MOLDY CITY

The Giant Sucking Sound of History Disappearing

2011-12-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

I won't have a chance to write a post before the final episode of CSPAN's The Contenders airs tomorrow night, so I'll just copy an email that I sent a friend a couple of weeks ago:

Hey C..,

I saw this guy on TV back in Sept when the 3rd medicine was really wiping me out. I saw him a few times, and he always said something like:

Mr. Smith said he perceived "The Contenders" to be an alternative to the constant coverage of the current Republican primary campaign, but relevant to the coverage too. Take Mr. Perot, for instance. "Perot put the deficit on the agenda in a way that made it virtually impossible for whoever won to avoid doing something about it," he said. New York Times Sept. 8, 2011

He also implied that Perot gave the election to Clinton, which seems plausible, perhaps likely (to most people), but isn't backed by polling data. He never got challenged on either point. I don't really care about the election part, except or the fact it's a Republican talking point to try make Conservative Republicanism seem like the mainstream. If you look at the guy's bio, you'll see that he's a Repub at a school (a state school) that conservatives and libertarians are taking over.

Anyway, you were a Perot supporter, didn't he talk about two deficits? In fact, didn't he talk about the trade deficit at least much as, probably more than, the budget deficit? I'd have a lot more respect for Tea Party supporters if people who are old enough to remember when there was concern about two deficits, showed concern for both deficits.

The rest of the email was personal, but of course the answer was yes, Perot was at least as concerned about the trade deficit as the federal budget deficit. My memory is that from 1980 (the first election in which I was old enough to vote) until some point in the 1990's* there was roughly equal concern over both deficits, but I'll have more on that in another post.

I can't call Richard Norton Smith a lazy researcher with a biased memory or a partisan hack until tomorrow night's episode airs and I can see how much attention he pays to Perot's concern with both deficits, but the September promos all left out the same thing, and I thought I heard a giant sucking sound.

*Concern over trade imbalances possibly started fading with 1985 Plaza Accord, but I don't think it completely disappeared from the sphere of legitimate discourse until the passage of NAFTA divided the Democratic Party and globalization protesters were marginalized as kooks in the Nineties.

Theme Song of the Professional Center-Left

2011-11-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

I guess some thoughts are obvious, but hearing people who can't even admit that they were duped when they joined the Obama Fan Club express scorn, or even just skepticism, toward people who at least understand that much*...

*Certainly not a description of everybody involved in OWS, but a partial description of a sizable percentage.

Suicides in China, unemployment in Silicon Valley

2011-08-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

In July of 2010, Andy Grove wrote a commentary for Business Week titled "How to make an American job (before it's too late)." The article created a stir last year, but seems to have been totally forgotten a year later, so I'd recommend that you read (or re-read) the whole thing.*

However, due to recent events, I'm reminded of a particular passage in the article:

Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000, lower than it was before the first PC, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, an effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers.

The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn. The company's revenues last year were $62 billion, larger than Apple or Intel. Foxconn employs more than 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard.

Until a recent spate of suicides at Foxconn's giant factory complex in Shenzhen, China, few Americans had heard of the company. But most know the products it makes: computers for Dell and Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, cellphones, Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, Intel motherboards and countless other familiar gadgets.

Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple's products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology and other U.S. tech companies.

Everybody's upset about Steve Jobs' illness; I'm more upset about lives destroyed in China and livelihoods ruined in America.

*Alternate one page link that might be somewhat abbreviated.

Huh?

2011-06-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

From The New York Review of Books:

Cassandra Among the Banksters
June 23, 2011
Benjamin M. Friedman

The banksters, as some people have taken to calling them, have had a mixed run lately.1
...
1 I first encountered the word in John Lanchester's I.O.U. (Simon and Schuster, 2010).

Is he serious? A writer for the New York Review, a professor of Political Economy at Harvard, first encountered the word "bankster" in a book that was published in 2010. Is that possible?

On the other hand:

The National Journal reports:

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who has run for president before, did little to shake his image as a fringe candidate by talking too fast and dropping obscure subjects like “Keynesian bubble" and “monetary policy" into the conversation.

Is it possible that "Washington's premier source of nonpartisan insight on politics and policy" considers "monetary policy" an obscure subject?

I know, if you read blogs, you've seen that kind of thing pointed out a zillion on the Internet, but sometimes the unintentional self-parody is impossible to ignore.

I hate typed sighs

2011-05-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

But I exhaled audibly when I read James Gill's column today:

So many voters had pegged Ray Nagin for a doofus by 2006 that he could barely raise a dollar for his re-election campaign.
...
There can be little doubt that we'd all have been better off had Nagin lost. It is highly unlikely, for instance, that Landrieu would have wrecked Armstrong Park by entrusting its renovation to a company owned by a felon and staffed by incompetents. Get rid of Nagin, the concrete gets poured properly and Satchmo's statue keeps all his toes.
If Meffert and St. Pierre did push Nagin over the top in that election, they bear a more terrible responsibility than one ruined park. Without Nagin, there would have been no Ed Blakely to screw up the Katrina recovery.
...
Meffert and St. Pierre were cock-a-hoop when Nagin was re-elected, but they must now rue the day. They could never have dug themselves into this deep a hole if we hadn't had a doofus for mayor.

James Gill wishes Nagin hadn't been re-elected, but "doofus" is the worst name he can call Nagin -- he still can't bring himself to question Nagin's integrity. I guess the poor doofus was just led astray by the suave, smooth-talking Greg Meffert.

One problem with that theory is that we've heard it before. In early 2005, the local press began to question Nagin's integrity, but quickly decided he had been taken advantage of by Charles Rice and his "Billy Carter brother-in-law". Billboard Ben isn't the only forgotten man in this story.

At any rate, prior to Katrina, the local press corps, including James Gill, knew that there had been ethical lapses within the Nagin Administration but somehow decided that Nagin was not personally involved. After Katina, questions about Nagin's personal integrity were, for some reason, off limits, and it would be at least a couple of years before local journalists even questioned the integrity of Nagin's associates.

How did that doofus get re-elected?

Nothing that a rich conservative says is too much for Joe Kernan

2011-04-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

The really venomous stuff starts about seven minutes in. Notice how strongly Kernan agrees with Faber when it gets to be a little too much for Becky Quick. If I understood Faber correctly, the hard-working rich are punishing the lazy, illiterate poor by exporting the jobs that they're too lazy to do.

I'll bet on the computer

2011-02-15T15:55:00.000-08:00

I didn’t watch Jeopardy yesterday, but I suspect that one human would have a better chance against two computers than two humans would have against one computer. Actually, I think that having IBM's Watson palying one game against Brad Rutter and one against Ken Jennings would be a better test than having the computer play two games against both. I'll expalin why after today's match.

An obvious point and a late New Year's resolution

2011-01-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

An obvious point, that almost never gets mentioned in discussions about Social Security and deficit reduction, is that the manufacturing work decreased dramatically between the early Nineteenth Century and the end of World War II, but has barely changed since 1950. Link

It doesn't take much thought to figure out why Americans were able to work fewer hours in 1950 than in 1830 -- technological advances and increased productivity. So, why has the work week remained basically unchanged through roughly sixty years of great technological advances and greatly increased productivity? One reason would be that people are living longer and enjoying longer retirements. Increased productivity prior to World War II led to greater leisure relatively early in life, increased productivity since WWII has led to more leisure in our later years.

I feel I'm stating the obvious, but I constantly come across people like George Will writing things like:

In 1935, when Congress enacted Social Security, protracted retirement was a luxury enjoyed by a tiny sliver of the population. Back then, Congress did its arithmetic ruthlessly: When it set the retirement age at 65, the life expectancy of an adult American male was 65. If in 1935 Congress had indexed the retirement age to life expectancy, today's retirement age would be 75.

So, I can't help but wonder why pundits like Will never mention technological advances, increased productivity and the static length of the work week when discussing retirement age.

I can only come up with two possible reasons. Either, they're too stupid or too lazy to think for themselves, or they think you are.

Unless anybody can come up with another reason, my late New Year's resolution is to point out that any politician or political pundit who discusses the retirement age without mentioning the unchanged length of the work week after decades of technological change is either a fool or thinks you're one. I hope that resolution doesn't apply to the president.

I'm also starting to think the same thing about the use of generational labels in political discussions, especially discussions of Social Security, but I'll have to turn this comment into a full length post or two to explain why. I do recommend the Archein post where I made the comment, even though it's a few months old and I think the author took a wrong turn at the end.

8 X 12 = 96

2010-12-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

But, it takes 120 credit hours to earn an undergraduate degree from a school in the LSU system. Since I consider the use of technically true facts to give a misleading impression to be a form of bullshit, I'd have to say that John Lombardi is an unprincipled spreader of bullshit. From today's Times Picayune:

The most costly and significant change would be to raise $75 million a year by charging undergraduate students for each academic credit hour. Currently, most state colleges charge a fixed tuition for "full-time enrollment" of 12 credit hours per semester. Students that cram more credit hours into a semester pay the same tuition as those who only take 12, meaning the extra classes are essentially free.

According to Board of Regents data, Louisiana college students in fall 2009 enrolled in 301,724 credit hours above the 12-hour level, or the equivalent of more than 25,000 full-time students who aren't paying any tuition at all.

15 seems like the relevant number to me: two semesters ina year, four year program, so 120/8 = 15. If the facts are on your side, you shouldn't need to engage in exaggeration or bullshit.

Both lies and bullshit can either be true or false but bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and in general are unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of their statements (it is because of this that Frankfurt concedes that "the bullshitter is faking things", but that "this does not necessarily mean he gets them wrong"). While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are" link

Do they really hate Houston that much in West Texas?

2010-11-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

So, Rick Perry (Sorry, Daily Show clip would not embed correctly) thinks that Washington began to "go off the rails" about a century ago. He might be correct:

•1910--A group of Houston businessmen headed by the Houston Chamber of Commerce proposes to Congress--and Congress accepts--a novel plan to split ship channel development costs between Houston and the federal government.

Of course, the federal's government's role in the development of Houston's economy goes back more than a century and continues to this day, but Rick Perry is from West Texas and might not be aware of this.

Here in Louisiana, when I watched six candidates for the U.S. Senate take part in an election debate, I thought that they sounded like six ordinary, middle class guys. It was only when I thought about what they actually said that I realized that five of the candidates did not have fathers or grandfathers who first went to college or first bought a house with the help of the G.I. Bill -- none of their families needed any help from the federal government to achieve the American dream. Boy, I must have been listening to five blue-blooded patricians discuss politics and policy and I didn't even realize it.

Yes, I listened to Perry's interview and I know he was discussing the income tax. First off, I think that's crazy. Secondly, I was making a joke to help illustrate the fact that the "federal government bad/market good" bumper sticker that dominates American political debate is based on willful historical ignorance. This will all be discussed in greater detail in my soon to be published book: Hedgehog Nation: High Concept Politics and the Destruction of the American Middle Class.

Tom Wolfe? I was thinking Charles Dickens.

2010-11-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

Because Jeffrey, if America's new aristos can even fuck over physicians with the connivance of state authorities, it's much more reminiscent of the Marquis St. Evrémonde and what happened to Alexandre Manette than of Sherman McCoy. I know, that's a little pretentious, and we're not supposed to get mad at rich people, but look at the D.A.'s reason for declining to prosecute:

"Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession," according to District Attorney Mark Hurlbert.

Yeah, right.

BTW, when I did a Google search to make sure that I remembered Sherman McCoy's name correctly, I came across a quaint little piece about Wall Street by Michael Lewis, of all people.

Also, the driver's attorneys claim the he may have sleep apnea, but I'd be willing to bet that he was calling or texting somebody when he swerved and hit the cyclist. At any rate, we could debate just how dangerous using a cell phone while driving really is for months without getting anywhere, but I don't know how anybody could object to examining cell phone records to help assess liability in the case of serious accidents. Not that it would necessarily prove anything in the Vail incident, but if I were the victim of what somebody claimed was his newly discovered sleep apnea, I'd certainly demand that he rule out every other possibility before I accepted him at his word.

Easy reference quote, Thomas Frank edition

2010-11-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

Time was, the only place a guy could expound the mumbo jumbo of the free market was in the country club locker room or the pages of Reader's Digest. Spout off about it anywhere else and you'd be taken for a Bircher or some new strain of Jehovah's Witness. After all, in the America of 1968, when the great backlash began, the average citizen, whether housewife or hardhat or salary-man, still had an all-too-vivid recollection of the Depression. Not to mention a fairly clear understanding of what social class was all about. Pushing laissez-faire ideology back then had all the prestige and credibility of hosting a Tupperware party.

But thirty-odd years of culture war have changed all that. Mention "elites" these days and nobody thinks of factory owners or gated-community dwellers. Instead they assume that what you're mad as hell about is the liberal media, or the pro-criminal judiciary, or the tenured radicals, or the know-it-all bureaucrats.

For the guys down at the country club all these inverted forms of class war worked spectacularly well.
The God that Sucked

Easy reference quote, James Lardner (via Yves Smith) edition

2010-11-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

To gain their political ends, the robber barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age were content with corrupting officials and buying elections. Their modern counterparts have taken things a big step further, erecting a loose network of think tanks, corporate spokespeople, and friendly press commentators to shape the way Americans think about the economy.... the new communications apparatus wants us to believe that our economic wellbeing depends almost entirely on the so-called free market - a euphemism for letting the private sector set its own rules. The success of this great effort can be measured in the remarkable fact that, despite the corporate scandals and the social damage that these authors explore; despite three decades of deregulation and privatization and tax-and-benefit-slashing with, as the clearest single result, the relentless rise of economic inequality to levels so extreme that since 2001 "the economy" has racked up five straight years of impressive growth without producing any measurable income gains for most Americans - even now, discussions of solutions or alternatives can be stopped almost dead in their tracks by mention of the word government.

From the June 14, 2007 edition of The New York Review of Books. Paywall protected but quoted in detail by Yves Smith here and here.

Ten years older than Jack Benny

2010-11-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

Funny, I don't feel very old, but some of the things that I remember as if they happened yesterday, or just a couple of years ago, make me wonder.

Seems like only yesterday that most people realized what a mess the Republicans had made of the country. Actually, I was old enough to remember enough to know what would happen to that great new Democratic majority two years ago. Even if the point of this post wasn't particularly clear, I wasn't buying into the November 2008 optimism. If I had seen this Dark Wraith post written before the election, I'd have just given a link and a quote:

Better yet, John McCain should be the President when the house of cards that George built comes crashing down. In that event, McCain wouldn't have to go to Hell, he'd already be there.

Absent that happy ending, I suppose I'll have to content myself with a self-absorbed, messianic, vacuous rich-boy, globe-trotting Democrat taking the fall. In that event, maybe the Democrats will learn that turning their fortunes over to children in a nation of sick, vicious, cheating opponents and catastrophically failing circumstances isn't the answer.

I'm also old enough to remember the local press praising Ray Nagin for his handling of city finances. Doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but it must have been a totally different press corps than the city has today.

Worst person in New Orleans

2010-10-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Under US copyright law, the justification appears in Article I, Section 8 Clause 8 of the Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause. It empowers the United States Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation the purpose of copyright is twofold:

"To encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public."
link

Last year, New Orleanians rose up with one voice and beat back the mighty National Football League when it tried to assert ownership of their beloved Saints' signature slogan.

Turns out, maybe "Who Dat" belonged to a couple of guys in San Antonio all along.

Brothers Steve and Sal Monistere make no claim that they're owed royalties anytime someone chants the phrase, but they do say that when it's exploited for commercial purposes, they should get a cut.

The guys who started out as startup musicians, recording a "Who Dat?" song in 1983, say they were smart enough to immediately trademark the Saints-fan battle cry
...
"We never claimed to have invented the words; we only trademarked it," said Monistere, who divides his time between his native New Orleans and San Antonio.
link

Remember when Keith Olbermann used his "worst person" segment to single out assholes and greedheads instead of people he disagreed with politically? Occasionally, the old style "worst person" designation applies to people in the local news.

I had no idea

2010-10-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

Watching "Informed Sources" tonight, I found out that George Will is a blogger (I'm no longer interested in taking gratuitous shots at the media, but they were laying it on pretty thick tonight).

Wanted: liberals who know how to throw a 1-2 combination.

2010-10-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

On MSNBC tonight, both Keith and Rachel have reported on the Chamber of Commerce allegedly using money from foreign corporations to run partisan campaign ads. Don't get me wrong, it's an important story, but the Chamber's leaders aren't just whores. They're also hypocrites:

"Make no mistake: When the aftermath of congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen," wrote Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vice president in September 2008, who at the time pressed lawmakers before their vote on a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street.

A few months later, Congress faced a similar reckoning — whether to pass an $814 billion economic stimulus package consisting of about one-third tax breaks and two-thirds additional government spending. Again, Josten wrote to lawmakers: "The global economy is in uncharted and dangerous waters and inaction from Washington is not an option."

Fast forward to the present. The chamber is now spending millions of dollars on ads trying to elect candidates whose campaigns are based on opposing the very bank rescue and stimulus law it once supported.

Poor Brett Favre

2010-09-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Watching last year's NFC Cahampionship, I agreed with the announcer who you can hear saying that he thought the penalty shown at the beginning of this clip was a bad call.

Also, I really didn't get the call on McCray. I'm sure I could find a clip if I looked a little harder, but I'm still not up for putting that kind of time into blog posts. Jason Cole described the play just as I saw it:

The blows weren’t cheap, but they were hard and they were constant.

McCray’s hit was flagged in the first quarter came after Favre handed off and appeared to go for a block.

I guarantee you that if Mark Sanchez had taken that hit in the Jets playoff game, the announcers wouldn't have been talking about the vicious hit, they would have called it a rookie error. They would have made a few comments about the learning curve for a rookie QB and it would have been quickly forgotten. I defy any Viking fan to tell me otherwise.

Three things I saw yesterday

2010-08-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'll try to explain the reasons why I haven't been posting much lately tomorrow or the next day. There are a few reasons why the posting became less frequent a couple of years ago, but I had hoped to pick it up a notch after my vacation last month. Unfortunately, I'm recovering from a fairly serious accident, so that's been put on hold. I'm back at work, but sleeping's difficult, so I don't have the energy for much else. Like I said, I'll explain soon.

I think most Americans need to go back and reread The Jungle, and accounts of the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire and realize that the free market didn't make industrialization benefit most Americans. In fact, for decades, it was pretty shitty for most Americans. At least America had free land (stolen land, if you prefer) to give away; things were worse in Europe. Since it took government actions and union activities to make industrialization benefit most Americans, I really don't understand why so many people believe that globalization would be any different. Accordingly, I strongly disagree with at least one paragraph in Jack Sparrow's guest post in yesterday's "Naked Capitalism." But, I wholeheartedly agree with his analysis of what's happening to the U.S. economy.

Oddly enough, Jim Cramer agrees too. I know that asking you to listen to twelve minutes of Jim Cramer is asking a lot, but please play the clip you can find on this link. He puts a happy face on it, but he's really saying something quite radical (or something that would have been considered radical not too many years ago).

Despite the damage that multinational corporations are doing to the country, the liberals at the American Prospect want us to eschew populism. Isn't that mostly a straw man argument? Not completely, because some people are advocating that Democrats, or liberals, or progressives strike a more populist pose. But, don't you hear more people arguing that liberals and Democrats need to stop being afraid of being labeled populist and need to start taking positions on economic issues that Mort Zuckerman or Larry Kudlow would call "populist"?

Makes sense to me

2010-06-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

From The Oil Drum:

In spite of that, Many will argue for at least one more (relief)* well anyway, and I would probably fall into that camp. Wells are drilled all the time based on the chance for a big payout, and then never go into production. Hopefully another won't be needed, but the risk of not capping the well as soon as possible should be obvious to BP, and waiting until circumstances force the issue of another well will not go over well. In retrospect, they should have looked at the calendar (with the upcoming stormy season approaching), considered yet another unthinkable scenario regarding relief well success, and planned accordingly. In lieu of that happening several weeks ago, the time is now for BP to go above and beyond what they think is required. And with the deepwater drilling moratorium in place, many rigs are looking for something to do.

*added for clarification, David. I'll finally start posting again tonight, BTW.

What, still no fucking booming school?

2010-06-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

updated

You ever put two and two together and get...the impression that nobody in charge, and nobody who reports on anybody in charge, is bothering to put two and two together?

Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil. Boom must always be at an angle to the prevailing wind-wave action or surface current. Boom, at this angle, must always be layered in a fucking overlapped sort-of way with another string of boom. Boom must always divert oil to a catch basin or other container, from where it can be REMOVED FROM THE FUCKING AREA. Looks kinda involved, doesn't it? It is. But if fucking proper fucking booming is done properly, you can remove most, by far most of the oil from a shoreline and you can do it day after day, week after week, month after month. You can prevent most, by far most of the shoreline from ever being touched by more than a few transient molecules of oil. Done fucking properly, a week after the oil stops coming ashore, no one, man nor beast, can ever tell there has been oil anywhere near that shoreline.

In practice, there's a reason the best booming schools last weeks. Different types of shoreline, different shapes, require different configurations. Your numerous anchor points (for this spill those would be 1-yard cement blocks with tie-off buoys) need to be chosen so the boom-tenders (you) can adjust the ropes, slanting the booms this way and that to account for changes in wind and current. Booms are tended 24/7, by the way. BUT... just having learned what you've learned here today, DKos Boomer, you know enough of the CONCEPT to figure it out. You get it. You could go out there and watch how the ping-pong balls (your test-oil) glide along the boom. You could see where they miss the catch basins and you could adjust and re-configure and you could perform fucking proper fucking booming. By the third day of actual booming, no one on this planet would be better than you. So if you understand it, and all these production employees understand it (we're talking tens of thousands of people here), then why is most or all of the booming along the Gulf... being done wrong?

I don't normally take Daily Kos diarists seriously, but this guy Fishgrease really seems to know what he's fucking talking about, so you might want to go read his entire fucking diary from last month.

Then you might want to try to figure out why there are fucking rumors of fucking boaters moving fucking boom:

“We're getting reports of people in boats moving boom so they can get through,” said Terrebonne Public Safety Director Ralph Mitchell.

Public officials say recreational boaters and fishermen keep moving, cutting or running over boom that's been deployed to protect the parish.

Spill responders are asking for the public's help in monitoring boom along the Gulf Coast.

WTF? Shouldn't the people tending the boom 24/7 know for sure whether it's going on? Seems like somebody would if the boom were there for any useful reason.

Update: Silly me, I didn't take into count that even improperly used, ineffective boom has sociological value. Since a limited amount of boom clearly wouldn't go as far if laid out properly, useless boom is more useful than useful boom, sociologically speaking.

More update: Rachel Maddow pretty much comes out and says it -- they, fucking BP and/or the fucking federal government, are just throwing out impressive sounding amounts of fucking boom to fucking impress us. They're not fucking putting the fucking effort and fucking manpower into it to make it do any fucking good:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Tim Russert of our own

2010-05-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

Lewis Lapham on Tim Russert:

To an important personage Russert asked one or two faintly impertinent questions
...
the reply was of no interest to him, not worth his notice or further comment. He had
sprinkled his trademark salt, his work was done. The important personage was free to choose from a menu offering three forms of response—silence, spin, rancid lie. If silence, Russert moved on to another topic; if spin, he nodded wisely; if rancid lie, he swallowed it.

Embedding has been disabled on these two videos (alternate links) of Norman Robinson interviewing the heads of Richards Disposal and Metro Disposal, but he didn't ask any of the follow up questions that I would have asked.

Now read Bob Somerby

Yep, Russert can really be a bulldog when handed a story his cohort approves of. He pummeled Biden with six straight questions about Kerry’s deeply troubling vote. But when Miller attacked Kerry’s vote—two times—the bulldog crawled under his desk and died. According to Russert, his job on Meet the Press is to “learn everything you can about the guests and their positions and then take the other side on the air” (page 308). But somehow, Russert forgot “to take the other side” when Miller slammed Kerry’s troubling vote. Voters are hearing this “position” from every steeple. But Russert forgot to challenge it.
...
Tim hammered Biden with six straight questions on one single topic. With Miller, the bulldog wandered around, trying to find an old steak.

I didn't count, but on this clip (again, not embeddable), it sure seems like even more than six questions on one single topic. Norman Robinson asks absolutely no follow up questions of either Alvin Richards or Jimmie Woods, but several of James Perry. Tim Russert would be proud. I suppose we can at least infer that Helena Moreno was well-liked by her former colleagues at WDSU.

Glad I won't have to worry about sitting in the shade

2010-05-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

I was overjoyed this morning to see a crew trimming the branches of an oak tree next to Bayou St.John in the vicinity of Toulouse St. I assume they trimmed all the oaks along that small stretch, and that's a good thing. If you were thinking of skipping Bayou Boogaloo for fear that you might get stuck sitting in the cool shade on a comfortably sunny day, don't worry, the city's taken the proper steps to ensure that doesn't happen.

As a matter of fact, when our new mayor reorders the city's priorities, I hope he understands the great importance of protecting us from the menace of a return to pre-Katrina shade levels. I don't care what any bleeding heart, liberal tree-lovers say.

Why is the Obama administration going along with the information blackout?

2010-05-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Yves Smith

Now let us get to part 2: why is Team Obama enabling this nonsense? I come up with two possibilities:

1. Team Obama believes the BP BS

2. Obama does not want to look impotent. Revealing that the leak is really bad and not having a quick solution is an Obama PR disaster. Obama has to work through BP unless he can implement an action plan using only government resources or by working with another oil company with deep ocean expertise. Given the lead times for government contracting, this would take quite a while.

If the leak is as serious as I fear, this is environmental equivalent of the Iran hostage crisis. Team Obama recognizes this, and therefore wants to create the impression as long as possible that everything that could possibly be done is being done. Note that the Administration is behaving with BP exactly as it did vis as vis the banksters in early 2009: believing that the problem is too complex and scary for them to assert control, casting its lot in with the people who caused the problem in the first place (while calling them bad names often enough to create plausible deniability). And enabling BP’s coverup of how bad the leak means, as Obama did with the financial services industry, of having to support, or at least not undermine too much, its PR efforts.

I'll try to exlain why I haven't been blogging about the disaster tonight,not that Iexpect anyone to care much.

Teeming swamp life

2010-05-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I was in City Park, and not out in the swamps, when I saw a scene that kinda, sorta looked like this video today

Well, there were only three alligators and they weren't behaving quite that aggressively. I also didn't hear any music that had me looking for Mohicans or mad British actors, for that matter. I've seen alligators in that part of the park before, the lagoon between the arboretum and the (closed) East and West golf courses, but never more than one,and usually they don't do very much. Seeing three active alligators in the middle of the city struck me as unusual.

On second thought, they were acting more like the alligators in these two videos, but I hate the talking in both of them, especially the professional narration in the first. So, it might have been a mating pair and a lonely guy trying to butt in. Still, it was a pretty cool sight.

Been too busy to keep up

2010-05-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Has anyone done the obvious "Thanks Houston" post?

Let's see, we've got:

BP and contractors Transocean and Halliburton were expected to give conflicting accounts of responsibility for causing the blast, testimony prepared for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment Committee show.

That's Transocean:

Transocean might not have a great record when it comes to safety engineering, but it has shown real expertise in the area of financial engineering.

...
Transocean has opposed new Interior Department safety regulations that would have applied to its rig by mandating safety audits once every three years, instead of whenever the oil companies felt like it, the Huffington Post reported. But it has treated its shareholders extremely well, pumping out billions of dollars in dividends and making use of aggressive techniques to finance a big merger.

Here are some highlights:

* The company, spun off from Sonat in 1994, was based in Houston but maintained its official headquarters in the Cayman Islands, where the tax rate is zero. It moved its headquarters to Zug, Switerland, in 2008.

And Halliburton, let's not forget Houston's Cameron International:

Even with the problems with cement seals and the weakening of the mud barrier, the blowout preventer, or BOP, a contraption built by Cameron International, still could have blocked the oil gusher. Unfortunately, those devices, too, have had documented troubles.

The above might be a tad unfair, but they do seem to like the "market good/ government regulation bad" Tea Party bumper sticker in Texas.

I can't be the only person to have thought that Chris Rose couldn't have been the only reporter to have heard

2010-04-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

In last week's Gambit, Chris Rose wrote:

Back in the days immediately following his election, with the city in the throes of optimism and anticipation, I recall a handful of folks buttonholing me to confide that the new mayor was not what he appeared to be to the masses.

It was a small number of folks, whom I took to be bitter losers or disgruntled operatives for other candidates and other parties, who warned me that the new mayor had a dark streak that would one day show itself, to all of our surprise.

Truthfully, I can't even recall exactly who it was that told me such things; I outrightly dismissed it — and them — as piffle. I didn't believe it. Not for a minute. Again, it simply didn't jibe with what I was seeing, hearing, reading and feeling.

Not to bash Chris Rose, but we do have to consider the fact that events and conversations can become confused, conflated and exaggerated in the memories of even the most scrupulously honest of people. It's also possible that Chris Rose was the only local journalist to have heard these mumblings, but click and scroll down to "Who Are You For?..."

Whatever the case might be, when I read that, I was reminded of a comment that I once made (not sure on whose blog) that New Orleans has some very good investigative reporters for a fairly small market, but its opinion makers (editors, op-ed writers, etc.) are all consensus historians who won't challenge the group consensus until investigative reporting or other events make the group consensus untenable.

I suppose that's pretty much the case nationwide:

Meanwhile, there’s also a mini-struggle going on within business journalism itself over how best to cover the crisis. Sorkin’s book helps draw a bright line between deal journalism and the work of accountability-oriented reporters. In the former, the reporter-source relationship is more transactional, with a focus on securing insider access; the latter maintain greater distance from their subjects and rely for their material on financial filings, lawsuits, whistleblowers, short sellers, nonprofit groups, and dissidents of all stripes—not insiders, but outsiders. As it happens, their sources were right about this crisis, while Sorkin’s insiders were part of the problem.
...

While Pittman’s adversarial style paid major dividends, it should be obvious that his approach would not gain him the kind of telepathic rapport that Sorkin seems to have developed with the Fed chairman (“. . . the towering white peaks of the Tetons offered a majestic view, but one that no longer took Ben Bernanke’s breath away the way it once had.”)

Readers should be aware of the differences in reporting styles and understand them for what they are: a division of labor. Neither will give you the full picture; one aims to tell you what the players said, while the other tells you what they did.

I don't think that the conflict between access journalism and investigative reporting is limited to business reporting. I should probably do a post rehashing all the reasons why I hated Nagin by the end of 2005, before writing much more about Nagin and the local press, but I will point out that the very "even-handed"* article about Nagin in yesterday's Picayune was co-written by a former very good investigative reporter turned city editor. The article failed to mention the depletion of the $200M revolver fund but did state that "the financial outlook is brighter, too." That will be a pleasant surprise for the incoming mayor:

“I will inherit a city that is in financial trouble,” Landrieu said. “… I think the public is going to be shocked to know the financial situation the city is in.”

I'll end with two questions. First, if the local press pulls its punches to help along the healing process or something, is that really just responsible reporting, or is it advocacy journalism?

Secondly, if Landrieu's inheriting a f***ed up situation, why would anybody want to sugar coat that?

*The article was much nicer to Nagin than the headline. I haven't looked at the letters page in today's paper, but I'd wager that any complaints that the article was unfair to Nagin focus on the headline.

Oddly appropriate fashion accessory

2010-04-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

Seeing Dick Armey dressed up like a cowboy today, I was reminded that very briefly, almost thirty years ago, I actually liked George Will:

Compared to some cowboys -- symbols of rugged individualism: hairy chested, leathery skinned, crow's feet around the eyes -- who use heavily subsidized water, graze their cattle on public land for a pittance, and have their market protected by beef import quotas -- compared to such Marlboro men, the average inner-city welfare mother is the soul of self-reliance

.
Admittedly, George Will wrote that column twenty-nine years ago; much has changed since then.

April Fools' Day at CNBC

2010-04-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

This skit should be an instant classic. First you have Trish Regan wondering why, oh why, do politicians continue to demonize banks? Then, some Republican guy says that Jamie Dimon and his Wall Street buddies should have known better than to trust a socialist Obama administration...before he says that Wall Street owns the government. Unfortunately, Larry Kudlow couldn't quite keep a straight face throughout the bit.

Which is it?

2010-03-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

"This bill does not control costs,"
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy."
Orrin Hatch,Republican senator from Utah.

Is there some way to control costs without affecting one-sixth of the American economy?

Remembering Jim Metcalf*

2010-03-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

As a young man in New Orleans -- a poser and a fuck-up -- I got laughed at while reading Jim Metcalf out loud to girls more than any other poet; more than Lord Byron, more than Rod McKuen even.

I normally leave the making fun of Chris Rose to Jeffrey, but, when you get to be my age, it's good to remind yourself that few things in this world are more pathetic than a middle-aged man telling anyone who'll listen about his past studliness:

As a young man in New Orleans — a poseur and a rake — I got laid while reading Barry Hannah out loud to girls more than any other writer; more than Dorothy Parker, more than Pablo Neruda even.

Writers like that tend to make a lasting impression. I wanted to be Barry Hannah — back then and sometimes now — all wild, indifferent, frighteningly talented and sexed-up. But I couldn't carry Barry Hannah's jock.

At least he tempers his bragging with a slight dose of humility. But, his ostensible paean to beloved dead writer still ends up a psalm of Chris Rose's coolness:

I have a family now, also. There are young writers who think it would be really cool to get faced with me. But time and words change a man. For instance, I have not gotten drunk and fired a gun inside of a house in over 10 years, and it's been more than a year since I last saw the inside of a jail cell.

I am 49 and I have never caught a significant fish. The avenue of regard is wider than I can fathom. Yes, time and words change a man.

Tonight, I will read some Barry Hannah to soothe my restless writer's soul.

My chances of getting laid while doing so are zero.

I won't be getting laid tonight either, but I'll be reading Ralph Gomory and William Baumol. Who knows, if I'm still blogging in twenty-five years, I might write:

As a middle-aged man...I won more economic debates, impressing more women, and ultimately getting laid by quoting Gomory and Baumol more than any other economists; more than Robert Kuttner, more than Joseph Stiglitz even.

It would be pathetic bullshit, of course, but the kind of bullshit people tolerate...when it comes from an old man.

*Not really about Jim Metcalf, but if you're about my age and from New Orleans, your mother probably watched his TV show, which wasn't bad. Form your own opinion about his poetry.

A walk though Old Metairie

2010-03-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

I took a walk though Old Metairie Sunday and noticed a surprising number of blue and white signs with S/H written on them -- signs that looked like this. I saw three or four on just the two block stretch of one of the "wood" streets between Haynes Academy for Advanced Studies and the railroad tracks. There were more in the neighborhood. I thought it was worth mentioning.

Should a conservative reformer vote for Jay Batt?

2010-03-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

A slightly edited and expanded comment that I left at the Library Chronicles

I missed the beginning of "Politics with a Punch" last night, did Jeff Crouere explain why he had Batt as a guest but not Guidry? If I understood Batt correctly, fiscal conservatives have the ability to pay for government services while eliminating sources of government revenue, especially unpopular sources of revenue like parking tickets and traffic cameras.

Anyway, I still think that Nagin forfeited any right to say NIMBY when he went to Jamaica before discussing FEMA trailer placement, but BATT was cynical enough in his handling of the situation to even impress me. The District A locations that he suggested were as far as possible from District A residents as any location that were technically in District A could possibly be, e.g. near the corner of Sere and Encampment. A small part of District A is on the eastern side of Bayou St. John bordering Districts C & D, and a very small part of that small part juts to the north to be surrounded by District D on three sides. In other words, Batt said, "You can put FEMA trailers in my district, just put them next to Cynthia's constituents." It's not often that I stand in awe of somebody else's cynicism.

I've started to write about this several times over the last couple of weeks, but I've been reticent to bring up the racial angle. Still, considering the racial divisiveness of reform issues, I can't for the life of me figure out why a sincerely reform minded voter would vote for the established pol with baggage over the fresh face.

What it comes down to is, if I were a conservative (which I'm not) and pro-Reform (which I am, albeit with reservations about the meaninglessness of "Reform" until specific reforms are proposed) would I consider fealty to Chicago School Economics more important than the ability to carry out a reform agenda. Yes, Jay Batt mentioned getting rid of unpopular revenue generators, but do fiscal conservatives really have a magic revenue wand? Does the New Orleans City Council ever have the luxury of debating lowering taxes versus expanding social programs? Can I possibly even begin to imagine any scenario under which it would even remotely begin to matter whether my city council representative was a Keynesian or a Supply-Sider (or a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute)?

On the other hand, would I really want the "reform as a way to attack established black politicians" shoe to fit? Maybe it wouldn't be fair to Batt, but when you elect somebody to a public office, you hire that person to do a job. If somebody has baggage that might not make him the person for the job, or if hiring that person might cause your firm embarrassment, you try to find a better candidate. I just can't see bringing back another established white politician as being the best move under the circumstances, especially one that can reasonably be accused of being a NIMBYist.

To be clear, I'm by no means suggesting that all white politicians and business interest are pro-reform and all black politicians and business interests are anti-reform. Far from it, on either count. However, anti-reform white interests do have to use different tactics than anti-reform black interests.

Needless to say

2010-02-18T20:52:00.000-08:00

Claude Mauberret:

Erroll Williams, a district assessor who has appraised property for roughly half the city for nearly 25 years, was elected New Orleans' city's first citywide assessor Thursday after his opponent, Claude Mauberret, pulled out of the March 6 runoff.
...
"I did not look forward to a bruising campaign against someone for whom I have a great deal of personal and professional regard," he said. "... Despite the friendship that Erroll and I share, I fear that others would cast this election in racial terms and try to divide our citizens, who came together in unprecedented fashion on Feb. 6 across racial, geographic, party and socioeconomic lines. I love my city too much to let anything threaten this historic time of unity."

made a moral choice.

NAMBLA Illustrated

2010-02-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

Slowly he peeled off his white game pants and pulled a sleeveless undershirt over his head. He squirted white, gooey shampoo into his grey buzz cut and it began running down off his head. All of this he has done hundreds of times since he was a little boy, flinging footballs around fields in Mississippi.

...

Next came wide receiver Sidney Rice. Over the course of their one season together, Rice flourished with Favre, with 83 receptions in the regular season and then three touchdown catches last week in the divisional playoff victory over the Cowboys. Rice is 23 and Favre is 40. Rice made Favre young; Favre made Rice grow up. They were good together. Now Rice stood in front of Favre with a towel around his waist and they embraced until Favre dropped his head into the crook of Rice's neck and his eyes welled with tears.

If you follow sports message boards, you've probably already seen plenty of jokes about Tim Latent's SI column, so I won't add any more. Still, no matter what happens tonight, everyone in the country should be thankful that the Saints victory two weeks ago saved us from two weeks of nauseating man love for Brett Favre.

Also, those of us in our forties, those of us old enough to remember when Prince used to be cool, can be thankful that we were spared two weeks of wondering, "My God, is this what turning fifty does to you?"

This election's cranky old man thought.

2010-02-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, watching TV, I wondered what some wet behind the ears Tulane professor from who knows where could possibly tell me about New Orleans politics. Now that Brian Brox finally looks old enough to shave, another station trots out some kid from who knows where who looks even younger. He was on ABC26 tonight, but I couldn't find a picture of Michael Sherman anywhere.

I set a personal record for procrastination this election, but it was partly Troy Henry's fault. Back in August, I wrote:

1. Though almost nobody acknowledged it, it was obvious by the end of 2005 that Nagin really didn't give a shit about the city.

2. The consensus historians and pleasant conversationalists of the local media either couldn't see or refused to acknowledge the obvious fact that Nagin has never given a shit about anybody but Nagin. They have no business defining the candidates in the next mayor's race.

3. Jay Batt has too much baggage to be either effective or believable as a reformer.

I started to return to the second point one night a few weeks ago, by adding a correction to this old post:

My memory was faulty, I can't believe that I forgot an ad by the first presidential candidate that I ever voted for. In the 1979 Louisiana gubernatorial election, Edgar Mouton ran a commercial that showed his opponents making promises before implying "bullshit" by cutting to a cow mooing -- I'm pretty sure that I remember that commercial correctly. Barry Commoner took it a step further the following year.

The plan was to write a post about the irresponsible amount of fun that the Margaret Carlson*/Maureen Dowd wannabes of the local media had heaping scorn and snark on James Perry over one commercial after work the next day. Troy Henry gave his media-bashing press conference the very next day, and I thought I should include that in a post about media coverage of the election. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to get around to doing that. At any rate, at one point, I counted four articles or columns, two each in the Picayune and in Gambit, after only one static-interrupted phone interview. That was not the full extent of the coverage that the two papers gave to the commercial, I just tallied up the snark and scorn filled columns that I saw before there was a follow up to the one cell phone interview -- an interview that in the reporter's own words was interrupted by a burst of static. Only a few days earlier, Clancy DuBos had written a column lamenting the fact that Mardi Gras and the Saints' playoff run would subtract from the amount of serious attention that might otherwise be paid to the election. I mean, come on man.

