Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Two Items in the Last Week's News

Didn't Couhig bring this subject up in one of the debates? It occurred during one of the exchanges where all the candidates could speak freely, so the topic changed quickly. As I recall, Couhig said that the S&WB was wasting about 2/3 of the water that it pumped. Couhig brought it up in the context of resettling the entire city. Couhig seemed to be using it as an argument for keeping the areas east of the canal closed; he seemed to think that most of the waste was occurring in the miles of pipe that water had to go through to get to those areas. Don't know whether the other candidates changed the subject because wasted water seemed to wonkish, or whether the idea of cutting off water to those areas seemed to controversial. Whichever it was, Couhig never pursued the topic. That angle hasn't come up in the recent reporting on the subject.* Not to worry, since Couhig's self-described job is to make the workings of city government within 100 days, we'll certainly know soon enough how large a factor that is in the Water Board's over $80,000 a day deficit (that works out to about $30M a year, the $50M figure quoted is apparently the market value of the lost water--I can't imagine that FEMA would pay for that). I can't be the only blogger thinking that he meant to mention it at the time. If anybody did mention it and I missed it, sorry about that. Nothing wrong with tooting your own horn--I'd certainly be shameless enough to. Well, I've gotten at least a little better about that.

In the too little, too late (alternate link) department, shouldn't Jack Kent Jr. and Marine Shale (scroll down to MSP behind the scenes) be fined that much just for their role in giving us Edwards/Duke and for their general all around thuggery. Years later, two things come to mind when I think of Marine Shale. The first is some truly infuriating film footage of Marine Shale thugs beating up--beating up isn't quite the correct term when two-by-fours and baseball bats are involved-- a group of peaceful environmental protesters. I believe that particular incident took place in the mid-eighties.

The second is the barrage of attack ads (paid for by Jack Kent Jr. and MSP) against Roemer that aired in the closing days of the 1991 election. If there's ever been a bigger barrage of third party campaign spending at the state level, I'm unaware of it. Don't know if other local bloggers have brought this up, but the recent election wasn't the first time that Republican business leaders helped elect a Democrat with a bad national reputation. It wasn't just MSP, though LABI remained neutral, the Louisiana Chemical Association also waged a virtual war against the Roemer administration. Though LABI was neutral in that election, the legacy of Roemer's battles with the LCA, can be seen in it's current legislative agenda. It's always worth remembering that LABI has its own definition of what exactly is pro-business or anti-business.

*It's probably no longer relevant, but it is interesting that everybody, including Couhig, seemed to decide that it was a taboo subject. I'm certainly not advocating turning off water service to people in New Orleans East, but it does underscore something that bloggers emphasized to a far greater degree than reporters in the election-- that city finances should have been as big a part of any resettlement discussion as flood protection.

Comments:
But those commercials were sooo classic. "Buddy Roemer. He's the problem" is still a catch phrase between my dad and myself. Ahh the bad old days!
 
WELL,WHOMEVER READ THIS BE IN MORGAN CITY ON JULY 19TH 2006 AT 7:00 P.M TO HEAR AND SEE A REPORT THE TRUTH ABOUT JACK KENT KILLER COMPANY MSP AND WHO HELP THEM TO HIDE THE ILLNESS OF THEIR WORKERS, YOU WILL NOT WANT TO MISS THIS.THE KIDS THAT WAS GETTING CANCER FROM ALL THE POLLUTED EMISSIONS IS TRUTH,THEY DID THEIR DIRTY WORK AT NIGHTIME DEQ WAS NEVER THEIR AT NIGHT.THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS.
 
Anonymous, thanks for the comment. Can you give any more details?
 
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