Peat bogged

Ever since training camp opened, Saints first round draft pick Andrus Peat has repeatedly impressed observers with how out of shape and unready he is.

Peat project: The Saints continue to move Andrus Peat around the offensive line. After working at right tackle and left tackle earlier in camp, he’s been getting some work at guard. He worked on the left side yesterday and lined up on the right side today. Conditioning still seems to be an issue and he needs to refine his technique at the guard position.

The fact that they're already trying him at guard seems like a red flag. Not everybody thinks so. ESPN's Mike Triplett doesn't think it means anything bad.

My read on the situation is the same as it was last week when Peat began taking snaps at left tackle for the first time. I don’t see this as a promotion or a full-time position switch. I see it as the Saints grooming Peat to be their top backup at a variety of positions since he hasn’t been making an immediate push for the starting right tackle job.

Peat spent the entire summer as the Saints’ second-string right tackle until late last week, when he switched over to left tackle to fill in for injured starter Terron Armstead for two days. The 6-foot-7, 316-pounder played left tackle throughout his career at Stanford.

Slotting Peat in as the extra tackle makes sense. Zach Streif was a regular at "Number 64 is an eligible receiver" for a few years before becoming a starter.  But it's unusual to try out a tackle you've drafted number one as a guard this early.  Especially when the reasons you've drafted the guy so highly are.. well, kind of weird.

After last night’s first round ended, Payton said little about how the Saints’ first pick, Stanford offensive tackle Andrus Peat, fits the team’s roster, and less about any specific plans the Saints have for him. Instead, Payton talked about how, in 1981, Todd Peat, Sr, had a superior letterman’s jacket.

Read the entire quote:

His father and I are the same age. His father went to Champagne Central High School which is in the middle of the state of Illinois. The first time I met his dad we were seniors being recruited by Northern Illinois. His dad played guard in the league for a long time. I just remember seeing his dad on that college visit. I can remember it was 1981 like it was yesterday. His dad had one of those letterman jackets on with five varsity letters all over it and I only had played my senior year. I hadn’t gotten my letter yet so I had stuff my mom gave me to make up really my letterman’s coat. His dad went on to have a great career at Northern, he was drafted, played a long time. This guy has all the things you look for. He is smart. He is big. He is very athletic. He is built much differently than his father, his stature.

Maybe it will be okay.   Or maybe...  

Was last season's 7-9 showing from the Saints an anomaly or a sign of things to come?  Unfortunately Who Dat nation, the voice of the Saints, Jim Henderson paints a picture of more doom and gloom instead of a silver lining.

"I think we'd all agree that we as fans, we as media, as members of the organization; we've become a little bit complacent and a little bit used to the success we've had," Henderson said on Sports Talk. "It's kind of hard to remember back to '04 and '05 after the wave started in '06 and the Super Bowl and everything."

"I think we're about to get a dose of reality again for this football team and this organization," Henderson continued. "I hope not for the fans' sake. It's hard to build a consensus based on the first week; but if you asked me what's impressed me so far, I would say the weather and I couldn't really say anything else."

While there are plenty of reasons to be worried about this team, I'm not sure we're really at "doom and gloom" with the 2015 Saints yet. Just because a lot of things are different doesn't mean they are necessarily worse. 

If we had to name one position upon whose success or failure to hang the season's prospects, offensive line would be right up at the top of our list.  Peat wasn't expected to come in and make them better right away.  But the unit and its depth needs to improve if the Saints are going to. It would be a shame if they come out of training camp looking even shakier than when they went in.

Everybody hates Bobby

At least, in Louisiana they do.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were the top choices for president among Republicans attending a party luncheon Tuesday afternoon.

Cruz received 10 first-choice votes among the 39 cast by Baton Rouge Republicans, and Walker had 7.  Donald Trump, the New York developer and reality television star, received six votes.

Gov. Bobby Jindal received one vote in the straw poll taken at the Ronald Reagan Newsmaker Luncheon hosted by his hometown Republican Party of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Book season

The Katrinaversary always brings us a new set of books either about the flood itself or New Orleans in general. But obviously the tenth year is going to produce a heavier crop.  Here's Gambit's Kevin Allman with a few brief reviews to help sort through some of them.

One of these, in particular, I've been waiting in line for this one for a few months. Looks like I'll finally get my hands on it soon.  Anyway Allman sells it well.

Katrina: After the Flood

By Gary Rivlin (Simon & Schuster, $27)

Rivlin covered the aftermath of Katrina for The New York Times and pieces together a tapestry of portraits and tales that should place this as one of the definitive books on the subject. He was a fly on the wall at meetings of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission (which was, of course, about bringing back some neighborhoods and not others), and examines the 2006 mayoral race, which brought 21 challengers against Mayor Ray Nagin, who had made headlines with his "chocolate city" comment. Along the way, Rivlin tells personal stories of New Orleanians just trying to get by, like that of Cassandra Wall, who believes the stress of the storm contributed to her mother's death from cancer, and the late Mack McClendon, who worked on his destroyed house all day and slept in a formaldehyde-poisoned FEMA trailer at night.

There are fascinating quotes on nearly every page, from real estate developer Pres Kabacoff ("It took a Katrina to finally turn things around") to Nagin, who allowed talk show host Oprah Winfrey to enter the Superdome only after swearing aloud, "I, Oprah Winfrey, promise not to hold the city liable financially or otherwise as a result of me going into this doggone stinky-ass Superdome."

Rivlin also resurrects a 2006 story by The New York Times' Adam Nossiter, who described boosters imagining a New Orleans that has become "an arts-infused mecca for youthful risk-takers, a boomtown where entrepreneurs can repair to cool French Quarter bars in ancient buildings after a hard day of deal making." You be the judge.

Meanwhile, this Sunday's New York Times has collected and reviewed another slate of Katrinaversary material.  This one looks like the winner in that batch.

LEFT TO CHANCE
Hurricane Katrina and the Story of Two New Orleans Neighborhoods
By Steve Kroll-Smith, Vern Baxter and Pam Jenkins
210 pp. University of Texas. Cloth, $75; paper, $24.95.

How to analyze the role of social class in the Katrina catastrophe? Taking on this important question, the University of New Orleans sociologists Baxter and Jenkins and their former colleague Kroll-Smith, now of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, came up with a fine plan: to compare the ordeals of two black neighborhoods, working-class Hollygrove and middle-class Pontchartrain Park.

Down-at-the-heels Hollygrove sprang up after World War I. Crisscrossed by highways, train tracks and canals, it was simply what was left after the urban planners finished drawing their maps. In contrast, Pontchartrain Park, a cynical product of the late Jim Crow-era “separate but equal” doctrine, was built as a planned community of 1,000 single-family homes arrayed around a blacks-only golf course. Socioeconomically disparate but similarly below sea level, both Hollygrove and Pontchartrain Park took on several feet of water when the levees broke.