The election's over, but I'm still pissed off, so I may or may not, return to that subject after the Super Bowl. Since Batt's in a runoff, I'll definitely do the "Batt has Baggage" post one night this week. In the meantime, read Oyster.

*CARLSON (10/10/00): Gore’s fabrications may be inconsequential—I mean, they’re about his life. Bush’s fabrications are about our life, and what he’s going to do. Bush’s should matter more but they don’t, because Gore’s we can disprove right here and now…You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator or you look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove Gore.
...
CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need government and so they would care more about the programs, and less about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t disprove these other things.Link

I copied the editorial of the Nov./Dec. issue of The New Orleans Tribune

2010-02-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

Since I couldn't find archives on the Tribune's website, I'll copy it at the bottom of this post. It's worth rereading after reading this month's endorsement of John Georges:

The New Orleans Tribune has been a tireless advocate and a consistently strong voice for self-governance and self-determination in a majority* African American city. We have been out front endorsing and supporting African American candidates for elected office with both our checkbooks and our pens for over 25 years.
...
We think John Georges is the best candidate to “hold” the mayor’s office while we in the African American community regroup. We know for sure Georges is the best candidate to stop the juggernaut that is barreling down on this community as we write.

It certainly makes you wonder what Georges promised the Tribune's editor, Dwight McKenna. It's almost enough to make you wonder about McKenna, Leon Cannizzaro, Georges and Bill Schultz.

BTW, Cannizzaro and McKenna's paper have both endorsed Jay Batt over either Virginia Blanque or Susan Guidry.

At any rate, last month's Tribune editorial (no link available):

A Betrayal of the Black Community

The recent exit by State Senator Ed Murray from the mayor’s race has left the black community confused and bewildered. The blow is even more painful because it is an African American politician that has let us down—failing to show the courage to lead and stay the course.

After the devastation of Katrina and the ravages that linger, we had looked forward to an able, committed, competent candidate who could and would lead the disadvantaged citizenry of this city, act in our best interests and restore confidence in our ability to govern ourselves. Boy, were we fooled. Yet after three days reeling in the wake of Senator Murray’s surprise announcement, we are resigned to the rumblings and rumors of back room deal-making to endorse another candidate. What a joke. What a ruse.

The spurious argument of not wanting to create racial divisiveness insults, and declarations of lack of money ring hollow in the ears of those who entrusted their confidence to Senator Murray. Now we see the old two-stepping routine of one wanting to be the spook that anoints the new king and the one who sits by the door. What we see is a man who thoughtlessly led us down the primrose path and selfishly left us up the creek without a paddle, a man who lacked the courage of his stated convictions.

Is this what our forefathers struggled and died for during the Civil Rights movement? Is this the destination that Dutch Morial and others of our first Black elected officials in the 20th century were seeking when they began their exciting journeys on our behalf and with us at their sides over 30 years ago?

Shame on you, Senator Murray. Do you not know what you have done? You have dealt a blow to this community beyond belief, a blow with ramifications that we will be dealing with for years to come.

In spite of our having been wounded, we can’t give up now. It’s time that we pull it together, regroup as a community, and seriously consider our options for mayor. It is paramount that we not despair but that we steel ourselves to make the right choice as we move forward. Even more than before, it is critical that we look past empty clichés, patronizing back slapping and meaningless platitudes while demanding that the candidate we agree to support unapologetically signs on to an agenda that benefits the African American community.

To our elected officials, Black and white, our people are tired, so be on notice, there will be no more free passes.

It’s accountability time in New Orleans.

*For the most part, I don't think it's a terribly significant fact that the city's voter registration was majority White when Dutch Morial became the city's first black mayor in 1978, but some rhetoric seems to ignore that fact altogether. If memory serves, white voter registration was about 57% (don't remember the exact figure), which would be consistent with this:

Dutch Morial made national history when he was elected the first Black mayor of the Crescent City in 1977, defeating City Councilman Joseph V. DiRosa by a vote of 90,500 to 84,300. Morial successfully became the city's first mayor of color by capturing 95 percent of the Black New Orleans vote and 20 percent of the city's white vote.

Does the conspiracy reach all the way to Obama?

2010-02-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

Or just up to Gary Locke? Really, Nagin or Riley (or somebody at WBOK) should say something if the Picayune's just making this up:

Riley got in the last word, suggesting that if the favored candidate of his unnamed movers and shakers wins the upcoming race to succeed Nagin, those forces will see that the city's population tally increases -- on paper, that is -- so that the rate of violence appears to decrease.

"You will find that when, if the shadow government gets their selection as mayor and chief -- because I'm confident that there is one -- you will find that our population will increase tremendously in six months," Riley said.

"Magically!" Nagin interjected.

Riley continued: "With the next election, you will find that the per-capita crime rate will go down tremendously. You will find that a number of positive things will come out within six months if that group gets who they want.

There's a very good reason why population estimates will not be used to calculate the city's crime rate during the administration of the next mayor. Nagin and Riley both know that the official census count will be used instead of estimates, but they think they can play WBOK listeners for fools.

On the other, if the census shows a surprising rebound in the city's population, Nagin's on the record as being skeptical. He surely won't take credit for a population rebound that he believes will only occur on paper.

Saints Fever

2010-01-20T21:13:00.000-08:00

My octogenarian, retired school teacher mother forwarded me an email that she was sent by a friend who's also a retired school teacher:

Just a reminder that Drew is a finalist for the FedEx Air Player of
the year. Please visit www.nfl.com/fedex to vote.. Spread the word!
Thanks!

Announcement

2010-01-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Over the last several days, many people have asked me the real reason why I decided not to run for mayor. It's quite simple really -- after thoughtful consideration and discussion with friends, I decided that, though I'd make a great mayor, my candidacy wouldn't be the most wonderful thing possible for the city. And, when you get right down to it, I'm nothing if not a wonderful person.

Now, I know that rumors have been circulating that there other reasons why I decided not to run. Don't believe it. As a matter of fact, I discussed the matter with a prominent member of the local media who, having met me, is now qualified to tell you that I'm a moral person and follow my inner moral compass. Moreover, having been told by members of my inner circle that my reasons were moral ones, he'll scoff* at anybody who hasn't met my inner circle but dares to question my motives, or his judgment of my character and motives. After all, if ~~being buffaloed by~~ talking to me and my best friends doesn't make somebody an expert judge of my character, what does?

*Third comment, in already linked piece.

Theory and Practice

2009-12-31T09:48:00.000-08:00

Theory

Why Powerful People -- Many of Whom Take a Moral High Ground -- Don't Practice What They Preach
...
Three additional experiments further examined the degree to which powerful people accept their own moral transgressions versus those committed by others. In all cases, those assigned to high-power roles showed significant moral hypocrisy by more strictly judging others for speeding, dodging taxes and keeping a stolen bike, while finding it more acceptable to engage in these behaviors themselves.
...
Galinsky noted that moral hypocrisy has its greatest impact among people who are legitimately powerful. In contrast, a fifth experiment demonstrated that people who don't feel personally entitled to their power are actually harder on themselves than they are on others, which is a phenomenon the researchers dubbed "hypercrisy." The tendency to be harder on the self than on others also characterized the powerless in multiple studies.

"Ultimately, patterns of hypocrisy and hypercrisy perpetuate social inequality. The powerful impose rules and restraints on others while disregarding these restraints for themselves, whereas the powerless collaborate in reproducing social inequality because they don't feel the same entitlement," Galinsky concluded.

Practice

Strategic defaults – conditioning, morality, or naïveté?

In the report, White noted comments by the former Treasury Secretary on one of the hottest housing market topics of the day – strategic defaults:

The worst criticism has been reserved, however, for those who would walk away from mortgages that they can afford. Typical of such criticism is that of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who declared in a televised speech: “And let me emphasize, any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator – and one who is not honoring his obligations.”
...
Maybe the rules are different for big banks than for homeowners.

I honestly don't understand how some things can be ignored

2009-12-14T22:14:00.001-08:00

For example, there's this:

The average wage of a Chinese manufacturing worker in comparison to his American counterpart remained constant over the past 30 years, hovering around 2%. This means that despite the massive increase in Chinese exports to the US, a Chinese factory worker still earns a 50th of his American counterpart, just like in 1980. In comparison, the average wage of Japanese manufacturing workers in comparison to their American counterparts went from 7% in 1950 to nearly 60% in 1980. Korean manufacturing workers enjoyed a similar relative increase in their buying power between 1975 and 2000, as did their counterparts in Taiwan.

Though, I share some of the doubts expressed by Yves in the above link, I doubt that it's that great an exaggeration. Still, I find it hard to imagine awareness of that fact eliciting much more than than a shrug from the average American.

Well, if you subscribe to Harper's Magazine, it's something you might want to bear in mind when you read the January Notebook.

My heart goes out to you...

2009-12-11T23:19:00.000-08:00

If you live in District B:

incumbent Stacy Head has one opponent: Corey Watson, an electrical engineer and pastor of a West Bank church. Watson is the son of the Rev. Tom Watson, who ran for mayor in 2006.

In case you've forgotten, father and son were in the news about a year ago:

You Asked For It... The List of Ministers Endorsing Indicted Congressman Jefferson
By Deborah Cotton

Below is the list of religious community leaders endorsing the indicted Congressman William 'Dollar Bill' Jefferson's candidacy, as supplied by campaign aide Eugene Green to the Times Picayune.
...
Bishop Paul S. Morton, Sr.
Rev. Tom B. Watson
Rev. Noily Paul, Jr.
Rev. Aubrey Wallace
Rev. Robert Turner
Rev. Samson Skip Alexander
Rev. Norman N. Francis
Pastor Chante H. Sutton
Rev. Charles M. Daniels
Pastor Tyrone Jefferson
Pastor Rachel Harrison
Rev. Brian K. Richburg
Rev. Darrin J. Boykins
Bishop Tommie Triplett
Pastor Tyrone Smith
Pastor Kevin Shorts
Rev. Cary Payton
Bishop E. Craig Wilson
Apostle Arthal Thomas, Sr.
Pastor Paul O. Evbuoma
Rev. Corey Watson
Rev. Dr. Ernest Marcello, Jr.
Rev. Rufus Bonds
Rev. John E. Breaux, Jr.

Just don't expect any debates to be restrained because one of the two candidates is a minister; Head's just as quick to dis ministers as she is to dis Walmart customers:

A leader of the black religious community said he was yelled at publicly by Head at an event for Congressman-elect Joseph Cao.

Bishop O.C. Coleman has asked for a public apology.

Of course, O.C. Coleman is, indeed, that O.C. Coleman. Still, I'd hate to have to vote for somebody as impolite as Stacy Head, and there are those damning emails to consider.

How often have you heard Rob Couhig call Ray Nagin a liar?

2009-12-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

WTF?

“Haven’t we had enough of a mayor that's lied to us? And we're gonna come with a guy who lied the last time? Who's lied already to his best friends in politics about what he wants to do,” Couhig said after qualifying.

I get the last sentence. Couhig's trying to stir up shit between Landrieu and Jacobs. To accuse Landrieu of lying to his best friends strikes me as political hyperbole, but I've never known Couhig to soft-pedal his criticism of anyone...other than C. Ray Nagin. Exaggeration is the worst thing I can accuse straight-talking Rob of here.

However, I'm totally mystified by the second question. A guy who lied the last time? I think Couhig needs to explain that one, because I sure don't know what he's talking about.

Finally, I can appreciate the first question. After all these years, Couhig finally implies that Nagin is less than totally honest. It's a little late for that. I don't recall Couhig criticizing Nagin for his blatant dishonesty when he (Couhig) had a radio show. Couhig had a morning radio talk show when Mayor Transparency was in an ongoing dispute with WWL TV and the Times Picayune over FOIA requests and access to information. I listened almost every morning, waiting for Couhig to use his soapbox to bring pressure on Nagin to keep his promise to bring transparency to city government. If he ever mentioned the subject, it must have been on one of the rare mornings that I wasn't listening. It wasn't what I was listening for, but I'm sure I'd have noticed and remembered if Couhig had ever called attention to, or even acknowledged, Nagin's dishonesty when he had a radio show. He wouldn't take a stand when Nagin was lying about crooked contracts, but Couhig's the scourge of dishonest politicians now. Is anybody buying that?

To be fair, in an appearance on WDSU, Couhig did accuse Nagin of breaking his word last August. But, he only pointed to examples of what he (Couhig) considered broken promises, he didn't come out and call him liar. Anyway, that was August of 2009. Starting in late 2006 through 2007, Couhig had the forum to help expose the secrecy, obfuscation and outright lies of the Nagin administration, but he never used his microphone for that purpose. That, IMO, disqualifies him as candidate for mayor to a much greater degree than the decision to endorse Nagin in May of 2006.

Yeah, they're related

2009-12-09T21:25:00.000-08:00

no link for the old T/P article

Money sets judicial rivals apart - Former prosecutors vie for vacated seat
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Author: Gwen Filosa Staff writer

The race to replace ousted Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Sharon Hunter comes down to two candidates with vastly different campaign styles, starting with the disparity in their money-raising abilities.

In the Nov. 5 runoff, Sandra Cabrina Jenkins, a private attorney who started her career as a prosecutor, faces Ben Willard , another former prosecutor with a politically connected family and a talent for campaign finance.

Willard , the brother of City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard -Lewis, has outspent Jenkins by a ratio of at least 8-to-1. In the primary alone, he raised more than $46,000 and spent $31,000, while Jenkins collected about $5,200 in roughly the same time period.

On Oct. 21, she borrowed $5,000 each from her bosses, Lawrence Blake Jones and Arthel Scheuermann, along with accepting an additional $1,000 donation. In the Oct. 5 primary, Willard swept into first place with 46 percent of the vote. Jenkins was second with 25 percent, separated from the front-runner by more than 14,000 votes. Voter turnout was about 23 percent.

The Section C judgeship burst open this summer when Sharon Hunter* lost her office because of judicial misconduct stemming from sloppy record-keeping. Hunter, first elected in 1996, was removed Aug. 19 in a unanimous ruling by the state Supreme Court for mismanaging her staff and failing to preserve at least a dozen trial transcripts.

The specter of a disheveled courtroom has popped up during the campaign, with Jenkins insisting that her track record in criminal law exceeds that of Willard .

Originally from Baton Rouge, Jenkins moved to New Orleans 13 years ago to begin her law career as a prosecutor in District Attorney Harry Connick’s office. In 1992, she left for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, where she worked as a staff attorney reviewing criminal appeals.

"We have to make decisions quickly," Jenkins has said of a judge ’s role. "Without experience, you’re going to make errors. You don’t have to worry about that with me."

For the past two years, Jenkins has been an associate at the Scheuermann and Jones firm, which has been a key donor to her campaign, kicking in $2,800 during the primary.

Willard campaigns as a military man turned tough prosecutor. He is an alumnus of Southern University Law Center as well as an honor graduate of the Army’s Signal Corps training. He clerked for state Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson for four years before joining Connick’s office in 1999. Willard left in 2001 for a job in Juvenile Court, handling traffic court cases. He also works in his brother Walter’s law firm.

"What sets me apart is I’ve got military experience," said Willard , who recommends boot-camp-style programs and military careers for troubled teens.

His billboards, sea of yard signs and stack of endorsements -- SOUL, LIFE, the Progressive Democrats and the Alliance for Good Government, to name a few -- helped catapult him to a primary win.

Willard , 38, likes to point out that this is his first bid for public office while Jenkins, 41, ran unsuccessfully for judge in 1996 and 1998. She is endorsed by BOLD and Women in Politics.

In public appearances, Willard is a booming presence quick to veer into a tangent, such as comments about his son’s birthday being on Nov. 5. He often refers to himself in the third person when stumping for judge , and has a penchant for turning phrases.

When asked about domestic violence at a debate, he said his father raised him to respect women.

"If you put your hands on a woman, you get what you deserve," Willard said. "When you come before Judge Benedict Willard , we won’t put you in the jails, we’ll put you under the jails."

To the same question, Jenkins offered a more measured response. As judge , she would ensure that all paperwork is properly handled when it comes to defendants living under restraining orders, she said.

I keep telling you all to get library cards and use Newsbank at the Louisiana Library Connection. You can easily find Times Picayune articles going back twenty years and Baton Rouge Advocate articles going back to 1986. On Google, all I found was a couple of nola.com commenters alleging (correctly, as it turns out) that Ben Willard and Cynthia Willard-Lewis are brother and sister.

Anyway, in case you missed it, Ben Willard was in the news today. There was a similar report last year.

I really don't have as negative a view of CWL as some local bloggers, but I do wonder about her brothers.

Good Lord

2009-12-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

(Really) Damn

2009-12-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

This went up on the wrong blog last week.

I guess we won't have a candidate for mayor of Dubai after all. In case you missed it, we can't afford visionary leadership any more than Dubai could.

Seems like an updated version of the Edgar Mouton commercial that John Anderson copied to me

2009-11-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

A Times Picayune reporter seems shocked that a James Perry commercial uses bleeped out profanity to make a point about two of his opponents in the upcoming mayoral election. Unfortunately, I'm anything but shocked that no journalists showed the slightest bit of curiosity when a fourth candidate, Troy Henry, made a similar point in a more genteel manner:

"People judge you for who you are," he said. "Nobody says (campaign opponent and state Sen.) Ed Murray is a crook because Bill Jefferson is going to jail. I think voters can take an honest look at all the candidates and not pre-judge them."

Well, since nobody with a press card asked, I did the anonymous blogger thing and fact-checked his statement using the internet (beginning with Murray's first campaign):

RACE FOR HOUSE SEAT TURNS FORMER ALLIES INTO FOES
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Friday, November 8, 1991

Hughes and Murray survived a seven-candidate scramble to fill the vacant 96th District seat in the state House of Representatives. They will meet in a Nov. 16 runoff to represent a district that includes parts of the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, Faubourg St. John, Gentilly and Treme.

Murray is running with the strong support of outgoing state Rep. Charles R. Jones, his close friend and law partner, who has been elected to an appeals court judgeship. With Jones' assistance, Murray has picked up the backing of a host of big-name organizations and elected officials from throughout the city, including U.S. Rep. William Jefferson .

Hughes, who has no elected officials in her corner, said the city's political establishment is trying to force-feed voters Jones' hand-picked successor.

She boasts a cadre of grassroots leaders who share her ideas, particularly that the district needs an independent voice in Baton Rouge. "Endorsements don't vote, people do," she said.

The nastiest aspect of the campaign is Hughes' charge that Murray and Jones tried to keep her out of the race.

Before the Oct. 19 primary, a resident of the district challenged Hughes' residency in Civil Court. Hughes and two other candidates were thrown out of the race, but Hughes appealed. The state Supreme Court reinstated her less than three weeks before election day.

Hughes said Murray and Jones were behind the challenge that cost her valuable campaigning time. As evidence, she cites Murray's presence during hearings on the case.

Murray, who admits doubting that Hughes has lived in the district for the required 12 months, said he had nothing to do with the challenge. He said he sat in court to gather material for legislation to strengthen residency laws for political candidates - an assertion Hughes calls a "bald-faced lie."

Morial bases third-term bid on school-reform program - Mayor officially launches City Charter campaign
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Mayor Marc Morial placed his third-term hopes squarely in the education basket Tuesday, using the kickoff for his effort to change the city charter's two-term limit to sell his plan to help New Orleans' troubled public schools.
...
The crowd of several hundred included a couple of sign-waving protesters. Up front sat a scattering of elected officials, some who'd voiced their support for the charter change before and some who hadn't.

They included Criminal Sheriff Charles Foti; District Attorney Harry Connick; State Reps. Ed Murray and Mitch Landrieu; City Councilman Marlin Gusman, Morial's longtime chief administrative officer; Clerk of 1st City Court Ellen Hazeur, an ex-city councilwoman who often voted with mayoral hopeful Jim Singleton's faction; Assessor Patricia Johnson, formerly a member of Singleton's BOLD political organization; and Assessor Betty Jefferson, whose brother, U.S. Rep. William Jefferson , has not closed the door on running for mayor himself.
(oops, that has nothing to do with the Murray/Jefferson connection that Henry implied)

William Jefferson undeterred by allegations - Incumbent stresses years of effectiveness
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Several high-profile Jefferson supporters, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin among them, cite his record of getting things done that played heavily on their decisions to endorse him. "I think it's important that we don't lose his institutional knowledge and the working relationships he's established," said state Sen. Ed Murray , another supporter. "I don't think anyone can argue that he hasn't done a good job."

