Death stars and carbon bombs

In most of the country, Labor Day Weekend is where we make the psychic turn from summer to fall, even if the calendar doesn't quite yet agree. In Louisiana, September is a liar. School is back in session. Football has kicked off. The Halloween decorations have been up at Rouses for weeks now. But outside, the heat and humidity remain. And, of course, Hurricane Season moves into its most active period. The August 29 date marks not just the anniversary of Katrina, but also Isaac and Ida, so the seasonal transition can be an especially traumatic one.  This year the temporal ecotone delivers us into peak storm season from the most brutal heat most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. The state is still so hot and dry that the Governor is warning people not to fire up the grill for the holiday. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, as we head into the marquee part of Hurricane Season, the Washington Post greets us with a predictably depressing update on Louisiana's sinking coastline. 

A group of scientists at Tulane University have also been investigating the situation. They found that across more than 200 wetland monitoring stations, seas are almost always rising faster than wetlands are able to grow — meaning that most wetlands are in a state of “drowning.” Their work, which is unpublished, tracked changes between 2009 and 2021.

“The number of the ‘drowning’ sites is much more than I thought before I started” the research, said Guandong Li, a PhD student at Tulane who led the work. “About 90 percent of these sites are unable to keep up with this recent high rate of sea level rise.”

"In a state of drowning."  I'm petitioning for a bill next year that let's me buy a license plate with, "The Drowning State" printed on it. Anyway, we know this information all too well now.  The current effort to protect and rebuild the coast is proving to be no match for accelerating sea level rise.

Sea level rise is driven both by land sinking — or subsidence — and the rising of the ocean. In the case of the current Gulf Coast surge, research suggests it is occurring in regions with and without major subsidence, implying a dominant role for the ocean.  The faster seas rise, the less effective the state’s widely praised plans to protect its coast will be.

In 2012, Louisiana projected that, if sea level rise and other environmental threats remain modest, it would be able to rebuild land within 50 years. But a new plan released this year assumes faster sea level rise more consistent with current trends and shows considerable land losses by late this century — even in more optimistic scenarios.

“Over the period of 10 years, the state has gone from potentially being in a net gain situation to potentially being in [a] very significant net loss situation,” said Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “And that’s despite the best efforts of some very dedicated people.”

Those "best efforts" Kolker is talking about end up being cancelled out by all the carbon bombs 

In 2016, the U.S. exported its first tanker of liquified natural gas, or LNG, from Cheniere’s Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish. Since then, fossil fuel firms have built four more export terminals in the Gulf South with plans for 20 more. Even before the terminals were built, the initial emissions estimates to regulators were so alarming that some environmental advocates described the planned facilities as “carbon bombs.”

Now, it seems that the reality is more grim than the predictions. All five of the active LNG export terminals in the Gulf South have leaked pollutants. People who live near the export terminals say the facilities are belching higher levels of toxic and climate-warming pollution into the air than originally estimated – which threatens the air quality of communities already burdened by pollution. 

For example, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass export facility, in south Louisiana, exceeded hourly emissions limits of its air permits more than 100 times in 2022, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which sent the company a consolidated compliance order in June, warning that fines were possible. 

Industry marketing campaigns tout natural gas as a “cleaner” alternative, because burning it produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal, to generate the same amount of energy. But leaks and emissions can erase those benefits, because natural gas is primarily composed of methane, the potent greenhouse gas.

It's a real boom in these bombs. It makes me a little bit sentimental for the days of the Bobby Jindal regime when the Wall Street Journal heralded the coming of "Qatar on the Bayou."  At that time, Louisiana's industrial tax credit subsidies promised to bestow on us gleaming corridors of "fertilizer plants, boron manufacturers, methanol terminals, polymer plants, ammonia factories and paper-finishing facilities," up and down the Mississippi.  That article (yes it's paywalled but trust me) featured commentary from the fossil industry's resident.. uh.. fossil in Louisiana, economist Loren Scott who promised that once the 10 year tax breaks expired, our school districts would "find themselves with a bonanza" on their hands.  But fast-forward to this year and Louisiana public schools are seeing crashing enrollments, a drain on public funding that benefits private schools, and a superintendent who panders to the hate groups coordinating book bans. Some bonanza. 