The authors conducted 68 lengthy interviews with survivors from the two neighborhoods, running through their experiences from disaster preparation to rebuilding. But eventually Kroll-Smith, Baxter and Jenkins found themselves at a loss. So many aspects of the Katrina ordeal — where outside New Orleans one happened to have family and friends; which FEMA official answered the phone; whether a particular local bureaucrat was better swayed by a calm request or an emotional outburst — seemed, as their title puts it, left to chance. Moreover, levels of hardship couldn’t always be predicted by socioeconomic status: “Joseph Pratt, a lifelong resident of Hollygrove and jack-of-all-trades . . . hot-wired a truck, siphoned gas and drove himself and others to Baton Rouge and out of harm’s way. These are working-class skills.” In an emergency, handyman training may prove more useful than a college degree, but when a hurricane is approaching isn’t it even better to have the middle-class prerogative of owning a reliable car? “We don’t have a theory about their stories,” the authors confess. “Our goal in this book is to create a little disorder of our own.”

As it happens, you can see the authors of each of these books at Rising Tide this year.

Pam Jenkins, one of the authors of Left To Chance will be participating in a discussion at Rising Tide this year on domestic violence issues. Here's a sketch of that panel.

After Hurricane Katrina, the dynamics of domestic violence and sexual assault changed.  The issues of safety and vulnerability for women increased as the city emerged first from the immediate crisis and then, the long term recovery.  At the same time, activists and providers began to think how to provide services in this changed landscape.  This panel discusses the challenges and success of increasing women’s safety.

Pamela Jenkins, Professor emeritus, Sociology, University of New Orleans and president of the Family Justice Center Board of Directors

Mary Claire Landry, Executive Director, Family Justice Center of New Orleans

Meanwhile Gary Rivlin, whose book is also reviewed at length by NYT,  is a featured speaker... or morning keynote.. or whatever we decided to call it when we do multiple keynotes at RT. 

Gary Rivlin, an investigative reporting fellow at The Nation Institute, is a former New York Times reporter and the author of five books, including most recently Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big Business. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, GQ, and Wired, among other publications

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production or order swag, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.

Nobody actually lives here

Last week an organization called Neighbors for Neighborhoods held an organizing meeting to talk about the plague of short term rentals driving up rents and driving residents out of New Orleans neighborhoods in favor of part time second homes and tourists.  The meeting was joined by a landlords' group called Alliance for Neighborhood Prosperity apparently under the impression that it was a city sponsored public event. Most of them were turned away.

Those ANP members who did make it in were, unsurprisingly, not impressed with what they heard.

Rob White, a French Quarter resident, spent the bulk of the meeting highlighting many of the committee's grievances. For those of like mind, it was validation. For those who think otherwise, it was inflammatory. For or against, few of his remarks came as news to anyone who has been paying attention to the short-term rental debate.

Some of his points, paraphrased: Short-term rentals drive up housing costs by taking units for locals off the market. They erode neighborhood cohesion by creating neighborhoods where nobody lives. They are operated by people who openly flout the law in order to make a buck.

The so-called "sharing economy" is a sham, White said. "Sharing is when I have a ham sandwich and I give you half" When someone gives you a sandwich and then hands you the bill, that's a restaurant, he said.

In the case of the short-term rental business, the product is the neighborhood. "I'm being sold by the guy in Mississippi who rents short term," he said. "That is not sharing. That is colonization."

A half dozen of the ANP members in attendance walked out in the middle of his speech

That the landlords already feel like nobody has any right to talk to them like that should tell you enough about their position and the overwhelming likelihood that they're going to get their way from the city.   That the press spends even a moment entertaining the notion that the landlords have a legitimate beef should tell you the rest.

Anyway, if you'd like to watch the meeting, Dambala has the whole thing on video here.

Also, if you'd like to learn more about short term rentals and New Orleans neighborhoods, come see this presentation at Rising Tide.

Breonne DeDecker & her team are using research and GIS data to track Short Term Rentals in New Orleans. They're working to understand how this affects the overal rental market and figure out what sort of policy intervention could improve housing access and affordability.

Rising Tide X is August 29 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production or order swag, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.

The final throwdown

The final community budget, everybody come yell at the mayor meeting is tonight in District E. If you can't make it, The Lens is live-blogging again. Always helpful and entertaining.

Do read the comments

If you want to understand what's happening in an election, it means you have to pay attention to what people are saying about it.  This means more than just looking at sterile polling "data points." It means listening to callers on talk radio. It means watching the trainwreck focus groups. It also means, you gotta read the comments.

Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee. But he's currently the lightning rod for the most passionate chunk of the GOP base. It's worth knowing what motivates them.

Rise of the technocrats

Please take the time to enjoy this review of the past decade of New Orleans politics the Advocate has put out this morning. There's a tremendous amount to digest there. The Nagin reelection should be studied closely by anyone who wants to understand Post-K tensions and contradictions quickly.

Months after the floods, Nagin found himself facing 23 challengers. It was a diverse group, but all of the well-funded ones were white, and it was clear that the coalition of white voters and middle-class black voters that secured Nagin’s victory in 2002 was falling apart.

Not that the mayor hadn’t done his best to hold it together: He stacked his Bring New Orleans Back rebuilding commission with prominent members of the business community and publicly entertained the footprint debate, widely viewed as a subterfuge to redline poor black neighborhoods and keep out their former residents.

When it was clear the coalition was no more and that many of his wealthy white supporters were writing checks to his opponents, Nagin tacked hard in the other direction. He made explicit racial appeals: His signs asked voters to re-elect “our mayor.” He told black voters in other cities that his many opponents “don’t look like us.” And he gave his infamous “chocolate city” address on the 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, in which he indirectly rebuked supporters of a smaller footprint, to whom he himself had granted a megaphone.

The tactic worked. Nagin tapped into a collective sense of despair felt by many black people — a feeling that they were losing the political power that they had worked generations to achieve. In beating Mitch Landrieu in the runoff, Nagin nearly ran the table among black voters, many of whom came to town from distant locales to pull the handle for him. In the runoff, Landrieu’s share of black votes was smaller than in the primary.

Of course Nagin failed to relieve the "collective sense of despair" because he was never serious about it in the first place.  And as his second term sunk deeper into a malaise dominated by corruption allegations and various outbursts of his own and our collective Id, political power continued to shift toward  more affluent whites.

There's a suggestion in the article that this is can be understood as a "post-racial" dynamic. But really it is post-political.  The emerging New New Orleans is less engaged at the grass roots. The expectation is that the technocrats know what's best and challenges to authority are seen more as annoyances. The new normal is a more stratified power structure than ever before hidden under a gilding of "decorum" and "best practices" and such.

The person who best picks up on this is former city councilman Oliver Thomas. Thomas is sort of the Jimmy Carter of local politics. He's become a much better ex-politician than he was an elected person. Anyway Thomas observes.