Asked how he would respond to constituents who might be disturbed about the investigation, Murray said, "I would say I'm troubled as well, but that I believe in our system of justice that you are innocent until proven guilty."

I could go on, but because I went to Newsbank rather than Google, it would all be block quotes rather than links. The fact that Jefferson has supported Murray in every race that he's ever been involved in and that Murray has returned the support is not incriminating in of itself. I guess it's just that I'd rather trust the city's recovery finances to a housing advocate whose business suits appear to be less expensive than even mine than trust a professional politician (and amateur lobbyist) who refuses to release his tax returns. On the plus side for Murray, he will attract enough crossover vote in a runoff to be considered a uniter, and his white vote won't even come from what Jeffrey calls the "yuppie left." Of that, I'm certain.

Unfortunately for Perry, if you're going to run an aggressive campaign you need to stick to your guns. That especially true if you're going to try to run "edgy" commercials. Otherwise, journalists who think that every complicated issue can be reduced to a simple "yes or no" question* might not be able to resist in something really simple -- snarking about your campaign ad (undeserved snark, especially considering how shallow the other campaign coverage has been) and your waffling response to questions about (invited snark). Glad the city has an alternative weekly to KISS us and make the problems all better.

*I didn't like the LSU/VA question when I heard about it on TV news report. At the time I thought 1) it's not totally clear, 2) Chris Matthews disease -- the remedy for obfuscation is not to insist on simple yes or no answers to every question 3) I'm getting really sick of footprints. I don't mean that as a personal criticism -- I don't have a negative opinion of K.A. and I had no idea who asked the question. But I'll explain points 1 & 2:

“Yes or no only, please: Do you support the plans for the LSU/VA hospital with its current footprint?”

I assume that means the proposed big, new footprint in the current plans, but any candidate who wasn't sure could have asked for clarification, so my first reaction was just a curious reaction, not a negative one.

I think point 2 should be obvious. LSU really wants the great big footprint that calls for demolitions that will serve no purpose for decades. People in B.R. really want the LSU medical center, and people from other parts of the state are willing to help them get it (remember Carla Dartez). Whether you're still willing to push for a renovated Charity or just a reduced footprint, it becomes a question of risk in fighting too hard for the preferred option. It's almost like one of those foreign policy questions that Chris Matthews thinks can be reduced to yes or no answers.

BTW, if N.O. somehow loses the LSU medical school it will all be blamed on the preservationists, and that will be the end of preservationism in N.O. Seems obvious, but nobody seems to consider it.

Correction: My memory was faulty, I can't believe that I forgot an ad by the first presidential candidate that I ever voted for. In the 1979 Louisiana gubernatorial election, Edgar Mouton ran a commercial that showed his opponents making promises before implying "bullshit" by cutting to a cow mooing -- I'm pretty sure that I remember that commercial correctly. Barry Commoner took it a step further the following year.

I wonder

2009-11-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

Was somebody just talking about me?

A math word problem for journalists

2009-10-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

Update It appears that the Oct. 29 column will not be posted online. See the comments if you're interested in reading it. I'll add a few comments after the Saints game if I'm not too tired.

I couldn't find the link that would make the point of the problem obvious.

Ray's brother-in-law Cedric's friend Glenn* stole $550,000 of the city's money. The city later gave Glenn $650,000 to settle a lawsuit. If Glenn is forced to repay the $550,000 that he stole, how much of the city's money does Glenn still have?

*Who doesn't appear to have been a friend of Ray's friend Greg. Believe it or not, the problem was not suggested by a Pete Finney column -- just a column that read like a Pete Finney column.

Evil Bastards

2009-10-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

Baby Boomers are simultaneously endangering Social Security's finances by retiring early, and blocking the career advancement of Gen Xers by not retiring. That's pretty vicious trick. No wonder I hated Dr. Spock's spoiled generation before I became a part of it in the generational gerrymander of the 1990's.

Actually, hate's too strong a word. You may recall the scene from The River's Edge in which the members of a high school class collectively sighed and rolled their eyes when the thirty-something said "we stopped a war, man." If you were in your twenties at the time, you had spent at least ten years rolling your eyes at that kind of statement. You wouldn't become part of the generation that "stopped a war, man" for another ten years. I no longer really care what generation I'm considered part of,* but I am enough of a paranoid conspiracy theorist and believer in pitchfork populism to wonder who benefits if generational bitchfests drown out serious discussion of economic issues and class interests.

*Not really. True story, my younger brother stopped by apartment one night in 1990 when I was trying to figure out some the lyrics to "Bodies." The first thing he said when i answered the door was, "David, is that the Sex Pistols you're listing to? It's 1990, you're worse than you used to make fun of old hippies for being ten years ago." Didn't like it when Madison Avenue decided I was one of those old hippies a few years later.

An obvious thought

2009-10-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

If the point of awarding the Nobel Prize is to influence U.S. policy, shouldn't the prize in Economic Science be awarded to Simon Johnson. Some wag has probably already suggested it, but I'm almost almost serious.

Reading Glen Beck* makes you smarter

2009-10-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the slightly misleading post title.

The Daily Beast "crunched the data on the brainpower of America’s 55 largest cities, from first-to-worst." Silly surveys always spawn silly arguments about their results, but I think it's more interesting to look at methodology (or to compare similar surveys that use different data -- if you're a real glutton for punishment). I really don't care that The Daily Beast says that New Orleans is a slightly less intelligent city than Birmingham but a slightly more intelligent city than Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio. This tells me all I need to know:

Then we divided the criteria into two halves: Half for education, and half for intellectual environment. The education half encompassed how many residents had bachelor’s degrees (35 percent weighting) and graduate degrees (15 percent). No credit was given for “some college,” or “some grad school”—we rewarded those who finished the race. The intellectual environmental half had three subparts. First, we looked at nonfiction book sales (25 percent), as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, the nation’s leading provider of accurate point-of-sale data, which tracks roughly 300,000 titles each week. We focused on nonfiction as an imperfect proxy for intellectual vigor, because overall sales are dominated by fiction works that, while entertaining, aren’t always particularly thought-provoking. We also measured the ratio of institutions of higher education (15 percent), as defined by the federal government—different than just measuring college degrees, this acknowledges that universities don’t just churn out diplomas, but instead drive the intellectual vigor of cities. Finally, many studies link intelligence and political engagement, so we weighed this, too, as measured by the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots in the last presidential election (10 percent). Our relatively small weighting acknowledges that numerous other local factors can affect turnout.)

Non-fiction book sales as an indicator of "intellectual vigor" because fiction works "aren’t always particularly thought-provoking."

Yeah, right:

New York Times
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Best Sellers

Hardcover Nonfiction

Top 5 at a Glance
1. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom
2. ARGUING WITH IDIOTS, written and edited by Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe and others
3. TRUE COMPASS, by Edward M. Kennedy
4. THE TIME OF MY LIFE, by Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi
5. THE MURDER OF KING TUT, by James Patterson and Martin Dugard

Paperback Nonfiction

Top 5 at a Glance
1. GLENN BECK’S ‘COMMON SENSE’, by Glenn Beck
2. I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL, by Tucker Max
3. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
4. MY LIFE IN FRANCE, by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
5. THE GLASS CASTLE, by Jeannette Walls

First off, book sale figures probably don't reflect used book sales very well, and they certainly don't reflect library usage. For that reason, book sales probably reflect disposable income as much as "intellectual vigor," and it seems obvious that the proprietors of Daily Beast aren't very familiar with the non-fiction book market.

I don't want to waste my time debating New Orleans' ranking in a silly survey, but the last criterion, voter turnout in the last presidential election, would obviously be unfair to a city with a scattered population.

Minor nitpick: I don't think that number of institutions of higher education per capita is the best measurement for that category. A small school school doesn't have the same impact as a larger school -- New Orleans didn't become a noticeably dumber city when Dominican College closed down. A more appropriate statistic would involve the number of college and university faculty and staff (especially library staff) members and students (especially graduate students?) per capita. Overall university budgets and research funding would probably be factors to consider as well.

*or Ted Kennedy or Mitch Albom

Piss away a million dollars, piss away 20-30 jobs

2009-09-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

I started a rant about this editorial last Friday, but got sidetracked over the weekend. Since I'm taking a couple of night courses, I didn't get back to it this week. I will over the weekend, because that editorial really ticked me off.

In the meantime, it is obvious that city will face budget cuts this Fall. Instead of trying to figure out how to save money by eliminating city jobs, I'd prefer to examine how many city jobs can be saved by eliminating or reducing wasteful or overpriced city contracts. Since we're talking about the livelihoods of real human beings, I'm sure that groups that consider it their Christian duty to advise the city on budget matters would agree.

As far as I can tell, a million dollars in payroll costs is the tab for 20-30 low level city employees. In 2006, the City Council budgeted $300,000 to hire nine new staff members. At that rate, a million a year would cover the costs of 30 employees, but I don't believe it would be quite that many. More recently, the NOPL advertised for its Library Associate I position with a salary of $26,807 last December. I believe the full cost of a $26,807 employee would be about $40,000 after payroll taxes and insurance costs. That would work out to 25 positions saved for every million cut elsewhere -- certainly, at least 20. If somebody with more knowledge about payroll and labor costs can add anything, feel free to do so.

So, whenever you read about a million here or there, think about the 20-30 human beings that the Times Picayune would happily put out of work.

Full disclosure: prior to the post-Katrina layoffs, I was a city employee. Look Mom, no schadenfreude.

Prosecution exhibit 10.05.06

2009-09-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

As I've said many times before, I doubt any laid off city employees blamed the mayor for the 2005 layoffs; the mayor only did what he had to do. By the same token, I don't understand the constant need to praise the mayor for his brilliant decision to tread water. However, once the mayor was forced to slash the city payroll, I saw no effort to put the city's remaining resources where they would do the most good. I looked and looked and tried to figure out exactly what the mayor's priorities were, but I honestly couldn't find any sign that the mayor could be bothered to take the time to set priorities. IMO, it went beyond mere incompetence to the level of simply not giving a sh**.

By itself, Thursday's editorial about police recruiting might not seem related to my point. However, it reminded me of an old article I've cited repeatedly in the past. To read the entire article scroll down to page 5 of this pdf:

Starting a wide-ranging recruitment campaign, with the goal during the next couple of years of hiring 250 to 350 officers -- the number Stellingworth said will be necessary to accommodate normal attrition levels -- will be a key test of the city's bureaucracy, depleted of money and personnel.
Stellingworth said he has concerns about launching a major marketing initiative when he doubts the civil service agency can handle an influx of applicants.
"Civil Service has to be up and functional to do that process," he said.
Making do with less
Despite losing about two-thirds of its staff, Mike Madary, a top official at the Civil Service Department, said the agency will do its best to aid police recruitment, which has been a top priority for at least a decade.
"We will do everything we can," he said.
While two staff members handled police applications before Katrina, just one person was hired back into that job, and not until March, when the department started seeking new employees. Madary said that if the agency runs into trouble processing applications, it could ask the administration for more staff.

Before the Fall

2009-09-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry, if you're looking for a post about football or the weather, you've come to the wrong blog. I have no idea idea what to make of the stock market, but early indications point to a possible sell off today. Notice that neither article mentions Obama's health care speech. I wonder if the talking heads on CNBC look at the website of their own network.

Since those links probably won't work in a few weeks, item 1:

US stock index futures turned negative on Thursday on a range of comments from officials highlighting the fragility of the recovery.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said there are many uncertainties in the outlook for the global economy and that the foundations of China's recovery are not stable.

Meanwhile, European Central Bank's Axel Weber said banks should increase their capital buffers now.

item 2:

North American companies are flocking to sell shares this week, signaling to some investors the U.S. stock market may be close to sputtering after a long rally.
...
September is on pace to be the busiest month for secondary issuance since May, which to some portfolio managers is a sign companies are taking advantage of the market while they still can.

BTW: Unless I misunderstood Charles Boustany, Republicans no longer believe there's a need to control Medicare costs. Somewhere Peter Peterson is weeping. Bonus link and a general recommendation to add Angry Bear to your normal blog reading, if that blog's not already on your radar.

The Most Misunderstood Mayor in America

2009-08-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

What do this Christian Science Monitor article:

Some 64 percent of New Orleanians say they want a mayor with "political connections." This might sound like a step backward – toward backroom politics. But to political consultant Greg Rigamer, who advises nearly all New Orleans candidates, it suggests a post-Katrina desire to find someone who can navigate the federal bureaucracy, the prickly relationship with Baton Rouge (the city's main patron), and New Orleans' own political spiderwebs.

and these American Zombie posts have in common?

It might be better for for me to begin with a related question, if Nagin's such a buffoon, moron, walking id, or whatever it is you choose to call him, how did he did he triumph so easily in two very important, fiercely contested campaigns in less than three years? Maybe not so fiercely contested*, when Nagin declared* the second campaign finished after a victory over his city council opponents, nobody objected.

IMO, the common denominator is a few misconceptions about the mayor that even his harshest critics have failed to correct. In some cases, his critics helped spread those misconceptions. Frankly, I have no idea whether Nagin was too incompetent, unintelligent or inexperienced to be mayor of a city that faced New Orleans' post-Katrina problems. I just don't know how you can judge the competence of a mayor who obviously doesn't give a f***. That was obvious to me by the end of 2005, but I guess I really need to finish up on this post. Still, I suspect the attitude that the city needs an experienced politician in the mayor's office stems, at least partially, from the idea that the mayor was overwhelmed by Katrina rather than under-concerned about anything other than himself and his cronies.

I'll have to return to the subject later this week, because it's getting late and I want to be careful how I word some criticisms of the local press and suggestions for the local blogosphere. Still, I couldn't help but think of that other Jason Berry when I read today's paper.

*In fairness to Landrieu, he was severely constrained by the fact that the supposedly anti-Nagin media insisted on complimenting both candidates on running clean, high-minded campaigns without innuendo or mud-slinging even after the Nagin campaign began an ad blitz that was based on innuendo. After the veto override (linked above) failed, Nagin declared the issue dead until the next mayoral election. Nobody, in politics or in the press, seemed to consider the implications. I think the next mayor will be saddled with an unprecedented number of expensive contracts for city services when he takes office.

Obviously, there's at least one incomplete sentence in the comment that I made at People Get Ready (also linked above), but it's a topic that I returned to frequently here and in comments on other blogs. In all honesty, I say this more to establish credibility than to brag, I called it earlier and more accurately than just about anybody: Nagin's second term would amount to one continuous campaign for control of reconstruction spending that he would win easily if he was seen as a stupid buffoon rather than a ruthless opportunist.

Then, we'll securitize the city debt and sell credit derivatives

2009-08-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

If Thursday's headline about the city budget came as a surprise to you, you haven't given much thought to the city's financial situation. Earlier this year, there seemed to be chance that a post-Katrina reconstruction boom would hide the extent of the city's financial difficulties for a couple of years, but there was also reason to doubt that federal money alone could keep the city afloat. Still, the best anyone could have realistically hoped for was a couple of good years before hitting the tiffing point at some point during the next mayor's first term. But it was soon obvious that we wouldn't even be that lucky, especially since the local tourism and convention industry has failed to buck that new normal trend. The sad thing is, most city council members seem to realize that the city faces real financial difficulties, but they seem to have a collective TIF addiction.

So, what makes Austin Badon think that the city has enough money to get into the business of flipping commercial real estate? In a recent appearance on WDSU, he said that the City Council should have voted to spend $8M on the Chevron Building, even though the Chevron Building would only be a temporary location for City Hall. Seriously, Badon's plan would call for buying the Chevron Building, then spending the money to build a new city hall, and then offering the Chevron Building to some company so that it would come into New Orleans and create jobs. There's no transcript that I can find, but he outlines his proposal at about the 2:30 mark of pt. 2 of his recent hot seat appearance on WDSU with Ed Murray (Pt. 1 can be found here). I also don't want to put words in Badon's mouth, but I honestly don't know why he brought up the Chevron Building in reference to racial divisions on the City Council. Does he think that at least one white council member should have voted for the mayor's plan in the interest of racial harmony?

Yet, Norman Robinson (or his producer) and Errol LaBorde have decided that Badon is a serious candidate, but James Perry isn't worth mentioning. Even a gun battle outside his campaign headquarters can't get Perry on the news, what's up with that?

Just to be clear, I'm not the "Perry bandwagon." There are a couple of things that I really like about Perry, but I also have some strong reservations. However, the reservations aren't based an utterly superficial resemblance between his candidacy and Nagin's candidacy eight years ago. I also think he deserves to be taken at least as seriously as either Austin Badon or Rob Couhig.

I'll probably won't be at Rising Tide tomorrow

2009-08-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

I've already registered, but the recovery from a procedure that I underwent Wednesday won't be as quite as fast as I had hoped. So, I've decided that it would be prudent to avoid potentially chaotic situations in which punches may be thrown. However, if anybody reads this on time, I do have one favor to ask. I suspect that at least one member of the politics panel will talk about the need for visionary leadership. If that happens, please ask him how many peyote buttons he thinks the city can afford.

Three announced candidates for mayor, three mayoral candidates on WDSU

2009-08-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Edited edition.

WTF?

The Times Picayune on August 9th:

So far, though, the tally of declared candidates totals just three: state Sen. Ed Murray, state Rep. Austin Badon and James Perry, executive director of a fair housing organization.

The Picayune last Saturday:

In fact, it happened during what amounted to the campaign's first televised event this month, as two of the candidates looking to move into City Hall next year took dead aim at Nagin, whose popularity stood at 24 percent in a recent University of New Orleans poll.

Asked by WDSU-TV anchor Norman Robinson to assess how the city is faring as Nagin nears the end of his eight-year tenure, state Sen. Ed Murray and state Rep. Austin Badon didn't mince words

Before just assuming that WDSU took it upon itself to exclude one of the three announced candidates from "what amounted to the campaign's first televised event," I decided to see whether Norman Robinson said anything about James Perry being unable to attend. I ddn't hear anything when I watched the video. Moreover, potential candidate Rob Couhig was on last night to say that he'll run if it looks like enough voters realize just how much the city needs his brilliant leadership. He appeared alone, he didn't even have to share time with any other candidates or potential candidates.

More on Badon, Murray, Couhig and Perry to come, but it's past time for me to get around to some posts that I've been thinking about since May.

I bent over backwards to be diplomatic toward the local media in my last post before I went on vacation because I had some serious criticism planned. Not that I wanted to go back to taking pot shots at the local media, but Nagin's last State of the City address prompted me to read some old articles and that research led to three conclusions

1. Though almost nobody acknowledged it, it was obvious by the end of 2005 that Nagin really didn't give a shit about the city.

2. The consensus historians and pleasant conversationalists of the local media either couldn't see or refused to acknowledge the obvious fact that Nagin has never given a shit about anybody but Nagin. They have no business defining the candidates in the next mayor's race.

3. Jay Batt has too much baggage to be either effective or believable as a reformer.

Before I start on the media criticism I will make an offer to any local journalists who happen to read and take offense at anything that I might write about the second point. Nagin's handling of the NIMBY/FEMA trailer issue was only part of the reason why I decided that Nagin didn't give a shit. However, Nagin vacationed in Jamaica the last week of November 2005. The first news report that I could find on the FEMA trailer controversy appeared in the Dec. 1, 2006 Times Picayune, and the issue wasn't resolved until some time in January 2006. If anybody can show me any evidence that, during that time period (Dec. 2005-Jan. 2006), a single local journalist even suggested that maybe, just maybe, Nagin should have stayed in town to discuss FEMA trailer placement instead of travelling to Jamaica, I'll will apologize for every negative thing that I've ever written about every local journalist.

Sounds reasonable to me

2009-08-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

On Meet the Press this morning:

MR. GREGORY: “Pull the plug on grandma.” That’s not part of this debate. It’s not in the bill, Senator.

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, David, it’s hyperbolic, it’s fearmongering, it’s actually politics at its worst. That’s the kind of thing that generates the kind of anger and fear and anxiety that people have today. You know, it’s, it’s amazing to me that a very good idea, one I’m sure that maybe even all of us agree with, that there ought to be some consultation, some opportunity to talk about these things outside of that moment when you’re at your most emotionally vulnerable state in life. And, and, you know, the amazing thing is—and Johnny Isakson, a, a member of the, the Health Committee, actually offered as a mandatory requirement that there be this mandatory counseling. He—as it turns out, it, it was, it—they, they persuaded him to offer it as a voluntary measure. But that voluntary counseling is something that we ought to be encouraging, not discouraging.