Nevermind the formal education, though. Louisiana is more proud of its entrepreneurial spirit anyway. Just look at these creative solutions we're applying so we can make real progress here in 2023, the hottest year on record. 

Instead of lowering their emissions, two Gulf Coast LNG facilities, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, have asked state officials to make the situation right by increasing the amount of pollution they are permitted to spew into the air.

All together, in the United States, 25 planned projects to expand and build new export terminals will produce more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gasses annually, according to “Playing with Fire: the Climate Impact of the Rapid Growth of LNG,” a 2022 report from the Environmental Integrity Project that based its conclusions on the projected emissions given to regulators before the facilities were granted permits.

“That’s almost as much climate-warming pollution as 18 million passenger vehicles running for a year,” the report noted.

But uh oh. There's trouble brewing, says this Times-Picayune article. The precious boom in carbon bombs might be slowing down as the market becomes saturated. You might think it's time to rein the established players back in on all that methane and CO2 they're allowed to blow off into the air.  You'd be wrong, though. We're doing this instead. 

The Lower Energy Costs Act — which aims to speed up environmental review processes for LNG terminals and other energy projects, among myriad issues — passed the Republican-led House earlier this year but hasn’t moved in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The legislation was spearheaded by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Republican Rep. Garret Graves, both of Louisiana.

Loosening the regulatory burden would help the smaller projects that can’t handle lengthy reviews, though it would further exacerbate environmental risks for Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Slocum said.

“If you remove that FERC regulatory process, and you allow some of these smaller scale facilities to basically just take your local zoning board out for a steak dinner and you got yourself your building permit and you can start construction the next day and you can finish it in 12 months, obviously that’s a big advantage,” Slocum said.

Critics of Scalise and Graves's bill have been calling it the "Polluters over People Act" (missing an obvious opportunity to call it the Steak Dinner for Polluters Act.) It would place limits on the time and resources available to federal regulators charged with approving or rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure projects.  It would also limit the law's ability to protect communities from the inevitable harm these facilities produce.

Such inevitable harm includes the 360 wildfires currently raging across the state due to an unprecedented drought brought on by fossil fuel driven climate change. It also would include a different kind of fire set off at the Marathon Refinery last week in St. John Parish, itself only the latest example of the tons of toxic chemicals released into Louisiana's air and water each year.  And of course who could forget the even more desecrated and faster sinking coastline wrought by all of this activity as well.

But the consequences of the boom are most visible on the Gulf Coast, mostly on the rural fringes of the Louisiana coast.

Grist reviewed dozens of state and federal records, and found that, even as regulators from state agencies like the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) hasten to greenlight new terminals, the handful of terminals that have begun operation are exposing residents of coastal parishes to dangerous levels of air pollution from flares and leaks.

Louisiana environmental regulators recently cited numerous violations at Venture Global’s LNG terminal in Cameron Parish in southwestern Louisiana. But five hours away, on the southeastern edge of the state, they are allowing the company to move forward with the Delta LNG plant near McAnespy’s home in Plaquemines.

In places like Plaquemines, gas exporters are building their plants on eroding swampland, where there is an increased risk of catastrophic accidents and explosions during floods and hurricanes. People like McAnespy, who live in neighborhoods surrounding the terminals, are right in the blast zone.

“It’s not just that each of these facilities is like a giant death star on sinking land, it’s that there’s so many of them,” said Elizabeth Calderon, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice who has worked on cases challenging LNG terminals in south Louisiana.

“This is how sacrifice zones are created,” she said.

And there's Louisiana 2023 in a nutshell. For the mere price of a few well placed steak dinners, you can deploy your very own Death Star to carbon bomb our sacrifice zone.  

But anyone can tell you there's a ton of money to be made in wartime for the savvy investor regardless of which side is actually winning. And why should the war on climate change be any different? Insurers understand this. They're already planning to win the next battle. There might not be much of a future in writing policies for homeowners in South Louisiana or Florida.. or California.  You know what you can insure, though?  More Death Stars. 

The companies no longer insuring Louisiana homes are well-known, but those insuring LNG terminals are not. Government agencies require proof of insurance for fossil fuel projects, but those documents are often shielded from the public as developers claim confidential business information exemptions, even going to court to prevent insurers’ names from becoming public.