Oliver Thomas, the former City Council president whose promising political career went down in flames in 2007, when he admitted taking bribes for protecting a city contractor, is also troubled by some of what he sees.

Superficially, he said, New Orleans appears politically calm, especially in comparison with years past, when School Board meetings often turned into shouting matches and City Council meetings ran late into the evening. But there are rip currents below the placid surface.

“In New Orleans, to me, we have half-a-day politics now, with 24-hour problems,” Thomas said. “Our political officials brag that our meetings end early. Well, how can you brag about getting along when you got issues in the community? We don’t need you to get along; we need you to debate. We need you to provoke thought; we need you to challenge. ... This whole idea about decorum has duped people into believing that things are great. So what are we finding now? They’re not.”

In order to get along as a city, we need to get back to not "getting along" as well politically.   That's democracy.  And it's the thing we're missing the most.

Everybody loves Bobby

While Donald Trump was busy burning down FOX News all weekend, this happened.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was warmly received at the RedState Gathering in Atlanta on Friday.

Jindal largely stuck to familiar talking points and catchphrases, working in lines about “hyphenated Americans,” his own “bandwidth” for the presidency, how Democrats want to “turn the American dream into the European nightmare,” and reiterating that “The United States did not create religious liberty. Religious liberty created the United States of America.”

The crowd ate it up. Jindal received bursts of applause throughout his speech and a standing ovation at the end.

To be fair, a lot of people were standingly ovated at RedState. (Not Trump, though) They're an excitable lot.

Still, comparatively speaking, Bobby is doing pretty ok right now.  Here's a Nate Silver article about.. yes, Trump and his weak net favorables. But look at the rankings.

Fourth most popular is not too shabby.  Give it a little time. Sooner or later we'll see some serious Jindalmentum talk.

Oil lobbyist supports oil lobby agenda

Remember back when Mary Landrieu was still a Senator and she set up a futile last minute run at forcing a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline?  The conventional wisdom at the time was that Mary was desperately trying to save her failing reelection campaign by appearing to "fight for Louisiana jobs" one last time. I didn't really buy that argument.  To me, it looked like Mary had already come to terms with her retirement from the Senate. The Keystone gambit, in that context, was really just resume padding for K Street.  If that is what it was, it worked.  

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has been hired by the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman (VNF), the company announced today. Landrieu's title will be "senior policy advisor," and a release from VNF said Landrieu would "advise clients on various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters."

According to the website Open Secrets, VNF's client base includes several companies dealing in oil and gas, as well as the energy field in general — a natural fit for Landrieu, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. The company has offices in Washington D.C. and Seattle.

The proper context for understanding Mary's actions toward the end of the Senate campaign was she was, at that point, auditioning for a job in the oil lobby.  Similarly, the proper context for understanding her actions now is she is currently employed as an oil lobbyist.

WASHINGTON – Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has signed onto a group of former Democratic lawmakers opposing the Obama's administration's international agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program.

Landrieu is listed as a member of the all Democratic advisory board for Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. Also on the board are former Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana;  Mark Begich of Alaska and former Reps. Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Gary Ackerman of New York and Peter Deutsch of Florida.

Oil is pretty cheap right now. The global market for petroleum is a complicated animal to describe but the most common belief among analysts is that the Iran deal is likely to drive prices downward as Iranian exports increase.  The Iran deal itself is also a complicated matter but the general consensus there is that it makes for a decent alternative to bombing more people.  That's also probably not the best news for Mary's clients. And they're who matter to Mary.

Floodline

One of the things I'm doing this month is retracing some of my own steps I took around town with the camera during the first few years after the flood.  Probably won't get to everything I want by the end of the month. (I seem to have a great deal less time on my hands nowadays.) If I find anything interesting I'll try and post it here.  Anyway here's the first one.

I noticed this house on Washington Avenue on Super Sunday 2007.  It struck me that the floodline was still so clearly visible nearly two years after the fact.



Last weekend I stopped in front of it again to snap this picture.



The second photo doesn't duplicate the first as closely as I'd like. I'll try to get better at that as I do more of these.  Had I gotten in closer, the fact that the floodline is still (barely) visible would be more readily evident.  If you open the photo in its Flickr page and zoom in, you'll find it.  Aside from the painting on the second level, it doesn't look like much else has changed here. The houses on either side look like they've had substantial work done.

As I was taking this picture, a man on the street approached me, said he knew the owner, and asked if I wanted to buy it.  I guess we should take that as a sign of the times in Central City. What other interest could a white guy on a bike have in taking pictures of houses there?

What would it be like if "Businessman" Ray Nagin ran for President?

Well he'd be a quote machine for one thing. Nagin had a unique ability, at least for a while, to say whatever crazy thing popped into his head and pretty much get away with it.

Donald Trump says the darnedest things. The real estate mogul is the current front-runner for the GOP nomination in a crowded Republican presidential field, and now more than ever, he has become a bottomless source of divisive soundbites.

Nagin was also famous for lashing out at reporters who pressed him.  So there'd probably be some of that going on too.

The debate left front-runner Trump singed by the aggressive questioning of Fox's moderator team of Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. Trump tweeted out criticism of the moderators as "not very good or professional" and retweeted a message from a supporter who called Kelly a "bimbo."

And who can forget that time when Nagin went to prison after a federal bribery conviction.  We should have seen that coming after the time Nagin explained to a reporter why he had gone into politics in the first place.

"Politics in New Orleans is the dominant industry, so I decided to get in," he said. "Besides tourism, politics dominates everything. I just think it's part of our legacy and our history."

What would it look like if a guy like that were running for President?  Would it look like this? 

Donald Trump bragged Thursday night that he could buy politicians — even the ones sharing the stage with him at a Republican presidential debate.

Trump was asked about something he said in a previous interview: “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”

“You’d better believe it,” Trump said. “If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.”

Finally, we all remember Nagin as our city's only publicly declared "vagina friendly mayor."  So let's see is that... oh.. wait a minute.



Okay well nevermind that. Guess we'll never know exactly what it would be like to see Ray Nagin run for President.  But we sure are getting something kind of close to that. 

Congratulations on not really solving anything

It's a feel good moment.

Anyone working for a company that gets significant contracts or subsidies from city government in New Orleans will have to be paid at least $10.55 an hour starting next year.

City Council members unanimously approved a “living wage” ordinance for those workers on Thursday, couching the measure as a blow against inequality and a moral duty for the city to pay its residents a decent salary and to put employees performing public functions through private companies on a more equal footing with their government counterparts.

Hey some folks got a raise.  Not a lot of folks. Only people working for companies who have contracts with the city worth $25,000 or more. Also, while this will mean a raise for some folks and that's good news for them, it's not, you know, great news.

More importantly, for the majority of these workers, $10.55 is definitely not a "living wage."  Here is MIT's Living Wage Calculator. This is what it does.