MR. GREGORY: And in fact, Senator Coburn, the prescription drug bill that the Republican Congress passed back in 2003 had a similar provision, did it not?

SEN. COBURN: I don’t know. I wasn’t in Congress in 2003, so I’m not familiar with that.

The only comment I'll make is that Coburn does a have a seat on the Senate Commitment responsible for health care legislation.

Update: Henry Blodget, of all people, provides a common sense take on the issue.

Two things I wondered about last week

2009-08-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Can't believe I'm asking this, but is it possible that Texas librarians are cooler than Louisiana librarians? When I saw the Tattooed Ladies of TLA calendar on sale last week, I expected body piercings on the LLA website -- couldn't even find any interesting hairdos. I'd say something about the need for us paraprofessionals to assert ourselves, but I don't have any tattoos either. Don't recall seeing on that other blogging library worker either. In my defense, I don't have the kind of arms that other bloggers gush about. The tattoo I've always wanted, a heart with an arrow through it (with "me" written in it), would look downright pathetic on my puny bicep.

On a totally unrelated note, isn't it a little pointless to list being elected "Louisiana’s first black congressman since Reconstruction" (not to single out Clancy DuBos, just using a readily available link to a phrase that I heard a few too many times) among William Jefferson's accomplishments? It's true, but all he did was win a congressional election. He wasn't a trailblazer like James Meredith or Jackie Robinson who braved threats and abuse, and he wasn't even like Dutch Morial who beat the odds in being elected the city's first black mayor -- while the majority of the city's electorate was white*. When you say that Jefferson was the state's first black congressman since Reconstruction, all you're saying is that he won the first election in Louisiana's 2nd congressional district after Lindy Boggs retired.

While I'm on the subject, I will point out that Jefferson was no Willie Stark who started out as an idealistic champion of the poor and became corrupted. From his early days in the state legislature

About the same time, Jefferson launched one of his earliest ventures, in the rent-to-own appliance business. that was, like others that would follow, a joint project with several siblings, in this case brothers Mose and Bennie and sister Betty, a former School Board member who is now a city assessor. Through Jefferson Interests, a company they founded, the group acquired four REMCO stores starting in the early 1980s, after Jefferson had joined the Legislature.

Some called the business predatory. In 1986, Rudy Lombard, one of Jefferson's opponents in his second bid for mayor, noted in debates that some public-housing tenants in Algiers late on payments had complained of being "harassed and intimidated" by REMCO officials.

Lombard also ripped Jefferson for sponsoring a bill that would have allowed theft charges to be filed against renters who did not return appliances on time. Jefferson denied sponsoring such a bill at first, but the next day he conceded he had when reporters confronted him with the evidence. The bill never passed.

through his career in congress, Jefferson always put his own interests, and those of his wealthy backers, ahead of the concerns of poor people.

*The majority of the city's population was black in 1978, but, in part because the black population was younger, voter registration was still majority white. I don't know if an apparent error in yesterday's paper was the result of shoddy research (or no research) or merely a poorly worded sentence:

As always, a key piece of the puzzle is race. Political experts tend to agree that voters gravitate toward candidates who look like themselves. The rule of thumb has played out in New Orleans for decades as a majority black electorate installed African-American candidates in key government posts, including the mayor's office in every election since 1978.

It's not a major point, but the crowd that thinks that the city's worst racists didn't move to the suburbs but chose to stay in the city in an attempt to use "reform" as part of a nefarious plot to steal back the power they couldn't hold on to democratically always seems to get the history wrong.

I've heard people even say that "Figaro" (the defunct local weekly that in the 70's occupied a similar niche to the one filled by "Gambit" today) helped elect Morial by convincing liberal-leaning white professionals that Morial was a superior candidate to Joe DiRosa. This piece (you may need to use this link and click a second link) of pseudoscholarship tells a similar story:

According to Allen Rosensweig, a prominent New Orleans pollster, Morial got 97% of the black vote and 19% of the white vote. Political writers for the New Orleans Times-Picayune had only slightly different figures. They analyzed 42 precincts with 10 or fewer white voters and found Morial getting 94.73% of the black vote. In 68 precincts identified as having 10 or fewer black voters DiRosa got 78.29%to Morial’s 21.61%. Morial fared extremely well in the Uptown wards, frequently referred to as the “Silk Stocking” area, near Tulane and Loyola universities. In that area he garnered more than one third of the white vote according to detailed analysis. Candidate DiRosa’s son told the story in frank language. By his account, “The uptown white vote killed us. I guess it was just fashionable to vote for a black man” (Gillis, 11/14/1977).

Had the internet yet been invented, a four or five year old kid in Gentilly might have expressed his dissatisfaction with a choice between the racist candidate and the candidate of the yuppie left. Well, the word "yuppie" hadn't yet been invented either.

There are some questions that I wouldn't expect a journalist to ask

2009-07-24T00:19:00.000-07:00

With the city's looming financial problems, one might expect the city government to look for the most cost effective way to restore its battered commercial district. So, it's entirely appropriate to ask why the mayor keeps coming with expensive proposals to shift its center of gravity.

Several months ago, I mentioned seeing a copy of Roy Rodney's infamous counter letter. If Nagin's former business partner was secretly acquiring land in the CBD, near the Chevron building, it's entirely legitimate to ask what other Nagin cronies might profit from the proposed relocation of city hall. Well, I wouldn't expect a serious journalist to ask such an inflammatory question, but a blogger certainly can. I wouldn't even consider it irresponsible blogging, since the mayor does spring these proposals by surprise and try to ram them through the council.

There are some other questions about counter letters that I think would be appropriate for anybody to ask, but I don't have time to elaborate. I'm getting ready to go on vacation -- off to get some Argentinian tail. More frequent posting when I get back, starting to feel like more of a dilettante than the jerk I almost voted for.

Interesting post about blogging, but those aren't the reasons I've been such a lazy blogger. As I said in a comment on my last post:

I tend to not even sit down in front of the computer until about 9 this time of year, and since I get easily distracted, it can take me a long time to look up links. I'm not an angry person in everyday life, but I tend to blog about things that piss me off. I got tired of starting blog posts at 11 at night about things that are going to cause me to go to bed angry. The obvious answer is to look up the links one night and write the post the next, but I've just looked up a lot of links without getting around to the posts.

This post would have been much easier to write a year or two or ago.

2009-06-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

But somewhere along the line, I decided to stop being quite so freewheeling with the insults. So, I'll assume that Mark Singletary puts more time, energy and effort into editing the content of his paper than into writing his commentaries. I thought that last week's was pointless (see comment 4), but this week's commentary isn't much better:

Louisiana spends more than $6,500 per resident each year. That number is based on 2007 data from the Tax Foundation, an independent research center. We rank 10th in per-capita spending when compared with other states.

Florida and Texas, ranked 49th and 50th, spend the least per resident. It’s fair to assume that quality of life issues aren’t tied directly to government spending. Most polls show Texans and Floridians are fairly happy about where they live.

Our closest neighbors all spend less than we do, as well. Mississippi, our dirt poor closest neighbor, ranks 13th at around $6,400 per resident and No. 29 Arkansas spends $5,300.

Not that I could think of any reason why Louisiana and Mississippi might have spent more per capita in 2007 than in previous years, but I decided to take a look at the National Tax Foundation's website anyway. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any earlier years.

Because Louisiana ranked tenth in state spending per capita in 2007 (according to the tax foundation), Singletary seems to have made an unfounded assumption about our per capita tax rate:

We tax ourselves excessively, yet we accept sub-par services from state government.

Not according to the Tax Foundation:

Estimated at 8.4% of income, Louisiana's state/local tax burden percentage ranks 42nd highest nationally, well below the national average of 9.7%. Louisiana taxpayers pay $3,286 per capita in state and local taxes.

Of course, the figure given is for state and local taxes, while Singletary was talking about state taxes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau Louisiana ranked 36th in per capita state taxes* in 2005. Also, I was being sarcastic in the middle paragraph.

On second thought: Singletary does make one or two good points, but he misses a big point. I'll add more tonight.

* The Tax Foundation ranking is as a percentage of income, the Census Bureau ranking is according to dollar amount per capita.

Do Bob and Irvin read the paper?

2009-05-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

We all know that our current mayor won't acknowledge any responsibility if the city's in bad shape in three years. If he comes with a grand vision of the city's future and personally chooses the contractors to start the work, it won't be his fault if his successor can't find the money to finish the job, it won't be Nagin's fault. But, is the rest of the city's leadership every bit as delusional? For example, do Bob Becker

City Park leaders have not secured money for the other primary elements -- a children's splash park near Marconi and an amphitheater planned for a portion of the tract where the tennis courts are now. But officials are hopeful that the flurry of activity will lead to more government and private dollars.

"Donors, as a general rule, give to successful things," said Bob Becker, the park's director. "That's because everyone likes to see progress.

"And when people see lots going on, it gives them confidence that you will use their money in a good way. So, we're hopeful that by moving all these projects along, it will make it easier to raise money from corporations, foundations and government agencies."

and Irvin Mayfield

The $650 million goal for all these initiatives isn't out of reach, said Mayfield, adding that donations have been received from such sources as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and the Pritzker Foundation.

realize that the economy is still pretty f***ed-up?

Last Fall, some local bloggers rightly blasted Ned Lamont for referring to the financial crisis as our Katrina, however, the "world class" crowd better realize that people who have less money due to "their Katrina" aren't going to fork over money to help us recover from our Katrina. I think might shoot the next civic leader who says "bigger and better."

Funny old quote

2009-05-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

It was not the night's only episode in which Nagin professed to be an unwitting victim of injustice in politics. Later, he employed a part-jovial, part-indignant tone during the Alliance for Good Government 's endorsement forum.

"I hope that once I sit down to write my book, one chapter of the book won't be, 'How can a mayor, Ray Nagin -- who opened up the doors of City Hall to deal with the corruption issue, who yelled at the tips at the brake-tag stations, who stopped all this crazy contracting that was going on -- has gone through four years without a scandal, and couldn't get the endorsement of the Alliance for Good Government ,' " he said. "I hope that's not in my book."

The quote appeared in the Times Picayune* shortly before the 2006 election. The funny thing is, Nagin gave a pretty good description of the great corruption crackdown: it amounted to little more than yelling. That's a point I'll return in an upcoming post, but, in the meantime, it's a funny quote.

*It's no more Mr. Nice Guys as candidates trade attacks - ALSO: Nagin 's conspiracy theory; Five for Fielkow; Look who came with Couhig

Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Thursday, May 4, 2006
Author: Michelle Krupa and Gordon Russell Staff writers

What's entirely missing this time?

2009-05-24T01:06:00.000-07:00

Over half the city's residents rent their homes. At least, that was the case before Katrina. Yet, neither the mayor nor the city's daily newspaper seem to care about 53.5% of the population.

Mayor Nagin:

Everyone has a right to return to this city, especially if they own property.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the Picayune's editorial against raising the homestead exemption barely noted the fact that raising the exemption would almost certainly lead to higher rents. The Times Picayune didn't mention it at all in Saturday's editorial.

As a renter, I just feel so unwanted.

Blurry memory, I suppose

2009-05-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

The mayor claims to have been making a heroic stand in New Orleans:

I have made some tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. To lead effectively, you must sometimes tell people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. Sometimes you have to go against the grain and upset powerful people. Sometimes you have to cuss a little to get people in power to help suffering citizens. Sometimes you have to stare greed in the face and say "No, everyone has a right to return to this city, especially if they own property."(wtf?) Sometimes you have to stand up to the double standards and do what you think is right for all people and not just a chosen few.

When he was actually lying on the beach in Jamaica:

For residents of New Orleans' most ravaged neighborhoods, there is no more pressing issue than whether they will be allowed to renovate or rebuild on their property.

Now, after weeks of only glancing discussion by state and local leaders, a group of urban and post-disaster planning experts has forced the potentially explosive issue to the forefront, saying the city must concentrate its rebuilding efforts on the highest and most environmentally sound sections or run the risk of haphazard development that results in miles and miles of blighted neighborhoods.

The panel of more than 50 land use experts, all members of the Washington-based Urban Land Institute, drafted a map to illustrate areas they believe are ripe for collective buyouts or future green space , including most of eastern New Orleans and Gentilly; the northern part of Lakeview; and parts of the Lower 9th Ward, Broadmoor, Mid-City and Hollygrove. Their draft report was presented last week.
…
While it remains unclear who has the ultimate power to make those decisions, it appears that the ball is mostly in Mayor Ray Nagin 's court.

The mayor was not available for comment this week because he was in Jamaica taking "much needed" family time, according to Communications Director Sally Forman.

Nagin also failed to show up last week at the ULI presentation, widely viewed as the cornerstone of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission's master planning efforts. Forman said at the time that the mayor couldn't attend because he was in Washington. On Tuesday, however, she said he was in Baton Rouge at the time of the presentation, and left the same day for a weeklong vacation.

At least, that’s how the Times Picayune reported it on November 25, 2005* . When he returned a few days later, the paper reported his strong opposition:

Elected officials and residents from New Orleans' hardest-hit areas on Monday responded with skepticism and, at times, outright hostility to a controversial proposal to eliminate their neighborhoods from post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

Even Mayor Ray Nagin , whose own commission asked the Urban Land Institute to devise the restoration plan, said he is reserving judgment on the most radical aspect: to abandon, at least for the near term, some of the city's lowest-lying ground.

"I'm not ready to concede that neighborhoods need to be demolished," Nagin said after an emotional three-hour public hearing on the Urban Land Institute plan that was unveiled this month. During the meeting, Nagin reiterated his intention to ultimately "rebuild all of New Orleans.**"

In fact, the talk of a "reduced footprint" and "green spaces" had begun two months earlier, almost as soon as residents were allowed back into the city, and that’s the first record that I can find of the mayor taking anything even remotely resembling a firm stand on the issue. He had, as I recall, made vague statements along the lines of "You know man, I think we should rebuild all of New Orleans." But, I don’t recall the mayor taking a stand until it became obvious that feelings were stronger among residents who wanted to return home than among the mix of residents and outside advisers who thought that a reduced footprint might be better. If anybody can find any record of the mayor actually saying a firm "No" to talk of a reduced footprint before it became the politically expedient thing to do, I’d love to see it.

I guess it not’s that big a deal (breaking news: Nagin exaggerates), but the suggestion that the mayor made a tough, unpopular decision strikes me as just another example of Nagin bullshit.

*Experts include science in rebuilding equation - Politics noticeably absent from plan
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Friday, November 25, 2005
Author: Martha Carr Staff writer

**Don't write us off, residents warn - Urban Land Institute report takes a beating
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Author: Frank Donze Staff writer

There's more than one queen of mean in this deck

2009-05-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Once again, Lolis Eric Elie:

Presumably, public officials realize that Louisiana law allows for few exceptions to the documents considered public records. But average citizens -- who might e-mail a public official about criminal activity or a personal issue -- might not realize their correspondence is subject to public records law.

If, for instance, a constituent wrote to his or her council member to complain about the crackhouse next door, the criminals would be able to learn who reported the nuisance.*

Washington brushes aside such concerns, preferring to view her creation as a teaching moment, a chance to inform the citizens of their rights and responsibilities.

"It's responsibility both on the government side and on the citizen side, " she said.

"I could not imagine that a citizen who has been energized and has been invited to engage would not know that, just as records you receive from the government are public records, so are all the records you send."

Perhaps because of my own personal concerns, my immediate reaction was: "Fuck bitch, have the guts to say 'The private life is dead,' if you just don't care who gets hurt in your personal pursuit of justice. Don't give us bullshit reasons that contradict each other."

Of course, it's possible that Washington's no Strelnikov, just a well-intentioned political activist who forgot about the real human impact of her actions. If that were the case, though, I would have expected an entirely different reaction. Seven words: "I'm sorry. I hadn't thought about that." Nobody would have expected her to drop the matter, just to proceed a little more cautiously.

When I consider Washington's Austin background, her connections to the Jefferson machine, her possible abuse of the attorney/client relationship and the unusual circumstances under which Washington came into possession of the council emails, I have trouble thinking of her as just an overzealous, but well-meaning, community activist. Then again, I'm biased. I've emailed Stacy Head, but the only personal information that I included in that email was my pay at a university library. The pay was embarrassingly low, especially before a step up in rank, but nothing to make me hate anybody. I also mentioned this blog, which is semi-anonymous, but that's also not reason for me to hate anybody.

However, not long after Katrina, I emailed other council members and mentioned a medical treatment that I would not want to have turn up anytime somebody Googles my name. It was a stupid move, but I was dealing with post-Katrina stress (like everybody else in the city) and perhaps looking for any outlet to vent, and the medicine had strong psychological as well as physical side effects. In other words, like probably hundreds of other New Orleanians, I had a lapse in judgment. I certainly wasn't engaged enough to think about public records laws and I seriously doubt that most people who write their city council representatives are either. Now, I'll worry about what people will find when they Google my name after other council emails are released. Thanks for the teaching moment Tracie.

Now, it's entirely possible that emails will be released with enough redaction that no private citizens will have personal information revealed. If so, it won't be because Washington insisted on it. Jarvis DeBerry continues to insist that there should be no redaction at all. How can the publishers of the Times Picayune expect any of the city's residents to read their paper, when even its own writers don't?

*George Ingmire made a the same point more strenuously at Humid City:

How many lives could be put in jeopardy if Ms. White were to post these emails? Who will be in charge of selecting the emails for posting on nolapublicrecords.org?

Everyday concerned citizens write their councilperson about everything from crime problems to zoning concerns. Releasing these emails would be the tantamount to exposing potential witnesses and would further damage the already crumbling trust we all have in our city government.

I can't find specific links but similar points were made about private health matters, can't remember if they were made in articles, op-ed columns or letters to the editor, but they did appear in the paper -- the paper that Jarvis DeBerry apparently doesn't read.

She better not be offended

2009-05-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

So much for ignoring a shit stirrer's shit.

The most confrontational words were aimed not at any other candidate but at Mayor Ray Nagin.

While other candidates talked of finding peace with the administration despite recent, very public dust-ups, Clarkson advocated using the budget, the council's main source of power, to even the scales.

Boulet said that the council "has the power to create a parade. If the mayor wants to be at the head of the parade, he can. If he doesn't, he doesn't...Five votes overrides a veto."

Stephanie Grace wrote that in her Oct. 7, 2007 column (not available online). As I recall the event, Head didn't quite do justice to Boulet -- the ellipsis took the place of some strong words on Boulet's part, if memory serves. Also, Boulet went first and got a very positive response from the crowd. I got the impression that Clarkson saw that the audience wanted a city council that would stand up to the mayor and decided to trump Boulet's emotion with know how. Still, she seem prepared to back up what she said. That part of the reason why I recommended a vote for Boulet or clarkson, and that's why Clarkson's been such a disappointment.

Now, read the Picayune's account of Stacy Head's emails:

In an exchange of messages with Councilwoman Shelley Midura, Head refers to Clarkson as "an ASSS" and "a disaster" and says, "I am so tired of her old time politico bs I can't stand it." Midura replies, "I know -- jackie just literally pays lip service to us, and it ain't workin anymore."

Head's not alone in being tired of Clarkson's "old time politico bs."

I think that this aspect of the email controversy is just silly, but I will be curious to see how Head's comments about a food stamp user will somehow be used as a sign of a racial prejudice. Public comments by politicians about "welfare queens' and others who take advantage are often thinly veiled racial appeals, but Head thought this was a private message, why would anybody feel the need to use "code words' in a private conversation?

I haven't posted much since the email controversy started a couple of months, but I have been tempted to comment on Jarvis DeBerry's columns on the matter (I'm sure that's a surprise). On march 12, Lolis Eric Elie wrote:

Presumably, public officials realize that Louisiana law allows for few exceptions to the documents considered public records. But average citizens -- who might e-mail a public official about criminal activity or a personal issue -- might not realize their correspondence is subject to public records law.

If, for instance, a constituent wrote to his or her council member to complain about the crackhouse next door, the criminals would be able to learn who reported the nuisance.

DeBerry has written several columns about the topic, at least two of those columns ridiculed the thought that council members should expect their emails to be private, but he never says anything about the privacy of residents. Of course, he's never felt the need to reconsider his first column on the subject. He never does. A famous quote, of indeterminate origin comes to mind whenever I read DeBerry.

