 per night vacation rentals are better than one.  City Council takes up the issue October 6. 

'Treppin' tripe

CNBC asks us to swallow quite a load of pig guts in this story about how hot dogs saved Freret St.

While paying a little extra for a storefront in an established neighborhood can be justified, other times an ambitious business owner might gamble on a neighborhood's potential.

For New Orleans native Constantine Georges, a former federal prosecutor who served for 22 years, the idea to open a hot dog stand was already a gamble, but perhaps even more so considering the location he settled on in 2011: a 475-square-foot shack in a traditionally economically depressed New Orleans neighborhood on Freret Street.

Oookayy.. sure. And it helps also when the city is investing federal community development block grant money in upgrading the streets, sidewalks and landscaping. It also helps when the area is the focus of a Commercial Corridor Revitalization Program designed to combine grant money, tax credits, and special planning consideration in order to help promote new businesses just like your stupid hot dog stand.  And, hey, that's pretty nice.  There's a lot of good stuff on Freret Street now.  But it didn't happen because Constantine Georges took a courageous gamble. He just happened to be in position to reap the benefits of it.

It's just like every election then

Who "won" the first Presidential debate? How does one even judge? Do we just tally up the lies?  Because something tells me that must have been beside the point.  Are we supposed to microanalyze the stagecraft?  What did the swaying mean? How about all that sniffing? What are we supposed to be looking for here?

I've read lots of cheering from Hillary fans ecstatic over their candidate's performance. But they've spent so much time and energy convincing themselves that she is actually in danger of losing the election (she isn't) that they're ready to celebrate any non-horrible news as though they'd just won the SuperBowl.  I've also read where Michael Moore is very angry because he thinks "Trump won" and that is very bad because he has also convinced himself that Hillary is in danger of losing the election. (She isn't.) And of course there's #Trumpwon Twitter which.. well.... whatever with that. Most likely this debate was a push. Both candidates communicated the message they wanted to the audience they had zeroed in on in the particular language each speaks.

Objectively speaking they both were dishonest. This doesn't mean "both sides" lied in the same way, though. Clinton's dishonesty is the boring type fundamental to most candidates. She merely bends her interpretation of a somewhat fact-based slate of statements to suit her purposes. She sounded stern but statesmanlike when she agreed with Trump about using the terror watch list to restrict gun sales. She was telling the truth. But this is actually a horrible policy.  Since Democrats have already demonstrated a blind willingness to get behind it for political stunting purposes this year, though, it's a safe card for her to play.  She also appeared to agree with Trump when she told us "I happen to support" tax repatriation.  Here's what that means for people like, say, Apple's Tim Cook.

Translated into plainer English, this means Cook believes that Corporate America’s longterm plan to hold the U.S. for ransom will in fact come to fruition next year.

U.S. corporations have by now stashed over $2.1 trillion in profits overseas (including Apple’s $181 billion), thereby starving the U.S. of revenue we could use to repair our collapsing infrastructure. What they want is for Americans to get so desperate that Congress is willing to deeply slash the corporate tax rate for “repatriated” money.

This will deliver a one-time jolt of tax revenue, at the cost of sending the message that everyone who possibly can should use tax avoidance schemes like Apple’s in the future.

Cook is right to be optimistic: Hillary Clinton has hinted that she’ll push for exactly this in her first 100 days in office, while Donald Trump has said explicitly that he wants to make it happen.

Moreover, in the interview Cook also notes he’s gotten advice on how to handle this issue from both Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Bill Clinton.

Hillary partisans scoffed at Trump for answering charges that he is a tax cheat with the one-liner, "That makes me smart." But Hillary Clinton's policy will essentially validate his assertion.  Similarly, Trump sounded pretty crass when, criticizing US exit strategy post-Iraq, he said, "We should have taken the oil!" But this was also exactly the policy Hillary's adviser Neera Tanden was pushing when she wrote in an email that Libya should pay us in oil revenue for the privilege of having been bombed by us. In these instances, the two candidates were espousing strikingly similar policies. Only Hillary actually appeared to know what she was talking about. Make what you will of that.