The living wage is defined as the wage needed to cover basic family expenses (basic needs budget) plus all relevant taxes. The living wage calculation does not include publicly provided income or housing assistance. Values are reported in 2014 dollars. To convert values from annual to hourly, a work-year of 2,080 hours (52, 40 hour work weeks) is assumed. The basic needs budget is calculated as follows:

Basic needs budget = Food cost + child care cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
 
The tax values are applied to the basic needs budget to calculate a living wage as follows:
Living wage = Basic needs budget + (basic needs budget * (taxes))

According to the calculator, in Orleans Parish, $10.55 is below "living wage" for most people's family situations.  In fact, the type of only household for which this wage qualifies is livable is one with two childless adults.

The reason this is important is because, even after the mayor signs this ordinance and it goes into effect, the minimum wage for city contractors will still be substandard. And this says nothing at all of the greater number of minimum wage workers not employed by city contractors still making the even less liveable $7.25 (not liveable for any household type, btw.)

This means there's a lot more work to do in the interest of promoting a truly liveable wage in the city of New Orleans.  Only now when organizers come back to petition their councilpersons the momentum will be blunted by the fact of this recently passed this ordinance. "We did that already," they'll say just as they get back to figuring out how to legalize Airbnb and force the cost of living even higher. 

Of course, if we can celebrate 10 years of gentrification and disaster capitalism as some sort of uplifting "recovery," then it follows that we'll pat ourselves on the back over a raise from poverty into poverty.  It's all the same to the politicos, though. They passed something with the words "living wage" in it. Congratulations.

Trump's debate performance

Pretty much just this.



Anyway, I think this may be the beginning of the end of Trumpmania. It probably won't happen immediately. He might even see his poll numbers go up once more before they inevitably fade.  But this is the part where voters start to kick the tires on the NotJeb candidates Trump has been holding a space for.  From the looks of things, Carly Fiorina and.. yes.. Bobby Jindal seem to have made the best impressions during the early debate. Don't be surprised if Trump's support gradually starts to drift toward one or both of them in the coming weeks. In the long run, Jindal is the stronger candidate of the two but look for people (particularly mainstream pundits.. and especially particularly FOX) to try and push her a little bit harder at first.

Probably just for the hell of it?

Hmmm somebody has a idea.

It’s taken as a given in New Orleans political circles that Jason Williams has his eye on the 2018 mayoral race, but it now appears the City Council president is at least toying with setting his sights even higher: the Governor’s Mansion.

Williams said Thursday he will make a decision “very soon” about whether to become a late entry into this fall’s four-person gubernatorial race. His interest was first reported earlier Thursday by LA Politics, a subscription news service focused on state politics.

In an interview after the City Council’s meeting, Williams said he was “100 percent committed” to New Orleans. But he said he’s received calls from people “all over the state” in the past few weeks urging him to run for the state’s top job.

Uh huh. We know Williams is an up and comer and all. But wouldn't it be interesting to know who these "people all over the state" calling him are and why he'd want to help them ensure a Republican is elected Governor this year.

Debate drinking games are so 2004

Nevertheless, there are going to be some debate drinking game articles published so be ready for that. Some of them are still kind of funny, even. But, really, from this point forward the one rule is this.

Drink when: There is a debate on.

Who is still here and who are the bastards?

This is a pretty good looking review of what I expect is a questionable book. I went to see Gratz talk a few months ago and I got a similar negative impression of her indifferent, condescending toward the locals currently being displaced in favor of arriviste "re-imaginers" with over-inflated opinions of their importance.

Her subject is the resurgence of the city, through “old-fashioned volunteerism” and the determination of everyday people to prevail over dysfunction, corruption and contempt. An acolyte of Jane Jacobs, Gratz trails urban saviors, full of faith in the ­power and process of citizens organizing themselves against industry and government powers.

Nope. None of that thesis has any basis in reality. New Orleans was always going to be rebuilt. The burst of activity boosters like to call a "resurgence" was the inevitable result of the 71 billion dollars worth of federal aid poured into the city after the flood.  The challenge faced by local leaders and activists was to make sure the benefits of "resurgence" accrued equitably. That the city we rebuilt would work for the people who lived in the city that was destroyed.  If there's been one unifying theme to this Yellow Blog over the past decade it is that our leaders and activists have failed miserably to meet that challenge.

Gratz's work has a different focus.

But the book is less a portrait of the city through the eyes of its citizenry than a guided tour of its nonprofit industrial complex. Much of her cast is in possession of 501c3 status, and too often, her treatment of their stories is about as illuminating as the “About Us” page on an organizational website. Because Gratz’s New Orleans is a series of causes, a true geography of the city scarcely emerges. Those who do not self-select into citizen advocacy groups are recipients of services.

In other words, this is a book from the point of tunnelview of the "volunteer entrepreneurs" and other various grifters  who have managed to find niches for their nonprofits. But the bigger picture of  the "recovery" is about building nice things for rich people and tourists while moving everyone else out of the way.

The title of this book is "We're Still Here Ya Bastards" but one has to wonder who Gratz thinks is "still here" and who are the real "bastards"?

August

The shitty part of the year has entered its home stretch. The forecast calls for only moderate shittiness, though.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center on Thursday gave its forecast, calling for a below-normal hurricane season with a 90 percent degree of accuracy. It's the highest probability for a below-average season since NOAA began issuing seasonal forecasts in 1998.

Forecasters say El Nino has strengthened as predicted, while atmospheric conditions and cool ocean temperatures across the tropics aren't good for storm development.

NOAA expects six to 10 named storms, with one to four strengthening into hurricanes with top sustained winds of at least 74 mph.

 Thanks, El Nino. Looks like you've saved the day again.

I wanna see some history

Where has the year gone?  We're almost all the way to the end of Everybody Shout At The Mayor Season. The final Budget Circus Shout Session is next Monday in District E.  If that seems early to you, it's because it is.  Shouting at the mayor season was intentionally moved up the calendar this year in order to better serve the illusion that the shouting actually helps to shape the mayor's budget priorities. It doesn't. But, man, is it ever fun.

Still, the shift in schedule may have caused you to miss your chance to get in on the excitement.  If so, you are in luck. 

Following last week's invite-only daylong discussion on the future of the city's Confederate landmarks, the City of New Orleans hosts two meetings next week that are open to the public.

The Historic District Landmarks Commission hosts a meeting in City Council chambers at City Hall (1300 Perdido St.) from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 13, followed by a Human Relations Commission meeting at 6 p.m.

Up for discussion are the possible relocations of several monuments to the confederacy, including a statue of Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle, a Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway, a P.G.T. Beauregard statue in front of City Park, and the Liberty Place Monument on Iberville Street.

Oh boy. Do you think they know what it is they are asking for? 