Of course, it didn't help that Head, Fielkow, and company tended to discuss the matter in legal rather than political or emotional terms. They talked too much about pending legal issues and not enough about the privacy of private residents. They certainly didn't use terms like "crack house," "fear for personal safety" or "private health matters" as much as they should have. Make the legal case in court and make the political case when the a reporter sticks a microphone in your face, right? It would have been so easy to put Tracie Washington on the defensive before it got this far.

I'll bet the bikes didn't have lights.

2009-05-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

In a conversation about crime last Winter, another local blogger said something about young guys on bikes making him nervous, especially at night. He went on to ask another person present if it was true that the problem of muggers on bikes in the French Quarter had grown worse in recent months. I don't out as much as I used to, but even I had heard similar stories. This City Business report on armed robberies in the French Quarter doesn't say anything about, but this post* about an incident in Marigny does.

I didn't push it as a topic of conversation, but during the discussion last Winter, I mentioned something that had occurred to me a few nights earlier. While walking along Bayou St.John one evening, I noticed three bicyclists turn onto Moss, heading in my direction. Before they got close enough for me to determine age, race or gender, or look for cultural clues, I had decided that they weren't bike riding muggers. It took me a few minutes to realize that because two of the three bikes were equipped with lights, it subconsciously registered that there was nothing to worry about.

So, here's the question, should riding a bike without lights at night be considered probable cause? There is a state law requiring a front light, side reflectors and either a light or reflector on the rear of any bicycle ridden at night -- can't any obvious violation of law be considered probable cause? I'm not suggesting that pulling over every bicyclist on an improperly equipped would have an appreciable effect on the crime rates for the city as a whole (in most of the city, muggers probably use cars to look for victims), but it would eliminate bias issues and at least one concealed weapon would have been found had the three Marigny muggers been pulled over -- I'd be willing to bet that those bikes didn't have lights.

I'm certainly not suggesting that everybody who rides a bike without a light should get a ticket, the last thing we is more petty arrests clogging the system. However, I'd be willing to bet that, at least at first, such a policy would lead to a considerable number of concealed weapons charges. I wouldn't consider concealed handgun charges petty. Hell, for various reasons, I sometimes find myself riding at night without a light, and I wouldn't want to get a ticket everytime that happened. But, I couldn't certainly understand getting stopped and frisked and having a records check run. If it caused me to miss the beginning of a TV program, that would be my own fault for riding without a light.

I can see a couple of obvious drawbacks to such a policy. Outside of the French Quarter and Marigny, I can't see it having an appreciable effect. Exceptions might have to be made for bicycle delivery people (who might consider it safer to ride in the Quarter at night without a light), and that could lead to the slippery slope of officer discretion. The city might not be able to resist the temptation to turn into a revenue measure, although I can't imagine there being enough potential revenue to offer much temptation. It might be that, once a police officer calls in a code violation to run a check for outstanding warrants, he's obligated to write a ticket. That would lead to the problem of time and resources being wasted on petty offenses, but, if that's the case, the law could be changed.

I'm not suggesting this would be a major breakthrough, but there's an easily defined problem, or smaller part of a larger problem, and I'm sugesting a partial, only partial, solution. Muggers use bicycles to get around in a relatively small, relatively congested area (The French Quarter, parts of Marigny, probably parts of the CBD), but the police obviously can't stop and frisk every cyclists in that area. Even if I weren't a cyclist, I'd cringe at the thought of such an obvious infringement on civil liberties, but I'll guarantee you that the thugs also break other laws that would give the police probable cause to pull them over -- in addition to laws about bikes being properly equipped with lights and reflectors, there's also riding against traffic. Sure, the muggers would adjust, but that's the way it always work. The police come up with a new traffic for combating crime, if it works there's an increased number of arrests and drop in crime. Then, the criminals come up with new tactics and crime rates go back up. So what? You take the temporary drop in crime rates and have the police come up with new tactics down the road.

*Part of a crime roundup at NOLA-DISHU.

What's (almost entirely) missing?

2009-05-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Though I agree with the Times-Picayune editorial page staff that raising that raising the homestead exemption would be a bad idea, I can't say that I was impressed by Thursday's editorial. Though I'm no fan of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, it's probably correct that businesses pay too much of the property tax burden in Louisiana. However, the editorial covered that.

I also agreed that:

Raising the exemption -- even in increments, as proposed in House Bill 485 -- would wipe out millions of dollars in tax revenues that pay for services like schools, drainage and infrastructure repairs. Local governments could be forced to cut services or shift the burden to businesses and renters.

So what's my beef? Well, as The BGR points out:

The millage rate impacts would also increase the tax
burden on the owners of rental properties and indirectly on their renters. Most, if not all, of the increase is likely to be passed on to renters, making their housing
less affordable. This could undermine the ongoing efforts to increase the supply of affordable rental housing throughout the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Yet, the passage that I just quoted contains the only mention of the effect on rents in the entire editorial -- one word.

There's also something that seems to be missing in local news. Since increasing the homestead exemption would not be in the interest of most businesses,* it's easy to find reports of business groups speaking out against. However, the poor and oppressed tend be renters and the children of the poor and oppressed tend to be public school student. So, one can reasonably conclude that the poor and oppressed would be hurt by an increase in the homestead exemption. I was sure that there were organized groups that spoke out on behalf of the poor and oppressed locally. Yet, I can't find any evidence of anybody speaking for the poor on this issue.

*An increase in the property tax on businesses could add to the relative advantage of big box retailers that have been able to obtain property tax exemptions from local governments.

Matthew 6:24

2009-04-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

You may have noticed this item in the news over the weekend:

A Virginia company has agreed to pay $4 million to settle claims it breached a contract to set up a base camp for relief workers in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Lighthouse Disaster Relief and two of its partners, Gary Heldreth and Kerry Farmer, were accused of billing the Federal Emergency Management Agency for work they never performed after the August 2005 storm.
...
Two days after the contract was issued, FEMA was "deluged with Katrina-related invoices" when it paid the company $5.2 million for the full price of the contract, according to the Justice Department's lawsuit.

"Had officials at (FEMA) known that defendants had billed for work not yet performed, they would not have authorized such payments," the lawsuit said, adding that auditors uncovered the erroneous payment in January 2006.

A contractor that took over for Lighthouse told FEMA the camp was "in chaos" when they arrived, according to the suit.

You might not recall that Lighthouse was apparently awarded the contract as part Bush's faith-based initiative. From a 2006 Scout Prime report:

Heldreth never did the work but pocketed the $5.2 Million. And the pastor began spending it……

U.S. District Judge James Brady on Monday froze the assets of Lighthouse Disaster Relief and owners Gary Lee Heldreth and Kerry Lynn Farmer one hour after the Department of Justice filed papers claiming the two are “moving money at an alarming pace” — spending it on a motor home and three new cars, and cashing checks $10,000 at a time.
...
Investigators have since determined that Lighthouse Disaster Relief wasn’t even incorporated until October 2005 — a month after it won the FEMA contract.

I guess there's one more similarity between the Bush administration and the Nagin administration.

Will we see similar savings in New Orleans?

2009-04-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in yesterday's paper:

Governments get lower bids from contractors as economy slows

A catastrophic hurricane and a booming world economy combined to make construction prices soar in the New Orleans area in the past three years. But the tide has turned, and contractors are underbidding construction estimates by substantial margins.
...
The city of Slidell planned to spend $5.8 million on a 23,000-square-foot municipal building, or $252 per square foot. But when city officials tore open bid envelopes in January, the low price was $4.35 million, or $189 per square foot.

"The taxpayers are getting a break," Morris said.

In St. Bernard Parish, recent bids for a cultural arts center at Chalmette High School came in at $25 million, $4 million less than anticipated, and the cost of a new Arabi Elementary School came in at $14.5 million, $1.5 million less than the estimate, school Superintendent Doris Voitier said.

For some reason, I doubt we'll see the same savings when rebuilding contracts are awarded in New Orleans. I also doubt that many people will bother to ask why.

Questions of general principle

2009-04-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

That should be asked before Saturday's election.

Do you think that ridiculous hyperbole should be treated with ridicule? If a politician kills an important piece of reform legislation because it goes too far, do you think she has an obligation to help craft a more acceptable piece of legislation?

If the answer to either question is yes, I'll remind you of a bill that Julie Quinn killed last Summer:

But state Sen. Julie Quinn said counter letters are essential. She chairs the committee that killed the bill to ban counter letters.

“It would have destroyed commerce in Louisiana over night,” Quinn said. “The legislation was so wide open, I don’t think there’s a single business that would stay here a minute if that was the case.”

Quinn said she’s not trying to open the door for corruption, but wants to make sure that if lawmakers go forward with any counter letter ban, it doesn’t affect private legal practices.

“We certainly shouldn’t go overboard and outlaw all private contracts,” Quinn said. “It’s the backbone of commerce in our country.”

Maybe Julie Quinn really believes that outlawing counter letters would destroy commerce letters and there's no need to introduce another bill. I suppose it really is possible that, despite Governor Awesome's awesome tax cuts and even awesomer ethics reform, nobody would choose to do business in Louisiana if we didn't have a mechanism for secrecy that no other state in the union has. But, I 'd like to hear her explain that. Otherwise, somebody should ask her why she's running for the Jefferson Parish council when she has unfinished business in Baton Rouge.

FWIW, I really don't care which Republican gets elected to the Jefferson Parish Council. If anything, I can think of at least one reason why I'd probably prefer her to Cynthia Lee-Sheng, but I hate exaggeration that goes far enough to border on dishonesty or insult our intelligence. Also, her commercials are...interesting. She implies that she's the straightforward, straight talker in the race, yet one of her commercials implies that The Gambit endorsed* her over Lee-Sheng. Gotta love straight talkers who exaggerate and mislead. She also says that the impression that she owed $265,000 in unpaid taxes was due to a complicated divorce settlement. I'll withhold judgment on that, but the complicated divorce settlement with a major hotel magnate/real estate developer raises questions about her reasons for killing the counter letter bill.

Again, I really don't care about a Jefferson Parish council race, but I do want to hear one of the candidates answer some serious questions about her part in killing a reform that would have brought greater transparency to business and politics throughout the state. I could say something about double standards, racial politics and the transparency issue, but I'm waiting for the city's politically active minister/businessmen to raise a stink over the failure to outlaw counter letters. I'll agree with them if they do.

*Can't figure out why she left out the enthusiastic endorsement of "We Saw That."

Which is the April Fools' Day Joke?

2009-04-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

The Justice Department dropped the case against Ted Stevens.

After our experience with Nagin, it would be insane to elect an inexperienced politician to serve as our next mayor.

Penile fractures are unusually common in western Iran.

If the lack of a link doesn't make the answer obvious, here's a hint:

Though Nagin said Monday he wasn't sure who paid for his family's trip, he said he was sure it wasn't a city contractor.

"It's no vendor," he said. "It's a personal vacation. What's up with you guys? What's with y'all, man?"

Asked specifically who paid for the trip, Nagin became irritated.

"I don't know, man," he said. "This is a personal trip. I've taken trips to Hawaii before. I've taken trips to the Caribbean."

Funny he should mention it. I was just getting ready to bring up the fact that Nagin went to Jamaica less than three months after Katrina. I'll return to the subject at some length, but the only lesson to be learned from Nagin's time as mayor is that city can't afford another smug prick who doesn't give a shit. I will grant that, to some degree, Nagin demonstrates the risks inherent with choosing an unknown quantity, but not to the extent that you might think. We chose to ignore what we did know, or could have known, about him.

New comment on an old post

2009-03-31T20:47:00.000-07:00

I wanted to wait until I had time to add a few thoughts, but it's already been a week since I received an interesting comment on a post from December of 2006. I will say that though I think that all of the questions that I've raised about James Carter in the past are valid ones*, I should acknowledge that the lack of a response to the email in this post gave me negative feeling at the very start of his term. The transparency ordinance might have caused me to soften my opinion, had Fielkow not dropped it.

At any rate, the old post and the new comment:

David - It's time to revisit this post. Now the question is who is behind Nagin? Carter's behavior in the Fielkow transparency dustup was extremely interesting. There he was in the niddle of the whole thing, he ran as a reformed versus his behavior since then, between Fielkow and the Nagin contractors, and it looked like his hand would be publicly forced and then..... what? Nothing on the vote, Fielkow suddenly dropped it.

So: Washington and Jacques Morial are co-directors of LJI. Jacques Morial has about 10 companies and a LIFE registration at 201 St. Charles's 25th floor and, guess what, the public records request from the mysterious Tionne Simon (see WDSU story) comes from the UPS location at that very address. How many offices on the 25th floor have their pickups there? Well?

The drive to save Nagin and the contractors (via the Nagin email deletions and the email deliveries) is coming from none other than Jacques Morial.

posted by Anonymous

I have no idea who left the comment, but he I'd bet that he's the same anon who's left some interesting comments on this AZ post.

*Hell, his campaign website said "no more business as usual," and he ran as a reformer, but he's helped kill at least two reforms.

Reversal of something or other

2009-03-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting comment on a recent Picayune article:

Posted by stinc on 03/23/09 at 8:26AM

Tracie Washington KNOWS the rules. She was the attorney for Capital Metro in Austin Texas, their version of RTA. She was fired for calling the local prosecuting attorney an SOB in front of reporters in 1997 after he threatened to subpoena records she refused to hand over. If you check the archives of the Austin American Statesman and the Austin Business Journal you will find story after story of Tracie's obstructionist activities regarding open records. She refused to release records regarding a freight rail contractor and had to be sued to turn over records about a $400,000 parking lot that Metro had built for Praise Tabernacle church, saying it would be a park and ride but then quickly cancelling any plans to actually run service to the lot.

She KNOWS the rules. White KNOWS the rules. Nagin KNOWS the rules. They just don't like 'em and they are gaming us.

I couldn't find any working links on Google, but a search of the Austin American Statesman's archives reveals that the commenter was basically correct. Veronica White's good friend (and attorney?), Tracie Washington got into trouble, and was ultimately dismissed, as Cap Metro's chief counsel for obstructionist tactics involving the release of public records. I couldn't find any evidence that Washington was involved in the decision to pay a local church $500,000 to build a transfer station and park-and-ride servicing a line that was scheduled to be discontinued, but she did her best to obstruct efforts to investigate the deal. She was dismissed after publicly calling an attorney investigating the deal a "son of a bitch." That was the final straw, not the sole cause. FWIW, I looked but couldn't find any record of a Statesman op-ed piece about a stereotype of white, male aggressiveness.

As I said, no working links. However, ~~I can provide excerpts from Austin American Statesman articles with date and headlines.~~ Too nice a day to sit inside doing that. Partially edited the first, with plans to post two or three paragraphs from seven or eight articles, but realized it would take all day. What follows is one partially edited article, one complete article, and two editorials.

Mar. 5, 1997:

Statesman sues to get records of Cap Metro; Newspaper seeks files on

The Austin American-Statesman on Tuesday sued Capital Metro, claiming the transit authority has broken state law by refusing requests for records detailing how the agency spends taxpayer money.

State District Judge Joseph Hart ordered Cap Metro to appear in court April 3 to explain why the records should not be made public.

The requested records range from the compensation package for General Manager Justin Augustine III to a computerized list of the checks that Capital Metro writes. Also requested was a computer database of employee payroll information, which is routinely given to the newspaper by other public agencies including the City of Austin and the State of Texas.

Some of the requests have been pending since September. State law requires any public agency to release information within a reasonable period after such requests, or to ask for an opinion from the Texas attorney general within 10 days.

The suit alleges that the transit authority did neither.
...
Augustine said he thought the agency had provided the information.

I think we've got a big misunderstanding over here,'' he said.

Since last Sept. 17, the newspaper has filed seven requests for information from the agency. The agency provided some information, but failed to provide a vast amount of what was requested, according to the lawsuit
...

The lawsuit came after other efforts by the newspaper to resolve the issue.

The most recent occurred Feb. 21, when another of the newspaper's lawyers, Jim Hemphill, sent a letter to Augustine and the Capital Metro board, listing the information that had not been released and asking again that it be released.

On Feb. 28, Capital Metro General Counsel Tracie Washington sent a letter to Hemphill saying that Irie Turner, the agency's contracts manager, who used to be in charge of public information requests, already had provided the information.

The lawsuit states that the information has not been provided. I apologize if you have not gotten the information,'' Washington said Tuesday, when told the American-Statesman had not been given the database and other documents. I don't know what's happened in the past. ... I have been responding.''

Some records provided

The American-Statesman is interested in details of the compensation offered to Augustine last summer when he was hired to head the agency. At the time, the information was not publicly divulged.

On Tuesday, after the lawsuit was filed, Washington said that the transit authority does not offer compensation packages as described by the newspaper in its request. Details of Augustine's salary and benefits, she said, are included in a contract. If the newspaper had worded its request to ask for a contract instead of the compensation package, Washington said the information would have been provided.

Capital Metro did send the newspaper a list of salaries for the agency's top 10 employees, but no information about other compensation. Augustine's salary was listed at $118,500.

In her letter Feb. 28 to Hemphill, Washington said a computer payroll database requested by the newspaper could not be produced because it contains confidential information, such as Social Security numbers. The agency, however, never asked the state attorney general's office for a ruling on whether the information could be withheld from the public.

Washington said Tuesday she will try to make the database available without the confidential information.

The agency also did not produce phone records, which the agency said Tuesday after the lawsuit was filed would cost more than $13,000 to produce, and a federal performance report requested by the newspaper.
Nancy Monson, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said information from public agencies is presumed to be public unless the agency proves otherwise.

If they never get back with you and never go to the attorney general, it is public information,'' she said. Then you've got a legal situation.''

Board chairman concurs

David A. Anderson, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in media law, said the information requested by the American-Statesman sounds like all public records to me.''

He said the public should care because there's a lot of public money in Capital Metro.'' The transit authority gets $88 million of its $118 million annual budget from a one-cent sales tax.

March 16, 1997

Bus agency spotty on openness; People seeking Cap Metro files

When Doug Killough asked Capital Metro in late January for all railroad -related expenditures,'' he expected to discover how the agency was spending taxpayer dollars to improve its rail line for light-rail transit.

Instead, he got nothing.

Even as Capital Metro was spending $500,000 to promote a light-rail demonstration last month, the transit agency's chief counsel, Tracie Washington, was writing Killough about the light-rail expenditures: In my opinion this is not railroad related, but transit related.''

Killough's experience is not an isolated incident, according to a survey of people who requested public records from the transit agency over the past year.

Capital Metro often releases routine information such as board minutes or provides documents to people either doing business or wanting to do business with the agency. Yet at times the agency delays the release of public information, particularly about its performance and how it spends tax dollars, or denies it has documents that it later is forced to release.

Capital Metro does this although state law entitles the public to such information in a reasonable time. If an agency considers the information confidential, it has 10 days to say it will appeal to the attorney general. If it doesn't, the information must be released to the public.

Among the cases in which there have been problems getting information from Capital Metro:

*On Jan. 20, attorney William Hubbarth sought personnel records, plus --policies dealing with employee discipline or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Hubbarth is representing two people Capital Metro fired.

On Feb. 3, the agency told Hubbarth it had no discipline or disability policies. After a month of wrangling and threatening a lawsuit, Hubbarth said he finally got the records.

*Last summer, KVUE television reporter Treva Ladd, trying said. We're spending a gazillion dollars on breakdowns, and I got nothing.''

She read from her request: Radio room logs (i.e. driver's radio calls into Capital Metro dispatch) for January 1, 1995, to August 21, 1996.'

How much more specific can you get?'' Ladd asked.

*Twelve days ago, the Austin American-Statesman sued Capital Metro after the agency refused for months to provide public records information routinely disclosed by other public agencies, including the compensation package of General Manager Justin Augustine III. Tracie Washington, Capital Metro's chief counsel, said the newspaper should have asked for Augustine's employment contract, not his compensation package. A day after the lawsuit was filed, the agency released most of the records.

All of this comes as Capital Metro, which collects $88 million in sales taxes for its $118 million budget, is trying to move forward on light rail. Meanwhile, its critics are pressing for legislation to give voters a greater say over Capital Metro's taxes, leadership and the future of light rail.

Is this flap over public records just a misunderstanding, as Augustine suggested when the newspaper filed its lawsuit, or is the agency trying to stifle criticism by not releasing records?

Capital Metro officials won't say. Interviews with Augustine and Washington were requested on Tuesday. Washington, through the agency press office, agreed to a Friday interview, then canceled that morning.

Irie Turner, the agency's purchasing director, was in charge of requests for public records last year when the American-Statesman and KVUE did not get their records. Washington, who joined Capital Metro last fall as chief counsel, took over the assigment this year.