In early June, anti-fossil fuel campaign Insure Our Future got a rare look into one gas export terminal in Texas: Freeport LNG. First published in E&E News, Freeport’s insurers are largely specialty or reinsurance companies, but a few are also involved in the property market, including Liberty Mutual, AIG and Chubb.

Most insurers and LNG companies contacted for this story – including AIG, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Venture Global – either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. While no insurance information for terminals in coastal Louisiana has become public, their insurers are likely to come from similar kinds of companies.

Oil and gas projects along the Gulf Coast have long been “a major market” for specialty insurance carriers, Keenan says.

This is how climate policy is formulated. Insurers, and investment capital firms are making decisions about what is viable. Such decisions carry massive impacts for ordinary people but allow them no input beyond their limited role as consumers. And, in accordance with the dictates of our capital de-risking matrix, anyone who can't afford the increasing costs of living along a sinking coast of a rising sea is allowed to fall off and fail on an isolated individual basis. Political factors, we are told, has no consideration here.  Most convenient for elected policymakers, these problems are all off their desks. The real choices are abstracted away to private investors and explained simply as market determinants. 

And the market has determined that we do not need to invest in sustainable equitable and healthy communities in order to generate profit. Those things, we can happily sacrifice in the fire or in the flood, whichever comes first. The net effect is a re-calibration of who and what can survive where. In this way,  New Orleans becomes a boutique resort where nobody actually lives.  Grand Isle can "boom" but only as an exclusive fishing camp for millionaires. And towns all up and down the bayou can be swallowed whole by extractive industry. 

Now here is where we have to remind ourselves not to go too far overboard with the "market decides" rhretoric. Remember, we're supposed to be moving past neoliberalism.  We're doing something called "Bidenomics" now. But mostly what that means is we are seeking the same sorts of policy outcomes as before but being slightly more explicit about the fact there's intention behind the program. Did you know, for example, that Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act "includes a bonanza for the carbon capture industry?"  That's what this headline says, anyway. And, hey, there's that "bonanza" word again. As we've already seen, that can only mean one thing.  More massive state subsidies for environmentally damaging heavy industry. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate on Monday and is poised to pass the House on Friday, includes a dramatic change in a crucial tax credit for the carbon capture industry—increasing the government subsidy for capturing CO2 from polluting sources from $50 to $85 per metric ton. Developers say that raising that incentive could tip many projects that once weren’t worth the investment over the financial finish line. The new bill also simplifies the process for receiving those tax credits, and opens the subsidy to smaller carbon capture projects, which together essentially fulfill a full industry wishlist for new carbon capture legislation. 

“The fact that [the legislation] actually happened isn’t a big surprise,” says Adrian Corless, CEO of CarbonCapture, a direct air capture startup. “The fact that it actually came out in such a good form and actually came out [so soon] is much better than we expected.”

What Democratic Party political consultants mean for us to get from this is the Biden Administration is directing a bold new industrial policy that fights climate change. What's actually happening, is much less impressive. In practice, Biden's initiatives are working out about as well for Louisiana as Bobby Jindal's program of industrial expansion did.  Consider that most carbon capture projects are "greenwashing" exercises. That is to say they are an elaborate token mitigation measure that allows polluting industries to carry on with business as usual.  

CCS does not do a good job of capturing and storage carbon. It struggles to exist, and when it does, it struggles to function. When it manages both, all it does is capture a tiny fraction of high-emitting process, supplying or burning fossil fuels, and the carbon it captures gets sent straight back to work worsening the climate crisis by jimmying the last dregs of oil from depleted reservoirs.

On top of all of this, it serves a rhetorical function; worsening the climate problem through the empty promise it provides.

And it's working. Joe Biden's carbon capture "empty promise" is enabling new projects in Louisiana.  A gas company called Air Products has, over the objections of local residents, already begun drilling a carbon pipeline that would inject waste material deep beneath Lake Maurepas.  Already they seem to have imploded a groundwater well in the process.  All of the new LNG carbon bombs and Death Stars are enabled by carbon capture promises as well. Maybe we're not quite ready to declare the next Qatar on the Bayou but you can see where we're going.  