According to a release, comment cards at the Human Relations Commission meeting must be submitted no later than 7 p.m. in order for participants to speak. The city also is accepting public comments online at www.nola.gov/hdlc or www.nola.gov/hrc. Those comments must be received by 5 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11 to be entered into the record

Ha ha, yes they do, indeed.  Well, okay, let's have it out.  This will only take about all of the rest of our lives to resolve.  Not that it should take that long. As I and others have said, this isn't as complicated as the reactionaries are making it out to be. The specific monuments in question represent a propaganda campaign on the part of Confederate apologists during the Jim Crow period. It is time to end that campaign. We've spent enough time trying to annotate or compromise with it to know that isn't going to work.

For example, this is the Liberty Place monument.



Erected in 1891, it commemorates the restoration of white supremacist government to Louisiana by purposefully misrepresenting a riot during which members of the Crescent City White League murdered Metropolitan Police and state militia as a "battle" for "Liberty."  Inscriptions added later celebrated the end of reconstruction declaring, "The national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state."

In the 1970s another inscription was added saying, basically, "Hey we don't actually think the racist stuff we wrote on this monument before." More controversy ensued.

This gesture satisfied almost no one. In 1976, the NAACP Youth Council requested the monument's removal, while some decried the plaque as "historical revisionism." Furthermore, modern white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan began to see the memorial as a rallying point for planned marches and demonstrations.

In 1981, the monument nearly left public view at Mayor Ernest "Dutch" Morial's order, sparking a new round of public discussion and protest. Ultimately, the City Council blocked any move or alteration, and the monument remained on Canal Street, although partially hidden behind tall bushes.

The monument left public view in 1989, reportedly for safe keeping, amidst construction on Canal Street. Mayor Sidney Barthelemy pledged to return the marker, though his administration missed the originally stated date for its replacement. The structure stayed in storage until February 1993, when a movement led by David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, sued for its return. To the chagrin of many residents, the city obliged but moved the obelisk off of Canal Street to its present site in the curve of Iberville Street, between railroad tracks and the entrance to a parking garage.

When they put it back they, somewhat clumsily, patched over the white supremacy inscription with this piece of marble.



They also added a new front panel with some words about how we really need to honor "both sides" of the riot incited by the White Leaguers because doing so will "teach us lessons for the future."



I'll be the first to admit that this thoroughly stupid collection of insults and exacerbating half-remedies is full of historical significance. It should be preserved somewhere. But let's not allow it to continue on public display as a monument. There's nothing we can do to make it appropriate for that. And clearly we have tried.

The mayor wants us to consider renaming Jefferson Davis Parkway. I'm open to that, although I'm not thrilled that he wants to rename it for Norman Francis. But the monuments on the neutral ground are the real problem. Like this one to Colonel Charles Didier Dreux



That one along with other monuments described in this article  to "Poet Priest of the Confederacy" Abram J Ryan, General Albert Pike, and, of course, JD himself make the entire length of the street into a Confederate theme park.



It's probably well past time for us to change that.  But, if last week's District A Budget meeting is any indication, that will not be easy.  

Landrieu: "It does not surprise me that some folks in this room may not feel and may not think that some people in this city are offended every time they drive by a statue that they think reveres—" "History!" one woman yells. Landrieu politely asks her to let him finish.

One wonders, though, why the cries of "History!" are loudest in defense of these Jim Crow era revisionist monuments.  If it's important that we ensure the memory of our city's Old South history remain at the forefront of public consciousness, why not consider the far more significant sites and events we are currently neglecting?

Here is a view of the intersection of St. Louis and Charters Streets in the French Quarter.



The building we're looking at in the photo is a horrendous tourist trap of a "Cajun restaurant" called Original Pierre Maspero's (est. 1788). According to an official enough looking plaque on the wall there, this was the site where Andrew Jackson met with the famous Lafitte brothers to plan the defense of New Orleans from the British.  Oh and also, the plaque says matter of factly, "slaves were sold there."

The first problem for fans of History! is none of that is true. None of it is true of that building, anyway. The building that was once known as Maspero's Exchange (but also under other names) and where at least some of those things happened no longer exists. It was located across the street. On the corner from where this photo was taken, actually. Richard Campanella describes it here.

Originally called Tremoulet’s Commercial (or New Exchange) Coffee House, this business became Maspero’s Exchange in 1814, Elkin’s Exchange after Pierre Maspero’s death in 1822, and by 1826, Hewlett’s Exchange, named for new owner John Hewlett. Because of the place’s popularity and frequent management changes, newspapers and city directories ascribed a variety of names to the business at 129 (now 501) Chartres: the “Exchange Coffee House,” “New Exchange Coffee House,” “Hewlett’s Coffee House,” or “La Bourse de Hewlett.”

The two story, 55-by-62-foot edifice boasted behind its gaudy Venetian screens a 19-foot-high ceiling, four 12 lamp glass chandeliers, framed maps and oil paintings (described by one Northerner as “licentious”), wood and marble finishing, and an enormous bar with French glassware. Like many of New Orleans’ coffee houses, the upper floor contained billiards and gambling tables. Throughout the mid-antebellum years, Hewlett’s Exchange buzzed with trilingual auctioning activity, in which everything from ships to houses to land to sugar kettles to people legally changed hands.

The city’s seven auctioneers worked the block on a rotating schedule, every day except Sunday, oftentimes while maintaining other jobs elsewhere. Joseph Le Carpentier handled Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays; Toussaint Mossy (president of the New Orleans Architect Company) worked Tuesdays and Fridays; H. J. Domingon, George Boyd, and Joseph Baudue got Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and the busy Isaac McCoy and Francois Dutillet worked six days a week. At the time of Lincoln’s visit, Hewlett’s Exchange was the New Orleans business community’s single most important public meeting site for networking, news-gathering, and wheeling-dealing.

Which brings us to another point of interest our History! buffs might want to have a look at. The stuff in the plaque about Andrew Jackson and the Lafittes is shaky. But the "slaves were sold there" bit is quite an understatement. Campanella only talks about the Exchange's importance to "the New Orleans business community."  But this may be selling the scene short. In fact this was the center of the American trade in cotton and in human beings.Which is to say it was a major nexus of 19th Century global capitalism.

A recently published book to read here is by historian Edward Baptist. An early chapter in The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism describes innovations in banking and credit that allowed great fortunes in commodities and slaves (who were themselves commodities) to be moved great distances at the stroke of a pen. "Innovators" like New Orleans businessman Vincent Nolte could write an order from a table at Maspero's Exchange and thousands of bales would be headed to Liverpool, or thousands of slaves shuffled off from Maryland to Alabama. Baptist calls this the entrepreneur's "right hand" power. Today we might recognize it as "disruption." (You might have to click the image to read the quote.)

Given the modern enthusiasm for wave after wave of  "creative destruction" heralded at every NOLA Entrepreneur Week, you'd think our History! buffs would be thrilled to know more about the dynamic 'treps like Nolte who hung around in hip bars like Maspero's thinking up how to do Uber but for slavery. 