Since then, dialogue between the public and the agency has become shrill at times. Correspondence between Washington, Killough, Hubbarth, among others, refers to accusations, threats and irate phone calls.

Killough threatened to file a complaint with the attorney general. Hubbarth, after threatening to sue and file a complaint of official misconduct against Washington, got his records, including information from personnel files. Both said Washington was rude and confrontational on the phone.

She told me, We're doing things here differently now. I'm the big dog and you're going to have to deal with me,'' Hubbarth said.

Not everyone has had a problem getting public records from Capital Metro. The agency provided the names of 18 people and companiesto comment; and four couldnot be contacted.

David Wittie, a member of a local group of people with disabilities, said he had no problem getting minutes and a tape of a board meeting. Bertha Means, the owner of Austin Cab, said she was pleased with the response to her request for information on a program under which her company does business with Capital Metro.

Adstaff, a temporary services company, was given copies of Capital Metro's current contracts with temp agencies.

The state attorney general's office and the IRS reported no problem getting records. Neither did Bob Butler, a partner in a brick company,who said Capital Metro gave him copies of a rail freight contract. Butler was considering shipping freight on the agency's rail line but never did.

Fighting over records

Killough has followed Capital Metro since he and his partners lost a bidto operate a freight company along the rail line that Capital Metro manages and is likely to be the spine of any light-rail project.

Last fall, Killough and his partners requested a progress report by the winning bidder, Longhorn Railway. Killough said he wondered if taxpayer money was paying for improvements in the track that he believes Longhorn is responsible for.

As required by law, Capital Metro asked Longhorn Railway if the report included confidential company information.

At Longhorn's behest, Capital Metro asked the attorney general to keep the report confidential. The state lawyer dismissed Capital Metro's arguments that federal law prevented disclosure or that transit officials might be ensnarled in a lawsuit between Longhorn and one of Killough's partners. The attorney general ordered the report released with the names of Longhorn's customers blacked out.

Killough is objecting that Capital Metro blacked out too much information, including the names of investors instead of just customers.

As part of that dispute, Washington refused to disclose any railroadrelated expenditures.'' She contended the agency had not spent any of a $2.7 million budget item for railroads.

She also wrote that she could not interpret what could be considered railroad-related. Then she concluded that the money the agency is spending investigating the purchase of light-rail cars is not railroad-related, but transit-related.''

In her letter, Washington said she suggested further areas of inquiry and implied that Capital Metro did not have some of the information Killough was seeking.

He replied that agency officials said in news reports that the light-rail demonstration in February cost $500,000. There must be an accounting of these rail-related expenditures or Capital Metro could not have made such a claim,'' he wrote.

Killough is still seeking the information.

Despite his confict with Washington, Killough blames Augustine for a change in the agency's attitude toward public records. Until (former General Manager) Michael Bolton left, we had no problem. Once Justin Augustine took over, a veil came down.''

A lawyer's battle

Hubbarth said dealing with Capital Metro became worse after Washington took over open-records requests. She was belligerent,'' he said. Her attitude was If you don't like it, sue me,''' Hubbarth said.Hubbarth said.

Capital Metro didn't appeal Hubbarth's request to the attorney general's office, thus forfeiting its right to argue that the information should not be released.

It will be obvious to even you that more than 10 days has elapsed since my request was received,'' Hubbarth wrote Feb. 6. Therefore ... all the information that I have requested has now become public information, which I demand be provided ... immediately.''

Washington responded to Hubbarth's nasty and misinformed response,'' COMPLAINING that he continued to insist Capital Metro has retained from disclosure information we do not have and (personnel) information to which you are not entitled.''

She expressed frustration that Hubbarth refused Capital Metro's suggestions for resubmitting his request a different way. You perceive our actions to be obstructionist, where all we have attempted to do is assist you.''

About a month after Hubbarth's original request, Washington had her assistant send notice that the information was available.

I got 15 pounds of records -- no charge,'' said Hubbarth, who got the disciplinary and disability policies that Capital Metro at first said did not exist.

March 18, 1997
Cap Metro in the mirror

Capital Metro occupies a sort of looking-glass world, where everything is reversed:

* Openness is secrecy.

* Expedition is delay.

* Politeness is hostility.

* Documents that exist do not -- until the agency is forced to release them.

It is a world where the board of directors pursues a public vote on light rail by failing to ask for legislation to be written -- until a state lawmaker prepares to file his own proposals.

It is a world of the transit authority's own devising. If it does not break out of the looking-glass world into the real world with the rest of us, the agency will continue to be an unsuccessful money pit. Cap Metro is in danger of not only failing to gain the public trust but also of having its taxing authority curtailed and its plans to be a full-service agency derailed.

The lack of openness is especially galling, considering the promises of management to improve. As detailed in Sunday's American-Statesman news story by Laylan Copelin, Cap Metro may be willing to be open, but only selectively.

And the instances cited are not ancient history, but current events, under the regime of general manager Justin Augustine III. The article cited instances of hostile, defensive reaction by Cap Metro's chief counsel, Tracie Washington, to requests for public documents.

It is inexcusable to deny the agency has documents that later prove to exist, whether the denial springs from internal confusion or deliberate -- let us say -- lack of frankness.

Why should members of the public as well as the press have to threaten lawsuit -- or actually file suit, as the American-Statesman was forced to do -- to obtain documents that are unquestionably public information?

So sue me'' is not good public policy, not good public relations, not good period.

Cap Metro board members ought to demand that management begin to be as open as it claims it wants to be. No more misunderstandings.'' No more delaying tactics. No more semantical games. No more hostility to the people whose taxes pay the bills. No more -- let us say -- lack of frankness about whether documents exist.

State law is clear: If the agency thinks requested information is confidential, it has 10 days to say it will appeal to the attorney general. If it doesn't, the information must be released.

The bodies who appoint Cap Metro board members are beginning to notice Cap Metro's bad attitude. So are state lawmakers. It's time the board and management noticed, too.

May 10, 1997

Cap Metro turning point
Capital Metro General Manager Justin Augustine III should use the resignation of agency attorney Tracie Washington as an opportunity to educate his staff about its public mission.

For too long now, Capital Metro's board and staff have bristled at every question about the operation of its bus system. Under Washington's legal advice, the board and staff have arrogantly perpetuated a hostile attitude toward any and all who dare to question their authority, methods or ability.

Copping that same attitude with County Attorney Ken Oden, who has subpoena power and is investigating Capital Metro's unfortunate $500,000 investment in an unneeded park-and-ride lot, was a big mistake. Now that Washington has hied her antagonistic, obstructionist attitude elsewhere, Augustine should take advantage of the opportunity in several ways.

First, he must impress on the staff that they work for, are paid by and answer to the public. And not everyone with a request or a question opposes mass transit. In fact, most of the bus company's staunchest critics stand fast for mass transit. But the way Cap Metro relates to the taxpayers who pay for it has been incredibly stupid.

Second, he can look at the chief counsel position Washington has vacated as the place to begin to rebuild confidence in Capital Metro. The new chief counsel should be someone who understands the value of cooperation over confrontation, openness over obstruction and the desperate need for the bus company to invest in positive public relations with the community that it serves with taxpayer money.

Capital Metro has persisted in its blind obstructionism beyond good sense. Even as Washington refused to cooperate with Oden's investigation and called him a son of a bitch'' in front of his own investigator,the state Legislature is sitting on bills that would radically change Capital Metro.

Austin taxpayers are awe-struck watching Cap Metro self-destruct, wondering just how far it can sink. Legislators, holding bills to change its funding, change its structure and put the light-rail system to a public vote, must be amazed at the bus company's penchant for immolation.

Augustine and the Cap Metro board must accept this latest debacle as a turning point. Cap Metro will never recover if it persists in indulging the bunker mentality that has brought it to such low regard.

“I can go out and champion against everyone and be unemployed"

2009-03-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

WWL did a report on the pathetic state of the city's playgrounds, informing us that the city has spent less than $3 million of the $16 million that FEMA has obligated for playground repairs. There was the usual back-and-forth about whether FEMA or the city is more responsible for that state of affairs -- I'm in no position to judge. The usual pathetic excuse about staff shortages, even though the mayor's personal P.R. budget gets bigger every year -- I'll return to that in my next post. However, the report contained one real eye-opener:

Barabino says his job is to handle NORD programming. He says 10,000 residents are taking part in NORD activities a month, but says that when it comes to facilities, he can only push his boss, Mayor Ray Nagin, so far.

“I can go out and champion against everyone and be unemployed. I have a family. I love doing what I'm doing. For me to go against my superior or employer, where will that leave me?” Barabino asks. “I've sat with Mayor Nagin and expressed my concerns,” he says.*

What is he afraid of?

I believe that it's customary for department heads to be unclassified, at-will employees. However, I have to ask, is it really a good idea for all upper-level NOPL employees to be at-will?

*video link

Oops, sorry for the mindfart.

2009-03-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

I did a fair amount of thinking out loud in last week's post on electronic monitoring, but I never got around to adding a clarification at the end. TSAP's listing on the state's corporate data base is vague enough to pique any amateur detective's curiosity, but I can't find enough campaign contributions from either TSAP, or the obviously related Sunex Holding Company, to make allegations of influence peddling.

Still, the history of the home monitoring program leads to some obvious questions. Since TSAP was the second highest scoring bidder when the original contracts were awarded, why wasn't CBC's contract rebid when the mayor decided that it wasn't performing well enough? TSAP's website now says:

GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail an offender (charged or alleged). The benefits are cost savings for the city and accuracy.

However, I doubt it could have made that claim when it took over CBC's contract:

Since September, the company has staffed its office overnight as well as during the day, ensuring authorities can be quickly alerted about violations, said William Welch, chief executive officer of TSAP. link

Shouldn't the city have tried to find a company with overnight staffing in the first place? Again, I'm not alleging wrong doing on the part of the home monitoring company, just carelessness on the part of the Nagin administration. I guess the mayor had more important things to worry about in 2007.

Still, I did notice Sunex in the list of people or businesses who have contributed to Nagin since his re-election. I believe the amount listed is a little low, but I still don't find signs of Sunex or TSAP throwing significant amounts of money around. However, the mayor moved into a glass house when he finished the 2006 mayoral election with an ad blitz about his opponent's successful fund raising. It's entirely kosher to comment when any company or individual that's given money to the mayor, especially since his re-election, receives a city contract. Ya heard me, Greg Rigamer? I would even say the same thing about people or businesses that are paid money out of Nagin's campaign war chest. Ya heard me, Silas Lee? It really is terrible the way the local media always consult Nagin haters for expert analysis.

I know they bring excitement to the teaching profession

2009-03-20T05:12:00.000-07:00

But, I think this Teach for America employee got a little too excited:

MARRERO, La. – A teacher at Higgins High School has been arrested by Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputies for obscenity after three students claimed they saw the teacher masturbating alone, inside a classroom, according to JP spokesman Col. John Fortunato.

Joey Lehrman, 22, New Orleans, was arrested for obscenity. He admitted, according to police, to unbuckling his pants and rubbing lotion on his lower stomach, adding he did this because of a medical condition. Lehrman also said he rubbed lotion on his genitalia, police said.

Lehrman, according to police, has been teaching at Higgins since 2008 and had no prior record. School officials said that Lehrman was an employee of Teach for America, not an employee of JP public schools.

JP school officials said they have suspended Lehrman without pay.

An error message would be nice

2009-03-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

I left a comment on WWL's website that was indecipherably cryptic, because the website didn't accept html. It accepted the comment, but without the link I assumed would be included. Just as well, because it was late and I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, I misunderstood something in Katie Moore's report:

Mayor Ray Nagin awarded the initial, $3 million contract in 2005 to Burnell Moliere, a man who had no experience in corrections, but ran a janitorial company.

He's now awaiting federal sentencing after pleading guilty to helping to conceal a school board bribery scheme.

TSAP C.E.O. Bill Welch took over Moliere's contract the following year.

I somehow took that mean to that Moliere ran TSAP before Welch took over operation of the company. So, I commented:

So let me get this straight, Burnell Moliere was the owner of TSAP when it was getting victimized in favor of a company owned by Moliere, Jimmie Woods and Ray Valdes?

A meaningless comment without the link, an incorrect one with the link. The mistake was entirely my own, but I do think that Moore should have said:

Mayor Ray Nagin awarded the initial, $3 million contract in 2005 to CBC, a company owned by the talented trio of (the ubiquitous) Jimmie Woods, Ray Vlades and Burnell Moliere, a man who had no experience in corrections, but ran a janitorial company.

I stopped work a blog post on the nefarious goings-on in the city's electronic monitoring process when it finally occurred to my sleep-deprived brain that I had misunderstood Moore's report, but not before blogger autopilot led to the Louisiana Secretary of State's corporate database. Now, I'm aware that when bloggers play internet detective and get all exited because they've found a smoking gun, it usually turns out to be a cap gun, but I did find an interesting coincidence. The CBC's filing lists the address as 2601 TULANE AVE., STE. 615, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70119. TSAP's address:: 2601 TULANE AVE., 6TH FLOOR, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70119-0000. Since TSAP's listing is for a trade name rather than a business and doesn't list any members or agents, I looked up William Welch. He has another listing on the sixth floor of 2601 Tulane Ave. I have no idea whether that has any significance, but I thought I'd share it.

Also, I couldn't help but notice the CBC's filing lists Rafael Valdes as agent, manager and member. When CBC was awarded the monitoring contract four years ago, Charles and Burnell Moliere both said that Valdes was no longer connected to the company. WDSU still uses Rice as a political analyst to comment on stories about the Nagin administration; I wonder if WDSU will employ him as an impartial analyst of the electronic monitoring contracts.

WWL and the Picayune have both done a fair amount of reporting on the electronic monitoring system, but I think I notice a minor contradiction, and I am left with an important question. WWL reports that "TSAP took over all electronic monitoring for all Orleans Parish courts in 2006," but the Picayune reports that:

The last time New Orleans officials sought bids for electronic monitoring for criminal defendants, a politically connected company wound up with a big piece of the action.

But Community Based Corrections LLC was let go in December 2007, when city officials decided the company was being outperformed by competitor Total Sentencing Alternatives Program, or TSAP.

I don't really care about slightly different reporting from two different sources, however it appears that that the mayor decided to award CBC's contract to TSAP without seeking new bids. Either date was well before this:

The company also upgraded its software to allow for real-time tracking of defendants.

Since September, the company has staffed its office overnight as well as during the day, ensuring authorities can be quickly alerted about violations, said William Welch, chief executive officer of TSAP.

Didn't the mayor think it would be a good idea to solicit bids from firms that could actually monitor prisoners at night.

A Great Mayor Before Katrina

2009-03-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

A pre-Katrina Stephanie Grace column

Sure, we’re watching; Nagin asked for it
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Thursday, May 12, 2005
Author: Stephanie Grace

"Contracts!" Mayor Ray Nagin, said, his voice filled with carefully scripted indignation.

Why is the media so fixated on examining the contracts that Nagin has let during his first three years in office, the mayor demanded during his Monday night State of the City address?

Here’s one answer: Because he asked for it.

He asked for it by running for mayor in the first place, knowing full well that his operations would be subject to public scrutiny. He knows, too, that citizens who’ve been forced to pony up for too many abuses in the past are keeping a close eye.

He asked for it when he declared himself a reformer, promising in his 2002 inaugural address to oversee a government that is "transparent and accountable," in which "contracts are awarded based on what you can do, not who you know."

And he practically begged for it when he signed on to a controversial campaign-season plan offered by the non-profit Bureau of Governmental Research. That plan was aimed at taking the politics and patronage out of professional service contracting by creating independent selection committees to evaluate bids. Nagin later changed his commitment, offering a revised plan that put the mayor back into the process, allowing him to select contractors from an independent committee’s pre-screened list.

Three years later, he still has not enacted either alternative.

But still, any comprehensive look at the subject has to acknowledge that Nagin has done better than the preceding administration.

He hasn’t entered into any deals that would tie future mayors’ hands or seem likely to attract the scrutiny of the feds, such as former mayor Marc Morial’s stinker of an energy savings contract with Johnson Controls, which was slated to run 20 years at a cost of $81 million.

His relatives haven’t been able to cash in on city deals, although his brother-in-law tried to nose his way into Morial uncle Glenn Haydel’s lucrative management arrangement at the Regional Transit Authority. That contract is also under federal investigation. In fact, Nagin himself put a quick stop to the brother-in-law’s involvement.

Airport legal fees, once a rich pot of patronage for Morial’s inner circle, are down by half. And another sweetheart Morial-era deal, a property tax collection contract with Linebarger Goggan Blair Sampson, has been rebid under terms more favorable to the city.

For all that, Nagin deserves a round of applause.

But that doesn’t mean contracting has become a non-issue.

As a businessman politician who promised to watch the bottom line, Nagin has cut some deals that are clearly problematic.

A no-bid contract for new trash cans, with a company that once acknowledged ties to Chief Administrative Officer Charles Rice’s brother, carried worse terms than similar deals in other cities. The administration all but admitted as much when it belatedly decided to ask for new proposals to sell ad space on the trash cans’ sides.

The city also chose the third-ranked bidder, the politically connected Community Based Corrections , to create a home monitoring program for municipal offenders, even though the group has no experience in the field.

And Nagin hasn’t attempted to improve the wasteful insurance arrangement he inherited, a cumbersome process that employs large committees of brokers, each of whom gets a cut of city business.

And then there’s that never-enacted BGR pledge.

During Monday’s address, Nagin finally announced how he plans to reform professional service contracting. He said he’d include a nominee from either the Urban League or the Chamber of Commerce in each screening committee, along with two staff members. That’s far short of what he promised back during his first campaign.

The mayor may have his reasons. Some of his aides have long complained that agreeing to BGR’s terms would make the mayor less accountable by taking key decisions out of his hands. But he’s never come out and argued the point.

He’s apparently too busy feeling victimized for being held to the high standards that he set for himself.

Not quite a Jeff Sadow imitation*

2009-03-12T23:09:00.000-07:00

I hate for my first post in ten days to be little more than a collection of links to earlier posts, but I saw Lee Zurik's report on the Old Gentilly Landfill and remembered that I had written about it a few times myself:

Nov. 14, 2007:

The following will appear somewhere in tomorrow's Picayune:
In 2001, Stumpf and Woods formed a joint venture and submitted the only proposal to operate the new facility. In the final days of the Morial administration in early 2002, they signed a deal under which -- provided the landfill received a state permit -- they would keep 97 percent of the proceeds, with the city getting the other 3 percent.

...
The Nagin administration also engaged in some convoluted reasoning to defend the landfill's operation:
(yet another)Nagin spokesman David Robinson-Morris said it's the city's position that the landfill "was never technically 'closed.' "

The argument apparently rests on the fact that the landfill was ordered closed -- and stopped accepting trash as a result -- but had not completed the closure process required by the state, which involved placing a layer of clay atop it. During the 1990s, New Orleans voters approved a bond issue that in part was to pay for the clay cap, but the work was never finished.

But for the purposes of zoning, city law offers definitions of "open" and "closed" that have nothing to do with state environmental law.
Times Picayune

Also worth remembering, Cynthia Willard-Lewis was a forceful advocate for the New Orleans East Vietnamese Community's demand that an eastern New Orleans landfill be closed. But that was the Chef Menteur Landfill, owned by Waste Management, not the Old Gentilly Landfill, owned by AMID/Metro.

May 25, 2007:

If you turned on a New Orleans television channel, you almost certainly saw a commercial in which Nagin said to ask yourself why his opponent's campaign contributors were giving him (Landrieu) money. With that in mind, I looked at the list of Nagin donors (sorry, can't find a working link) and saw names like AMID Landfill, AMID/Metro Partnerships, Metro Disposal and Durr Construction. In addition to Metro's "very lucrative" (Nagin's term) garbage collection contract, all four of those firms have an interest in the Old Gentilly Landfill that appeared in today's Picayune
...
The "yet another," before Nagin spokesman, didn't appear in the Picayune. Another item that didn't appear in the Picayune was the fact that Durr, in addition to being a partner in AMID Landfill, had the contract for the clay cap.

I have no idea which side is correct about the legal issues, but I do know that the Nagin administration has shown questionable judgement about the operation of another city landfill -- judgement so questionable that it was featured on the NBC News segment "The Fleecing of America." In the interest of transparency, and to avoid another embarrassment, it might be a good idea to demand a garbage dump document dump.

I can only hope that a facetious prediction I made in Nov. 2006 doesn't come to pass.