Perhaps the biggest boondoggle in all of this, though, are so-called "direct air capture" projects like this one in Calcasieu Parish. 

Louisiana will receive up to $603 million in Department of Energy grant funding to create a direct air capture hub in Calcasieu Parish that is expected to generate about 2,300 total jobs, federal officials said.

Dubbed Project Cypress, the direct air capture hub will attempt to pull more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually directly from the atmosphere and sequester it deep underground, according to the Department of Energy.

No it won't. It will not do any of that. In the above cited article, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm enthuses that direct air capture projects are like “giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky.”  In reality, they are ineffective net energy consumers likely to produce at least as much carbon as they could ever remove. Ten days after the above article praising the supposed 2300 jobs (100 permanent jobs max) promised by Project Cypress, the T-P followed up with this explainer where we learn the dubious process is "like trying to mop the ocean." 

It is “a little bit like trying to mop the ocean,” said Jane Patton, plastics and petrochemicals campaigns manager at the Center for International Environmental Law.

Patton noted that Louisiana emitted somewhere between 211 million and 219 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2018, according to LSU’s most recent greenhouse gas inventory. At best, Project Cypress will sequester 1 million tons annually.

“We’re talking about a very big planet here and very small filtration mechanisms,” she said.

Patton said prior direct air capture pilot programs have missed their carbon dioxide sequestration goals while using more energy than promised. In addition, the filtration systems rely on amines and ethylene oxide, which are “very toxic.”

Patton is also wary of the injection aspect of both direct air capture and carbon capture, which requires liquefying carbon dioxide, transporting it via pipeline and injecting it deep under cap rocks within Louisiana’s “sinking geology,” as she put it.

“That has not been proven to work reliably anywhere in the world at the scale that industry is promising,” Patton said.

The very toxic inefficient process that has not been proven to work might not be good for de-carbonization.  But, as we've already seen, that's really beside the point. The Bidenomics bonanza here is in real estate. 

Ohio-based Battelle will be the project owner and will partner with Climeworks Corp. and Heirloom Carbon Technologies Inc. to develop the sequestration technology. Gulf Coast Sequestration will transport the carbon dioxide and bury it deep within Calcasieu Parish land owned by Stream Companies. Both Gulf Coast Sequestration and Stream Companies are led by W. Gray Stream.

Heir to a large oil fortune (and son of country singer Lynn Anderson), William Gray Stream is a well known Louisiana business and land baron with heavy political ties. Bobby Jindal appointed him to the state Board of Regents in exchange for a $10,000 campaign contribution.  He has also dabbled in the tech start-up world, having spent much of the past decade attempting to prop up the ill-fated Waitr food delivery app. Despite much cheerleading from the local press, that venture seems to have reached its ending last year. 

But it's the land investment where Stream is positioning himself for the real windfall. The land holdings corporation he has inherited and the "wetlands recovery" business he owns are primed to receive federal subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration, as well as any future attempts to prop up the waning carbon offset market which seem all but inevitable. And so, in this way, federal funds ostensibly meant to fight climate change are just being sucked up... kind of like a giant vacuum.... by a politically connected Louisiana failson.

Meanwhile the Drowning State, under attack from an arsenal of Death Stars and carbon bombs remains in a state of drowning.  And as Hurricane Season enters it peak, we may yet see another munition deployed. 

The heat dome responsible for record-breaking temperatures and drought in south Louisiana may have also created a ticking time bomb of "ridiculously warm" waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which could rapidly intensify any tropical storm approaching the state’s coastline, scientists say.

As the peak of hurricane season approaches — generally considered to be around Sept. 10 — conditions in the Gulf will be a major focus of concern for storm trackers.

"All of the shallow waters, including the coastal waters and tidal lakes, are ridiculously warm right now. So it’s primed for anything that works its way in," said Ben Schott, director of the National Weather Service office covering the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.

We got a look at this Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified to a category 4 storm before making landfall in Florida last week. Hopefully we won't get to see the Gulf "time bomb" explode anything in our path this year. We're doing a fair enough job at blowing ourselves to bits as it is.

Delicious "B" grade water

Sounds lovely

In the year since SouthWest Water Company acquired the local French Settlement Water Company, Delatte said complaints of poor water quality have escalated. Photos have surfaced on Facebook of bathtubs and swimming pools filled with the brownish water, calling out the French Settlement company. 