But for some reason, they'd rather fixate on preserving the over-embellished memories of a failed rebellion bent on preserving the slave power these entrepreneurs created.  Maybe they just prefer losers. Or maybe they don't have any idea what they're talking about.  In any case, they're sure to be yelling about it at City Hall next week.  If you have the opportunity to witness this historic event, please take notes. Otherwise someone may call it a "battle" and try to commission a monument.

"Monitoring"

Oh dear

New Orleans businessman and newspaper owner John Georges has no current plans to run for Louisiana governor, but refused to rule out a 2015 campaign entirely during an interview with The Monroe News-Star.

"I'd rather not say one way or another. Right now I don't have plans to run, but I don't think it's too late," said Georges, when asked directly about whether he would enter the gubernatorial race this year.

This might be too much excitement. Our Governor's race already has Gomer, Mr. Bean, T-Bobby, and Vitty Cent.  Please don't make us add Goat Boy. I don't think we could take that. 

Bandwidth

Monday night tens of people tuned in to CSPAN to see the Republican Presidential candidates play an exhibition warm-up forum prior to Thursday night's prime time debates. Fans were disappointed to learn that Donald Trump would not be there. But, because this was a pre-season game, it only makes sense that team GOP rested their starter in order to avoid injuries.

Much like an NFL exhibition, this event did not challenge any of the candidates with direct regular season competition as much as it provided a controlled environment for individual evaluation.  Hard core fans will probably want to watch the game film here. But keep in mind, this was also muck like an NFL exhibition in that it's very difficult to say what, if anything, of value was learned.

Each candidate was given about a minute or two on stage to answer what appeared to be pre-arranged questions suited to his or her favorite talking points. After all 14 participants had rotated in, they were called back for a second, very similar, round but with 30 seconds added for "closing statements."

This was a heavily scripted performance of each candidate's standard stump schtick.  But it's worth at least observing how well they pull that off on stage. So, there were a few notes worth scribbling down, or tweeting out, or whatever I did. Here are those.

Given that the substance is staged boilerplate, I guess the thing we're looking for first here is style points. Sadly, everyone was pretty bland. The only candidates who distinguished themselves did so in the negative sense.

For example, Lindsey Graham's description of his trade policy, "Clinched fist or open hand. You choose," sounded weird the first time he said it. By the third repetition it started to sound almost dirty. Rick Perry didn't forget any list items or anything. But he did squirm in his chair a lot and generally look goofy. Ben Carson seems half asleep when he speaks and holds his "Gifted Hands" awkwardly. Ted Cruz was tangibly creepy but that's nothing new.

The most disappointing presentation by far was from presumed contender Marco Rubio who just isn't very good at talking. Rubio, like the two other Senators who participated, was beamed in via satellite link but was the only one of the three who couldn't figure out that he needed to wait on the delay to avoid talking over the host.  He also stumbled over his own words a few times and looked very much like he needed a glass of water.. which is kind of a problem when people are specifically watching for that.
 
Almost all of the candidates wanted to talk about "border security." Rick Perry began by saying he once "looked the President in the eye" and told him that Texas would secure the border if the feds would not. And then, according to Perry, Texas went ahead and did that so I don't really know what he's complaining about now.

Other Republicans talked more effectively about "border security" in relation to the version of economic populism many of them will try to sell this year.  John Kasich, Rick Santorum, and Lindsey Graham all talked about the effects of immigration on wages in the US.  Although they also spoke in favor of "guestworker" programs which apparently don't hurt anybody. (oops!) It's interesting also that all of these "free traders" have spent their careers supporting agreements like NAFTA, and now the TPP and TTIP which demolish fair labor and environmental standards across international borders but have no shame in demagoguing against their deleterious effects.

But hypocrisy is a given on the campaign trail.  This is how Chris Christie can declare, "The war on drugs has been a failure" the same week that he also said this.

"If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it," Christie, a Republican presidential candidate, said during a town-hall event in the early voting state of New Hampshire, according to Bloomberg.

“As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws,” he added.

Christie, who has long opposed recreational marijuana and said early this month that he has never tried pot, has stated that unlike President Obama he would not selectively choose which federal laws to enforce.

It's also how  Ted Cruz can, with a straight face, rail against "career politicians in bed with special interests" while this is going on.

Senator Ted Cruz’s standing in many national polls may be middling, but Friday brought fresh evidence as to why he should not be underestimated: The Texas Republican is a magnet for big donors.

How big? Toby Neugebauer, an energy investor, donated $10 million to Keep the Promise II, a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Cruz.

The donation represents one of the largest amounts given by a single donor to a Super PAC so far this campaign cycle and demonstrates the potential influence that individuals can have upon a presidential election and with a senior lawmaker.

Mr. Neugebauer, the son of Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas, is the co-founder of Quantum Energy Partners and has been an active investor in the oil and gas sectors, overseeing billions of dollars of assets.

There were other knee-slappers.

"Libertarian" Rand Paul seemed pretty adamant that the government has a right to summarily execute you as long as it says you are a "terrorist."

Scott Walker says it's important that climate change policy is "balanced" against the needs of industry which seems like a totally legitimate way to go about things given the circumstances.

George Pataki is also running for President.

Of course our friend Bobby Jindal was there too.  He comported himself pretty well, in fact. This was not a repeat of his infamous State of the Union response which I think we should all just stop talking about now.  Bobby has improved his presentation at least to a level where it is no longer laughable.

I'm less impressed with his improvement than Oyster seems to be, though. Jindal will always come off as a nerd and a phony.  But we've elected nerds before. (Think George H. W. Bush) And certainly we've elected phonies. (Think every President ever.) So there's no reason to dismiss Bobby Jindal's campaign based on style. One poor impression he made on TV six years ago does not mean he isn't to be taken seriously now.

The things he says are ridiculous too but no more ridiculous than any of his opponents' offerings listed above. Monday night Jindal coolly recited some of the pet phrases he's been honing during his many trips to Iowa and New Hampshire.

"I'm tired of talkers. We need doers."

"We need to get off of the path towards socialism."

"American Dream" vs. "European Nightmare"

You may have heard these before.  Have you heard this new one yet, though?

“We need a doer, not a talker,” he said in his valedictory. “We can’t afford four more years of on-the-job training.”

And, he assured the audience, he has the “bandwidth” and “backbone” to get the job done.

“We’ve had seven years of a great talker,” he said. “Let’s elect a doer.

“Let us believe in America again.”

What on Earth could that "bandwidth" thing possibly mean, we asked Twitter. Twitter responded, convincingly enough.

@champsuperstar @skooks it means he can handle a lot of things at once. It's common lame business jargon.

— Larry (@LarryLarmeu) August 4, 2015

In other words, Bobby is going for that "Geek Appeal" again. 

But as long as Bobby is talking about his "bandwidth" maybe one or two local Iowa or New Hampshire reporters would like to take it as an opening to ask him why he has so much while his state has so little. 