You may also remember the Old Gentilly Landfill from the infamous counter letter in the Pampy Barre case. I really do need to finish that post about Julie Quinn, but it's difficult to find the words to express how grateful I am that she prevented commerce in Louisiana from being destroyed overnight. I don't think that most people realize there wouldn't being a single business left in the state if she hadn't blocked a piece of legislation last year.

*Finally, Sadow tends to link to his own posts in a manner that most would find objectionable, especially coming from a professor. It's an entirely acceptable practice for a blogger to refer back to his previously expressed opinions; it's an entirely different to link back to your own posts when you're using a link as a corroborating footnote. As an example, most bloggers and readers would find it perfectly acceptable for me to refer to "my previously expressed opinion" of Mayor Nagin. If I had learned to blog from reading Sadow, I'd refer to a mayor who refuses to even explain his decisions. In Sadow's case, if you try to follow the links, you find more references to Sadow's previously expressed opinions without any corroborating links. For example, try finding anything in the last post mentioned that lends any credence to Sadow's assertion about Ater's desire to become head of the state Democratic Party. He's actually three-for-three in the second paragraph of that post. Maybe Sadow's just stuck on himself.

O.K., now let's see your fastball.

2009-03-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

About a month go, I basically acknowledged that it was softball question when I asked:

How can SDT provide private collection so much more cheaply than any of the firms provide public collection?

Speculating about a possible reason, I wrote:

The private collection would be for buildings with five or more units, so there might be some economies of scale, but $10 per unit (per month) less than Richards charges the city? The private collection wouldn't necessarily be semiautomated, so there might be some savings from using manual collection, but yesterday's Picayune featured a relevant article about the cost of semiautomated garbage collection in Kenner.

In today's Picayune, Michelle Krupa asks the same question and provides a similar answer:

Still, why does SDT charge the city at least $6.75 more per unit each month than it charges private customers for the same services? Torres said it boils down to volume and frequency.

"A lot of people who have five-plexes and six-plexes, a lot of times they don't produce the garbage compared with a large family," he said.

Unlike with the blanket city contracts, SDT negotiates with individual property owners, often charging for fewer units or for less frequent service than the city requires, Torres said.

However, I've also asked a much tougher question:

Why is garbage collection cheaper with $115 a barrel oil than with $60 a barrel oil?
...
Two years ago, Richards* negotiated a $22 unit price with the City of New Orleans, now it offers Jefferson Parish a $17.90 unit price.
...
That doesn't explain why the mayor and Veronica White negotiated higher prices for garbage collection in Orleans Parish when oil was $60 barrel than firms are offering with with oil at well over $100 a barrel.

I can guess why Stacy Head doesn't ask that particular question -- she gets into a tiff with the owner of MCCI and gets accused of racism. Instead of singling out a single businessman, she might think it prudent to question the overall cost of garbage collection in New Orleans compared to Jefferson Parish. Unfortunately, the mayor can plausibly call that an "apples to oranges" comparison. So, why don't any reporters at the Picayune, or any of the city's weekly papers, ask the "apples to apples" question?

It's not chump change, BTW. Richards' collection area covers 60,000 households. If it charged the city the same price that if offered Jefferson Parish, it would save the city almost three million dollars a year.

Just to be clear: Richards offered Jefferson a unit price of $17.90 for semi-automated service, the same service that it charges New Oleans $22 for. It offered a lower price for manual.

*Sometimes spelled Richard's. If you use the Louisiana Library Database to look up old articles, you find different Times Picayune articles for each spelling.

F*** Josh Marshall

2009-02-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

Still, the Louisiana coast might have survived another 1,000 years or more, Louisiana State University scientists said. But the discovery of oil and gas compressed its destruction into a half-century.

By the 1980s, the petroleum industry and the corps had dredged more than 20,000 miles of canals and new navigation channels from the coast inland across the wetlands. The new web of waterways, like a circulatory system pumping poison, injected saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico into salt-sensitive freshwater wetlands. Fueled by the advance of big business on the coast, the Gulf's slow march northward accelerated into a sprint. Link

While inland states enjoy 50 percent of the tax revenue from drilling on their federal lands, Louisiana gets back a mere $35 million of the $5 billion it contributes to the federal treasury each year from offshore drilling, or less than one percent. link

In other words, Louisiana has received almost nothing from the offshore drilling that has led to the destruction of its coast. Yet, hack journalists and bloggers have the gall to imply that Louisiana is a state full of ungrateful freeloaders. For over three years, we've heard it from the right, but now it seems to be even worse from the left. Lying liberally, Josh Marshall approvingly quotes Gail Collins:

Louisiana has gotten $130 billion in post-Katrina aid. How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money?

Believe it or not, Marhall would inform us that Numbers Matter only a few hours later. When conservatives quoted that wildly distorted $130 billion, they usually said "$130B to Louisiana (or New Orleans) and the Gulf Coast," so that the statement was merely a gross exaggeration expressed in a misleading fashion. Liberals* seem incapable of meeting even that standard of accuracy. Like I said at Jeffrey's, I didn't need "The Daily Howler" to tell me what a hack Collins is, but I didn't realize that Somerby was right about Marshall. BTW, Bob Somerby also quoted Gail Collins' column today. Incomprehensibly, he failed to question to question the assertion that Louisiana had received $130 billion in post-Katrina aid.

When time allows over the weekend, I'll find a few links to demonstrate what a remarkably inaccurate statement that was.

*Referring to Josh Marshall, I certainly wouldn't claim Gail Collins as a liberal.

F*** Chris Matthews

2009-02-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Rush job, articles that I had quoted in the past are no longer available online, so I found myself imitating a conservative Shreveport professor.

I don't often defend Bobby Jindal, but Chris Matthews' comments were way out of line Tuesday night. Others have criticized Chris Matthews far more effectively than I ever could, but I've heard similar comments from other quarters. Couldn't find a transcript, but the offensive comments are very early in the clip:

So, a state that the federal government has been ripping off for years, decades actually, should be grateful for the federal government's generosity?

I'll have to add a few paragraphs after work, but a few more things for Chris Matthews, or anybody else making similar comments, to consider.

About the only similarity that I can see between Katrina aid and the stimulus package is that Republicans, who normally claim that "tax relief" pays for itself, count the cost of tax credits and tax relief when computing the total tab of both.

What was the worst thing about Jindal's presentation tonight?

2009-02-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

Was it that he sounded like that museum tour guide who talked your ninth grade class as if he were talking to a third grade class? Was it that he was more interested in talking himself up than in criticizing Obama's speech? I mean, it was the Republican response to the president's speech -- guess there wasn't much to criticize. Or, was it that the criticisms he did make were the already stale lies and misrepresentations that the Republicans have been making since Obama's inauguration? Or, was it something else altogether?

Was Tom Foreman just trying to be cute when he corrected Obama about where the automobile was invented, or was he serious? I didn't notice a trace of irony in his voice, but I do sometimes miss that kind of thing.

Update: Even Fox News was critical.

At the 8th Annual "Newest New Orleanians" Breafast

2009-02-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

What will his smugness say next October? Will he welcome new residents and thank them for helping to shore up our decimated tax base? Or, will he tell them not to bother asking how their tax dollars are spent because they're not from here and wouldn't understand?

Will his hand-picked recovery director be there?

"It should not be a local person," said Blakely, who paid his own way from his home in Australia to address the African-American Leadership Project's summit in Central City. "They (should) have no baggage, but they have to have a real human touch to know where people are coming from."

Blakely said such a leader would be less likely to be influenced by historical, cultural and political factors that can sway the decisions of local residents on issues including which geographic areas, if any, should be off limits to rebuilding.

The city will be soon be changing the Make New Orleans Home website. Expect it to read, "Just because you'll be paying taxes, don't think you can bamboozle us mother fuckers."

Last minute advice for Val Kilmer

2009-02-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

When Nagin urges the King of Bacchus to shake his booty, Val Kilmer should respond that he's not from here. So, he wouldn't know the history of shake the booty dance and what's going on. And Ray Nagin should show him how to do it, or he'd be wasting our time.

Did I hear the smug prick say, "name one"?

2009-02-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

I can't find either a transcript or a recording, but I thought I heard the smug prick challenge his critics to name one questionable professional service contract. When he defended his executive order suspending professional service contract review panels, Nagin that that the 311 and crime camera contracts were bid contracts, not professional service contracts. I'm not familiar with the details of those particular contracts, but I'd be willing to bet that's a technically true, but misleading, statement.

Real cute for the mayor to challenge ordinary residents to any questionable professional service contracts. Real:

The city's Law Department explained that before it can make a contract available, it has to know who the contract is with. So until a reporter or member of the public knows who has a contract, he can't find out who has the contract.

cute:

First, a request was made through the Law Department for a complete list of the city’s active professional service contracts. The city responded with a list of 118 contracts totaling $42.9 million, but the list was incomplete. The city’s contract with Dallas-based ACS State and Local Solutions for the 311 non-emergency information service was at least one contract not on the list.

When asked how the city compiled the list of contracts for the request, City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields said her office must wait for other departments to file any contract amendments or extensions and then manually update the department’s contract database. Until then, those contracts would be rendered inactive in the city attorney’s database.

For the second public records request, a list of all current contracts either through public bid or professional services procurement was requested through Moses-Fields’ office, as well as through the purchasing department at Moses-Fields’ direction. The Law Department’s response to the request stated, “The city does not maintain or possess such a list and is unable to comply with your records request.”

Still, I can think of a few.

Before Katrina*, there was a contract for Jimmie Woods' brand new Community Based Corrections, a questionable parking meter contract and a no-bid contract for bombproof garbage cans.

Since Katrina, the mayor's awarded a no-bid contract to replace the bombproof garbage cans and a major embarrassment involving flooded and abandoned cars. A questionable contract for storm debris removal was signed the day before Katrina made landfall. I'm sure that I could easily find more.

Also, in an interview with Liz Reyes, Nagin said that there never has been a problem with RFP's for city contracts. That, of course, is bullshit.

Finally, I had to laugh when the smug prick called himself a "good steward" of public dollars. I'll return to this in a future post, but the man's spending priorities are so bizarre that even Dr. John and Dr. Jeremiah Wright said WTF?

*You know, back when Nagin was such a great reforming mayor.

It worked for Bush, didn't it?

2009-02-18T05:21:00.000-08:00

Bush in 2007. Nagin in 2009 -- not so much a similarity as a lesson learned.

I saw part of this interview several days ago and was immediately flooded with memories of the exact moment that I came to hate the smug prick. I tried to blog about it, but when I deleted every use of the phrase "smug prick", there was very little text left in the post.

Almost forgot Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

The most romantic clip I could find on short notice

Also, a heartrending ballad of unrequited love:

I couldn't resist

2009-02-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

John Pilger in The New Statesman:

The politics of bollocks

Supporters of the new US president refuse to admit that the "man of change" is, in fact, changing very little. It's time the Obama lovers grew up

Probably a little premature, but somebody other than Anderson Cooper has to keep them honest.

Today's first easy "Gotcha"

2009-02-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

Can't guarantee a second will follow

SDT's new commercial, prominently featured on the company website*, promises private garbage collection for "the same or less than what the Sewerage & Water Board puts on your bill." All three sanitation companies charge the City of New Orleans more than what the Sewerage & Water Board puts on your bill. I'm not sure how much SDT charges the city on a per unit basis, but Metro and Richards each charge the city significantly more than the $12 sanitation fee that appears on your monthly water bill.

How can SDT provide private collection so much more cheaply than any of the firms provide public collection? The private collection would be for buildings with five or more units, so there might be some economies of scale, but $10 per unit (per month) less than Richards charges the city? The private collection wouldn't necessarily be semiautomated, so there might be some savings from using manual collection, but yesterday's Picayune featured a relevant article about the cost of semiautomated garbage collection in Kenner.

Am I alone in thinking that, if Frank Donze must engage in snark, he should direct it at Mayor Frugal's Henny Youngman act rather than Stacy Head's Norma Rae act?

*While you're at the website, be sure to shop SDT. Actually, I can't get any of the merchandise to display, but I'm sure that the drink huggies, T-shirts and hoodies are delightful.

Thought I blogged about that

2009-02-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

Last November, I heard it from a very reliable source that O.C. Coleman was planning to run, as a Republican, for J.P. Morrell's House seat when Morrell moved up to the State Senate. Sure enough, in today's paper, I read that he's declared his candidacy. Since he's officially a candidate, let it be duly noted that Coleman is an dedicated member of the dragon slaying party. Of course, he has already been the instigator of one famous dragon hunt; maybe he'll be able to run as Jindal's veep in four years.

But, damn, I was sure I had already written about this, either in a blog post here or in a comment on another blog. Since I can't find the link to prove it, I'll just have to forgo the incomparable of pleasure of saying that I scooped the media. Guess I'll just have to go out and get laid or something.

Does James read Stephanie's column?

2009-02-06T04:35:00.000-08:00

Stephanie Grace made a good point last March:

Every time Nagin touts his own transparency and accountability, he all but begs for scrutiny.

And whether or not he's done anything wrong, every time he refuses to tell the public what he's up to, that shtick becomes a little less convincing.

I understand that it's vitally important for James Gill to keep his readers up to speed on every detail of the ongoing saga of Vince Marinello and his hairpiece,* but he should consider Grace's implicit advice and comment on some of the statements that Nagin and his staff have made this week:

The New Orleans City Council will vote Thursday on whether the decision making process concerning certain city contracts, worth millions of dollars, should be open to the public.
...
The mayor told Eyewitness News that he feels the process is already transparent, and he says if the council passes the ordinance his administration may end up fighting the decision in court.

Or:

The mayor's director of communications, Ceeon Quiett, released a statement a few hours after the vote, saying, "Under Mayor Nagin's leadership, city government is and will continue to be transparent.”

As of this writing, it's a dead link, but the mayor told WVUE that his administration was the most transparent in the city's history. Of course, he also brought along a former Morial City Attorney to vouch for his way of doing business...while he claimed to be such an improvement over his predecessors.

A brief history of Nagin Administration transparency as it relates to the santation contracts:

Times Picayune, Oct. 5, 2006:

City to award trash contracts
But bid details kept out of public eye
...
But with Nagin poised to hand out the mammoth deals, city officials have failed to produce any contract bids or their rankings by a technical committee that reviewed them, despite repeated phone, e-mail and in-person requests for the public records during the past two weeks.

Oct. 28, 2006:

Sanitation Director Veronica White said bid documents are never available for public review within minutes of being opened. Andrée Cohen, a city purchasing administrator, said the bid proposals would not be available until after the contract is awarded.

Fred Wilde, a lawyer with the city attorney's office, said the documents are public but that anyone wanting to view or photocopy them would have to make a request in writing.

That request comes on the heels of a similar exchange regarding the other two garbage-hauling contracts, which Nagin awarded Oct. 5.

Though mayoral spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett acknowledged that bid documents received for those deals were public, the city held them back for more than a month after they were submitted. They were provided four days after Nagin announced the winners -- Metro Disposal and Richard's Disposal -- during a City Hall news conference. Those were the only companies to bid on the deals, which each cover about half the city.

Nov. 18, 2006:

City officials refused to provide bid documents following the 10-minute conference, despite requirements of the state's public records law that in general oblige public entities to grant immediate access to available public documents. Assistant City Attorney Shawn Lindsay first demanded a written public records request, and after one was provided, said that only one lawyer in the city attorney's office handles requests for public records, and she was out of the office Friday.

Nov. 30, 2006:

Council seeking details of garbage contracts
Administration hasn't disclosed fine print
With a slew of questions still swirling around three proposed trash-collection contracts, New Orleans City Council members will meet in emergency session today to press for answers before they vote on the deals Friday as part of the Mayor Ray Nagin's proposed 2007 budget.

The most heated issues are the contracts' cost -- more than triple the current price of garbage collection citywide -- and the fine print of the pending deals with Metro Disposal and Richard's Disposal, which the Nagin administration has refused to disclose, saying the deals have not yet been signed. The contracts would call for twice-weekly pickup in most of the city.

That's all that I have time for this morning. As the Oct. 28 makes clear, some of the bid documents were finally made available, but by the time the council and public were informed of all the details, it was too late to rebid the contracts. Also, I'll repeat that to accurately judge the sanitation contracts that were signed, they need to be compared to the RFP's that allegedly frightened other potential bidders. If the council really wants to foster transparency, it should enact an ordinance requiring that all RFP's should be available for viewing by all citizens.

*Three columns about one wig in one month, you think maybe the T/P reassigned the wrong columnist? There may have been two wigs involved; I rarely pay much attention to crimes, even murders, in which the victim knew the assailant.

It almost happened the way I almost predicted it.

2009-02-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

I started to make the joke prediction that Arizona would win a poorly officiated Super Bowl that left Pittsburgh fans screaming bloody murder. Of course, I can't imagine any Super Bowl being as poorly officiated as the one Pittsburgh was given three years ago*, but I'm sure that Pittsburgh fans would have forgotten all about that. I don't know that the officiating favored on team over the other last night. If anything, I'd say that it favored Pittsburgh, but when the officiating is that obtrusive, the losing team and its fans have the right to complain.

Honestly, I did think that it would be fitting for Pittsburgh to lose a game that left its fans complaining about the officiating. Seattle fans might have even found something resembling cosmic justice in such an outcome, but, to believe in a God whose cosmic justice extends to something as trivial as professional football, one would to a strange conception of God, indeed. It would be almost as strange as believing in a god who ensouls embryos at the moment of a conception, when they have up to an 80% chance of failing to implant in the uterus. It wouldn't as strange as believing in a god who would kill innocent residents because that city contained gay bars and abortion clinics, and it couldn't begin to approach the sheer insanity of believing in a god who wipe out St. Bernard and eastern St. Tammany Parishes, and Hancock and Harrison Counties when he sent a hurricane to punish New Orleans for its sins. Didn't we stop believing in that kind of god when the one god of Christianity supplanted belief in the multiple gods of pagan mythologies?

*In fairness, I should point out that Greg Easterbook, the universally admired expert about everything, thought that Super Bowl XL was fairly officiated.

A long-standing law

2009-02-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

If a law that's been on the books for two years can be considered long-standing, there's nothing questionable about this statement:

Instead, the sudden accumulation of garbage along sidewalks in the Vieux Carre and CBD was the product of a surprise decision by the city's Sanitation Department to start enforcing a long-standing law that says owners of large businesses and residential properties with more than four units must hire private contractors to collect their trash.

As far as I can tell, that wasn't spelled out until the sanitation code was revised in 2007. One could argue that the revised sanitation code merely clarified the old code, which limited collection to four bags or four permanent containers, but that would be debatable. At any rate, there's still the (entirely predictable) problem of larger buildings that are paying the fee:

The water bill for a Quarter condo association with 10-units for example showed it was already paying $12 a month for each unit, but the association received a letter from the city dated January 28, 2009 that under a city ordinance they are prohibited from placing solid waste curbside for collection by the city contractor. The letter goes on to say because it's a residential complex with five or more units, it's responsible for contracting with private solid waste haulers.

Complaints from small businesses that pay the $24 monthly fee but find their garbage collection has been cut off are almost certain to follow.

However, it's late. Even though the reporting on this issue leaves a lot to be desired, I'll have to follow up on this tomorrow or Wednesday. FWIW, the relevant part of the city ordinance that I copied in 2007:

Sec. 138-46. Maximum collections for one establishment.
Not more than 128 gallons of garbage or trash and four standard bundles of tree branches and shrubbery securely tied, with each bundle weighing not more than 25 pounds and measuring not more than four feet in length shall be removed from any one household or small business place, at any one collection. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, garbage and trash shall be placed in not more than four permanent containers, each weighing no more than 75 pounds. Amounts in excess of these quantities shall be removed by the producers thereof.
(Code 1956, § 28-11; M.C.S., Ord. No. 21497, § 1, 5-6-04)

The link that I saved takes you to new code.

I'm so jealous

2009-01-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

When you hear of Shreveport's Mardi Gras feativities, you don't automatically think of donning a Kevlar vest, dodging inebriated masses and elbowing for position as you cover your children's eyes from the vulgarities of other venues. In Northwest Louisiana, it's more a tailgating-with-the-family affair that runs the gamut from the krewes of Gemini and Centaur and their big parades to off-the-wall events like the smaller but ever-growing Highland Parade and Barkus & Meoux, a krewe that reaches so deeply into family that it centers around pets.
Shreveport's Forum Newsweekly

Wow, somebody in Shreveport really didn't like Mardi Gras in Mobile. In case you needed to ask, Barkus and Meoux is six years younger than the original.