Hillary doesn't lie quite the way Trump does, of course. Trump's rhetoric clearly exists on a different plane of reality.  But just because Trump says facts wrong doesn't mean he does poorly with his audience. Voters aren't attracted to Trump because they want to see someone get all the answers right. Take for example Trump's comments about "the cyber"and "400 pound hackers." This drew derision from people who prefer a more precise, informed language. But it will play fine with the (massive, by the way) NCIS audience who are used to seeing some vaguely defined nerd stuff catch another criminal every week. These people don't want to hear about the details of international espionage. What they want is someone who will sneer on their behalf at what's bothering them regardless of facts they only tangentially care about.  Trump did plenty of this. And it's why he may have held his own.

Trump can say ridiculous things all night and still accomplish his aim if the result is the other side looking exasperated with him. If his bullshit launches another 500 Samantha Bee and John Oliver monologues, he's all the better for it.  Notice also that, according to Trump in this debate, Howard Stern and Sean Hannity are the keepers of our nation's essential facts anyway. He knows his people and the language they speak.

All of which brings us to  this Jay Rosen article about the contrast between the kind of campaign the establishment press is trying to cover and the "asymmetry" of the campaign we're actually seeing. Sorry about the long quote. It's a long article.

I made this argument in the Washington Post in July. Campaign coverage is a contraption that only works if the candidates behave in certain expected ways. Up to now, they always did. But Trump violates many of these expectations. For example:

Imagine a candidate who wants to increase public confusion about where he stands on things so that voters give up on trying to stay informed and instead vote with raw emotion. Under those conditions, does asking “Where do you stand, sir?” serve the goals of journalism, or does it enlist the interviewer in the candidate’s chaotic plan?

Here’s a more granular example. Up to now campaigns for major party nominees tried to make sure that what the campaign was saying (and the campaign manager, the running mate, the chair as titular head…) reflected what the candidate was saying. If the campaign put out a message contradicted by the candidate, that was a problem. Why? Because mixed messaging confuses the voters and makes the campaign look dumb. Therefore an interview with the campaign manager, the running mate, or some other surrogate was a window into the candidate’s thinking. It had journalistic value for that reason.

The Trump campaign breaks this practice. If Donald Trump calls NBC’s Lester Holt a Democrat (in fact he’s a registered Republican) and attacks him as part of an unfair system, Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is later free to say that Holt is a “respected, brilliant newsman” who will do a great job as moderator of the first debate. An on-the-ball journalist can ask: hey, which is it? But that’s a practice with a premise. The premise is that a presidential campaign wants to put out a consistent message to avoid confusing people, and to deny journalists a “gotcha” moment. What if that premise is false? The rationale for interviewing the campaign manager, the running mate, or some other surrogate collapses. They say one thing, the candidate says something else and the confusion is not considered a problem. It may even be a plus.

Again and again with Trump, journalists find themselves in this position: persisting with familiar practices that don’t really make sense because the premise behind them has collapsed— collapsed for one candidate, but not the other. And remember: asymmetry fries the circuits of the mainstream press.

I think this is accurate. But, much more importantly, we need to understand that it is nothing new.  In fact this is exactly Karl Rove's "reality based community" dissertation put into practice yet again.  Here's a refresher on that, just for comparison's sake. The "aide" quoted in this 2004 article has since been revealed as Rove.

I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

In other words, for all the novelty of having an actual reality TV star as one of the candidates, the dynamics of this election are actually just like every other election in recent memory.  The Democrat is a corrupt dishonest elitist. The Republican is a contemptuous reactionary thug. And the mainstream press apparatus is ill equipped to keep up with either of them.  At least we still have the internet. It's also useless, of course. But it does have Debbie Harry.

Reminder: The case against removing monuments is stupid

The Fifth Circuit is hearing the appeal today. This is a good time to recall that the "philanthropists" who clean the monuments out of the goodness of their hearts are saying they think this means they own the public property now.

The plaintiffs - four historical organizations - have advanced many arguments; among them, that their constitutional rights had been violated by the process for removal, the monuments were protected by historic preservation laws, by maintaining the monuments over the years they've gained recognizable property interest in them and that removing the monuments could irreparably harm them. They're asking the appeals court to grant them an injunction that would remain in effect throughout the litigation - meaning the city can't remove the monuments for months or years.