Louisiana was set to receive an $80 million federal grant to expand broadband access in North and Central Louisiana. I know, for an absolute fact that, behind the scenes, Mary Landrieu’s staff worked diligently to ensure Louisiana had an opportunity, and I’m not at all surprised that Senator Landrieu has been so vocal about this issue. You see, last week, the Commerce Department rescinded the grant because Louisiana couldn’t get its act together. More specifically, Governor Jindal and his administration couldn’t get their acts together

Of course it won't make much difference.  Bobby will simply say that, because the $80 million in broadband access for the poor was coming from the federal government and not a private cable operator, that he was really giving us "freedom" instead of bandwidth and isn't that better anyway.  It won't hurt Bobby with Republicans to have to say that.

In fact, it will be right in step with Scott Walker's claim that "freedom" is better than a union job with full benefits or George Pataki's claim that "patient empowerment" is better than actual health care. This is the meat they're all serving this year. These are the lies you tell if you want to be the Republican nominee And Jindal tells them every bit as well as or better than the rest of them.   

Disruption

Here is a great article by Jennifer Berkshire (aka EduShyster) based on a series of interviews she conducted recently with New Orleans area educators and activists. This is a wide ranging article but if I might point out one key component of the "disruption" grift we find in evidence here.

Fajardo is telling me a familiar story, one that I’ve come to think of as the conversion narrative—how she went from being a reform enthusiast to one of the new system’s loudest, and most persistent critics. “I thought charters were the best. College readiness, world-class education—I bought it all. I thought ‘charters must be better than what we have because everyone coming down here is so much smarter than we are.’”

But Fajardo, who spent years working as an advocate for children and parents in the pre-Katrina schools, soon found herself playing the same role in the new system. First informally, then as an organizer for VAYLA, a group of students and young leaders from both the Vietnamese and Latino communities in New Orleans East, Fajardo began to do battle on behalf of students and parents with limited English.

“I heard all the stories, about discrimination, about parents who had no way to communicate with anyone at their kids’ schools, about students being pushed out by schools,” says Fajardo. Her work with parents helped inform the federal complaint filed by VAYLA and other advocacy groups in 2013, alleging that New Orleans’ schools were violating the civil rights of non-English speaking students.

Fajardo is convinced that parents actually have less power in New Orleans today than they did under the previous school system. She argues that eliminating neighborhood schools has also eliminated the power of parents to come together as part of a community.  “Parents are fighting individual battles with these schools and they’re all petrified of what will happen to their kids,” she says. Meanwhile, principals in the new autonomous landscape are more powerful than ever, functioning more like CEOs who report to hand-picked nonprofit boards. “That’s the power shift,” says Fajardo.

Before I go, I ask Fajardo about the claim made by so many education reform advocates, that by giving parents the power to leave schools they’re unhappy with, they have the ultimate control over their children’s education. But she doesn’t see it that way at all. “Unless everybody pulls their kids out, how do you ever change a school?”

Break up the teachers union. Break up the local community. Isolate each family so that they have to face the "CEO" individually.    Obviously the next step is profit. 

Ms. Berkshire is back in New Orleans this week to participate in a conference on the consequences of the ed reform movement.  The tweets coming from there today are fascinating.

I would be remiss, also, if I did not mention that Rising Tide 10 (or RT X, if you like) will feature a panel discussion on this very topic led by last year's keynote speaker Dr. Andre Perry.  More details here.

What do you think of when you think about "public safety"?

Here is an essential op-ed by John Barry that ran in the New York Times over the weekend.  I say "essential" in that it lays out, for a national readership, the continuing challenge of protecting New Orleans, not only from flooding during the next inevitable major hurricane, but from sinking into the Gulf of Mexico altogether. For us locals, though, much of this is just review. Or so I thought, anyway.

Barry goes through the unique geology of South Louisiana, the problems of flood control and soil subsidence, and the special political challenges of holding the oil industry responsible for its sizeable contribution to the problem. His conclusion is dark.

Right now the city is safer than it was pre-Katrina, but it’s hardly secure, and it’s growing more dangerous every day. Even in the face of rising seas, however, it can be made much safer. The state has enough money to start its program, even if it doesn’t have nearly enough to continue, much less complete, the necessary work, once the BP settlement runs out. There is an unfortunate precedent. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the federal government began building the city’s hurricane protection. In 2005 when Katrina struck, that system remained unfinished.

On the 10th anniversary of Katrina, there will be much congratulating over how far the city has come. Mayor Landrieu has declared rebuilding over and is preparing to make New Orleans an international showpiece for its 300th anniversary in 2018. If the city and state focus on the one existential threat they face. New Orleans could have a sustainable future. But if focus dissipates, if politics blocks action, the 300th anniversary will most likely be the last centennial the city celebrates.

We've already seen politics block action. Barry experienced that first hand and writes about it in his article.  But that other part about "if the focus dissipates," that's worrisome. Barry pointedly places it aside the mayor's upcoming Tricentennial celebrations. Even this year, the official tone of the city's 10 year Katrina commemoration is one of great triumph. 

Meanwhile, the impending crisis has settled far to the back of our collective mind. I put the Barry article on Twitter the other day. Its title "Is New Orleans Safe?" generated immediate responses from many who assumed it was about crime.  We'll be arguing about whether or not we're safe from crime for as long as we're here. We haven't got much time left to decide how long that's going to be.

T-Bobby does his own stunts

Certainly is no Harrison Ford but..

While waiting for the light at the corner of West Congress Street and West University Avenue in Lafayette, Angelle saw a Chevrolet pickup truck driving erratically. The driver lucked out; catching the green light and slowly proceeding through one the city’s busiest intersections then into people’s yards.

Angelle said he saw the driver’s head bob and realized something was wrong.

He and other motorists jumped out of their vehicles, ran down the pickup. Angelle said he reached in through the driver’s window and put the gear in neutral. The truck rolled to a stop.

The guy driver seems like he's ok. According to the story at least. T-Bobby did a good thing. 

Season opener

Hey look the first of many clown shows happens tonight.

Gov. Bobby Jindal will be participating in his first Republican presidential candidates' forum tonight in New Hampshire. The event runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and features 14 candidates (though not Donald Trump.)

The event is being broadcast live on C-SPAN. The New Hampshire Union-Leader newspaper is streaming it live online here. The New Orleans-based WDSU will also carry the debate live on its website and mobile app, and then do a rebroadcast of the event at 10:35 p.m. on its television station.

Boo no Trump. But you do get to see something you won't see Thursday night which is Bobby Jindal on the same stage as Jeb and Walker and Rubio and the rest of the greater dwarves. Despite his campaign's attempts to generate a "surge" narrative in Iowa, Jindal still doesn't have what it takes to get on FOX's list that counts for the big show. So it's worth tuning in for that alone. 