"The water quality is terrible," Delatte said during the meeting, addressing a SouthWest representative. "They’re paying the water bill and they can’t use the product they’re paying for."

The water company says the discoloration is coming from elevated levels of iron and manganese, which can coat pipes, and says the water is harmless. Recent water grades for 2022 released by the state Department of Health show the five French Settlement Water Company entries range from an "A" to a "B" grade — though most have deductions for customer complaints and the presence of iron and manganese "greater than the secondary maximum contaminant levels."

One of the many examples that obtain these days of conditions we shouldn't expect people to "just get used to," and yet... 

The first time she noticed the problem, she and her husband were taking showers after getting off their boat. Her husband kept washing and washing his feet, which were muddy from their trip, but they never seemed to get clean. After scrubbing them repeatedly, he realized his feet weren't dirty — the water pouring from the shower head was brown.

Shoemaker was trying to dry her wet hair when she found it was practically matted together from the water.

Even when the water company flushed the lines, the smell of the strong chlorine water worried Shoemaker — "just like getting out of a public pool," she said.

Shoemaker began to knock on her neighbors' doors seeking more information and learned that the questionable water in the area had been a constant for years. As she has spoken about the problem publicly on social media, Shoemaker said she has received pushback from people retorting she should just dig her own well if the water is so terrible.

We're very quickly giving up on expecting better for ourselves and for one another.

Summer of Death

 Not great

Louisiana’s record-breaking summer has had fatal consequences. Sixteen people in the state died in June and July from heat-related causes, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

Six of those deaths were in June, and 10 were in July, said Kevin Litten, the health department’s press secretary. Those two months alone have already surpassed the state’s average of 10 heat-related deaths a year from 2010 to 2020, according to a 2023 state analysis. 

On top of that, Louisiana has already shattered its annual average for heat-caused emergency department visits. From April 1 to July 29, there were 3,305 visits, compared to 10-year annual average of 2,700, said Dr. Alicia Van Doren, a preventive medicine physician working with the health department on tracking heat injuries and deaths.

She attributes these high numbers to record-temperatures driven by climate change.

“It truly is a public health problem,” Van Doren said. 

As concerning as those numbers are, “all of this is an undercount,” she said. That’s because exposure to heat doesn’t always end up in medical charts or death records.

The public health problem is only getting a minimal public response at the moment. The city has struggled to open public pools and we've already noted they can barely keep the air conditioning on.  Also at the beginning of summer, there was some discussion about getting some public "splash pads" that have been popular in other cities put into operation here. Other ideas were floated, including "reducing vehicular traffic" although that's not going in the right direction either, apparently.

Otherwise, see this press release for a list of safety tips and "cooling centers" where the public can go and find relief in the air conditioning... usually.

Summer of shit

 Extended another month, basically.

According to @swbneworleans sewage will continue to be dumped to the Mississippi River until at least August 20. It started July 7, after a July 5 break in a force main outside Station D at Florida and Peoples could not be repaired. That break was fixed, but a 2nd hole opened. pic.twitter.com/CMYEZ4Rs4y

— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) August 7, 2023

I've been around

It was in mid-June that the odds-on candidate for Man of the Year 2023 emerged in New Orleans. 

A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media he was dead, according to multiple reports.

Family of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY.

His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.

But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.

“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”

There's not a man, woman, or non-binary person in the city who couldn't relate to that in some way. We're around. We aren't sure if we want to be around anymore. But what else can we be?  

Despite keeping quiet on this website all summer so far, I am still here, me.  And it's time, once again, for me to try and get some notes in real quick about the things that have been happening before I forget them.  I keep making the joke about wanting to quit tossing everything into the Twitter memory hole. But each time the world's dumbest man gets a step closer to erasing everything I've tossed there forever, it gets less funny. 

It's worrisome to see what's happening to social media. But it's only one manifestation of a larger crisis in media and the internet that has been developing for a very long time. We see aspects of it reflected in the SAG-AFTRA strike over the question of who owns the right to profit from creative labor, in the proliferation of pyramid schemes like cryptocurrency and NFTs, and in the ongoing effort to impose stricter and more invasive censorship and surveillance on the population at large. S uffice to say, it's been a long time coming. We here at the Yellow Blog have been following the "kicking you off the internet" beat for many years. Recently, Cory Doctorow has coined a term that captures well the thing we've all been feeling. 