#AllTheRecords

Congratulations to the Saints and Falcons for killing Monday Night Football. 

In fact, if the numbers hold up, the game could be the least-watched in "MNF" history, according to The Washington Post, as well as the least-watched NFL game this season. ESPN said final numbers were expected later Tuesday.

I mean, sure, there was a debate on opposite. But people can watch those on replay. (It's what I did, anyway.)  But this Saints team is all about setting records. Let's hope this one holds up too. 

Judge checks Lusher's privilege

You guys have to play by the same rules everyone else does. 

Lusher and Lake Forest argued that they were guaranteed a certain amount of money per student, and that School Board had violated their contracts.

Milazzo disagreed. In order to receive a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs must show they are likely to prevail on the merits of the case. "This court ... finds it unlikely that plaintiffs will succeed in proving that Act 467 substantially impairs the operating agreements," she wrote.

"It is obvious to this Court that there was no mutual intent of the parties to guarantee plaintiffs funding," she said, calling the testimony "unequivocal." In fact, the School Board "refused to agree to the addition of language guaranteeing any level of funding."

As long as we're going let charter operators feed themselves off of public money, they don't get to pretend they exist in a world apart from the public school system. It's really that simple. 

Water water everywhere...

Water everywhere is the problem in Louisiana. Not a drop of it to drink is the problem in Flint, Michigan.  It's all one unbroken sea of trouble in Washington today where the Senate is voting on the continuing resolution that will keep the government operating and, more importantly, could fund efforts to deal with both issues. But.. well...

On Tuesday, both sides still maintained that the other was "playing politics" by holding up a stop-gap funding measure that would prevent a government shutdown on Sept. 30. The bill is scheduled to be taken up for a procedural motion on the Senate Tuesday afternoon, but Democrats and Republicans continued to signal that no consensus had been reached Tuesday morning.

And, just as I'm typing this, it looks like the latest attempt to pass something has failed.

Senate CR with #laflood is blocked (unable to get 60 votes) after Dems say they won't vote for bill that includes #laflood but not Flint.

— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) September 27, 2016

Ideally we would find the money to deal with both of these humanitarian crises. But.. well...

Nobody actually lives here

Weird thing about this story is it doesn't tell us what the "especially disrupting incident in Treme" actually was.

NEW ORLEANS -- Some residents feel short-term rentals are changing their communities and they want it to stop.

After an especially disrupting incident in Treme over the weekend, neighbors say they’ve had enough of AirBnB takeovers.

"I think it's sad,” full-time resident Josh Newton said. “People partying, not respecting the people who live here."

Josh Newton lives and works in Treme. While he acknowledges tourists are bringing money to a historically lower income neighborhood, he wishes visitors would make a bigger effort to respect the neighborhood.

"It's not that people have a problem with tourists coming here, it's people have a problem with tourists just taking what they want and beyond that not even showing basic respect to the people who live here and the people who produce the culture that brought these people here,” Newton said.

Full-time residents worry that thanks to short term rentals, soon there'll be no permanent residents living on the street.

I did read via a friend on the Parallel Internet that some Airbnb folk flashed a passing second line in Treme recently as though it were a Girls Gone Wild shoot or something and received a stern talking to from the neighbors over it. Not sure if that's the incident in question. Maybe I have to watch the video.. in which case... please just write what's in the story, WWL.  (UPDATE: Okay I watched it. Yes, that's the incident they're talking about)

Anyway there was also a protest at City Hall this morning.  I noticed it involved props.

City Council members are depicted in helmets at short term rental demonstration pic.twitter.com/LNpovRUOVt

— Kevin Litten (@kevinlitten) September 27, 2016

I think some of that artwork might come from one of these recent Krewe D'Etat floats but, again, I'm not positive.

From 2015, a gentrification themed float.



And from this year, there was a float specifically about Airbnb.



I don't see the councilmembers in my photos. But the style is similar. Does anybody know?

City Council is scheduled to take up short term rental regulations at its October 6th meeting.