Where the Saints of football play

I don't know if this story is apocryphal or not but Dave Dixon made sure to tell it enough times that it gets included in anything anyone ever writes about the Dome. It's a great story either way.

As the story goes, then-Gov. John McKeithen was uncharacteristically silent while he was considering businessman and sports visionary Dave Dixon’s proposal for a domed stadium in New Orleans.

Then suddenly, McKeithen brought his fist down on his desk and thundered, “My God. That would be the greatest building in the history of mankind!

“We’ll build that sucker!”

And, by God, McKeithen was right, as this Advocate retrospective well demonstrates. 

Maybe it was for a Saints game. There have been 370 of them — and, remarkably, the locals are dead even in the building at 185-185.

Or maybe it was for Endymion. Or a Sugar Bowl. Or the papal visit. Or the “No mas” Leonard-Duran fight. Or the Essence Festival. Or a high school game. Or maybe even a high school prom.

They still have those in the ballroom-sized quadrants that have been converted into club lounges.

Or maybe one of the hundreds of other events over the past four decades, some successful, some not.

The Rolling Stones drew more than 80,000 fans to a 1981 concert. But a closed-circuit fight that also was being broadcast on HBO attracted just 83 paying customers. That’s believed to be the all-time low turnout for a Dome event.

While the flexibility of the Dome is what has made all of those concerts, boat shows, flower shows, trade shows and conventions possible, major sports events are what it does better than just about anyplace else.

McKeithen built our city a 70,000 seat "living room." (Doug Thornton calls it that in that article.) We all hang out there from time to time. It's our favorite place to host visitors. Before Tom Benson was allowed to sell the "name" of our building to a sponsor, the state legislature had moved to name it for Governor McKeithen. That would have been appropriate, although most of us prefer the original Louisiana Superdome. It was built by the people of the state. It should carry their name.

When you think of New Orleans and its famous architecture, you're likely to picture wrought iron balconies or Greek revival mansions.  But the Superdome is our greatest building. Sure, it is first and foremost a sports arena, but over 40 years it has functioned as a civic space, a landmark, a shelter (for better and for worse) and a piece of genuine local identity and even pride.

And unlike the glass and steel imitators billionaire sports owners extort from taxpayers around the country,  this is actually a beautiful building. Despite its enormity, the Superdome manages to convey a kind of understated elegance. Whereas Dallas has built a "Death Star" of surreal post-modern excess, and Atlanta is currently constructing, "Megatron's Butthole" the Superdome looks and feels like a real place.  It's no easy trick to design a welcoming, human sort of monolith but that is what our Dome is.  It's almost gotten to a point where people take this transformative and, yes, iconic structure for granted.

Sure, we've stupidly allowed Tom Benson to suck a bunch of money out of it he doesn't deserve. And, yes, the naming sponsorship is egregious. But that doesn't change the fact that this very well may be the "greatest building in the history of mankind" or, at least, in a very localized conceptualization of that.

Is The Greenway Open Yet Dot Com

The opening of the Lafitte Greenway, originally scheduled for this spring, and then pushed back to summer, and then again to late summer is pretty much done right now. Or at least that's how it appeared this weekend on a bike trip from the Quarter out to Bayou St. John.  Work crews were still finishing up some landscaping. And I don't know if all of the signage and lighting is quite ready. But the bike trail is ready and you can definitely go there and ride on it.  It's a convenient way to get between Mid City and downtown. Plus it just looks nice. Here's some pictures.

“It’s not that we dislike Hillary"

Someone is always qualifying a statement with that, it seems.

“It’s not that we dislike Hillary, it’s that we want to win the White House,” said Richard A. Harpootlian, a lawyer and Democratic donor in Columbia, S.C., who met with Mr. Ricchetti before Beau Biden died. “We have a better chance of doing that with somebody who is not going to have all the distractions of a Clinton campaign.”

A spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment.

In a July 30 Quinnipiac poll, 57 percent of voters said Mrs. Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, and 52 percent said she did not care about their needs or problems. The same poll showed Mr. Biden with his highest favorability rating, 49 percent, in seven years, with 58 percent saying he was honest and trustworthy and 57 percent saying he cared about them. But Mrs. Clinton’s numbers are still strong, especially among likely Democratic primary voters.

“The No. 1 thing voters want is a candidate who is honest and trustworthy, and the veep is leading in those polls,” said William Pierce, executive director of Draft Biden, a “super PAC” that is trying to build enthusiasm for a possible candidacy.

Geez there's even a "Draft Biden" Super PAC. Frankly, I don't see how Biden's entry does anything but help Hillary in that it more or less guarantees that Bernie Sanders will never grow his support beyond the enthusiastic crowds that have been coming to see him speak. And Bernie guarantees that Biden will have to split his share of the Anybody But Hillary vote with him.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, there's enough room for 16 or 17 candidates because they all share the same pool of billionaires anyway.  

A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs.

Meanwhile here's a must-read piece of commentary by Rick Perlstein on the unique campaign dynamics emerging for 2016.  

The bottom line is that the penumbras and emanations of Citizens United are changing the campaign game in ways that throw all previous understandings of how Republicans nominate presidents into a cocked hat. To see how it’s working on the ground, come with me to Southern California, where last year David and Charles Koch convened one of their dog-and-pony shows, where the aspirants lined up to stand on their hind legs to beg before their would-be masters.Politico spoke to two people who were there, and offered the following account of the performance of Ohio’s Governor John Kasich.

“Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and the wife of Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, rose to say she disagreed with Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage, and questioned why he’d said it was ‘what God wanted.’” Kasich’s “fiery” response: “I don’t know about you, lady. But when I get to the pearly gates, I’m going to have to answer what I’ve done for the poor.”

Other years, before other audiences, such public piety might have sounded banal. This year, it’s enough to kill a candidacy:

“About 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar.”

Which is, of course, astonishing. But even more astonishing was the lesson the Politico drew from it—one, naturally, about personalities: “Kasich’s temper has made it harder to endear himself to the GOP’s wealth benefactors.” His temper. Not their temper. Not, say, “Kasich’s refusal to kowtow before the petulant whims of a couple of dozen greedy nonentities who despise the Gospel of Jesus Christ has foreclosed his access to the backroom cabals without which a Republican presidential candidacy is inconceivable.”

So while Hillary Clinton, potentially Joe Biden and a cast of thousands of Republican donors struggle to figure out how they're going to master the new politics of oligarchy, only one candidate is running specifically on the promise to break it.

2016 Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders announced on Face the Nation a self-described litmus test for any Supreme Court nominee he would consider if elected president, which, hey, could happen: they must pledge to overturn Citizens United.

“As a result of this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, clearly the billionaires, Koch Brothers and others, are owning the political process,” Sanders said. “They will determine who the candidates are.”

“If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice,” he said. “That nominee will say that we are all going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians.”

Clearly, that guy does not actually want to win.