The pathology that I think that Musk is enacting in high speed is something I call “enshitification.” Enshitification is a specific form of monopoly decay that is endemic to digital platforms. And the platform is the canonical form of the digital firm. It’s like a pure rentier intermediary business where the firm has a set of users or buyers and it has a set of business customers or sellers, and it intermediates between them. And it does so in a low competition environment where antitrust law or competition laws are not vigorously enforced.

To the extent that it has access to things like capital, it can leverage its resources to buy potential competitors or use predatory pricing to remove potential competitors from the market. Think about Uber losing forty cents on the dollar for thirteen years to just eliminate yellow cabs and starve public transit investment by making it seem like there’s a viable alternative in rideshare vehicles. And we see predatory pricing and predatory acquisition in many, many, many domains.

This is the basic template for how everyone in charge of everything behaves now. Enshittification is what happens when everything in life comes down to someone with massively more amounts of power and money than you have actively making choices that put you in danger and/or rip you off.  And it's pretty much how we live now.

 

Anyway, all of this is to say that I need to post more things here in short form so I can look them up when I need them. Because tweeting them into space seems like a really weak bet for that. But I also need to get caught up a little bit. So, what follows is a small selection unrelated items I bookmarked over the past few months. It's not everything I need to save from the void. It's probably not even the most important stuff. It's just what I need to clear out in order to fire this thing up again. So bear with me a bit. 

The Ultimate Move for City Hall: From Duncan Plaza to... Duncan Plaza

I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your local indie outlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.  

Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.

In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space along West Stadium Drive.

There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens. 

One thing to keep an eye on will be the fate of the public space in the plaza itself. Recall in 2017 the city announced big plans to turn the park over to the DDD for a major renovation. But the goal seemed to lean toward limiting public space in favor of monetization.  Which would be a shame for reasons that then-DDD director Kurt Weigle acknowledged. 

Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.

“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.

“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”

It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.

Gordan Plaza residents suffer one more indignity

It almost seems intentional. 

One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000 profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.

The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund site.

But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New Orleans properties.

It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't. 

A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.

An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.

A retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at $475,000.

All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.

One SWB scandal just flows right into the next

A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems. 

A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by Arnold and his staff during work hours.

The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being “obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out contractor and permitting fraud.

Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find information on projects,” the letter said.

Those filing cabinets and index cards were confiscated by the FBI shortly after the story aired. Jay Arnold, the main target of the investigation, pleaded guilty last month. But the problems were more systemic than just one guy's actions. As of May, McBride was skeptical that any of that had been fixed. 

Other problems going un-fixed this summer: 

New Orleans entered its fourth week of sending untreated sewage into the Mississippi River on Saturday as the Sewerage & Water Board struggles to fix a 60-year-old underground pipe in the St. Roch area.

The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main, at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to repair it.

In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.

On the other hand, SWB did manage to shut some things down.  For example, it appears that the employee lounge is losing some of its frills.  

Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and unchecked harassment. 

In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.

Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.

Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going.  We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season.  It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though.  I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up.  Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.

Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.

Various other things are broken

In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.  

The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency situations. 

Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the last month, he said.

When he tried to order another 45, he said that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding invoices from other city departments.

Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.

"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point. 

Also, watch out for falling trees. 

Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.

In a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed obvious warning signs.

“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic arborist for the case.

Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks. 

I'm sorry. That's Special Assistant To the District Attorney, Morris Bart now.  Gotta remember that. 

Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been

Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration. 

“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s best to pursue other opportunities.”

Landrum, 50, declined to say what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason Williams.

She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has taken.”

It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some progressive groups.

Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction. 

Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.

Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.

Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.

See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper.  Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes. 

Various other scoundrels on the loose

The freaking "Night Mayor" has been making friends on the streets and online recently. Actually, I'll save this for later but suffice to say the city's selective enforcement regime continues to nickel and dime struggling residents while cutting favors for landlords and bosses.  In the meantime, read this. 

There are other potential ethical concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.

Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project. 

Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp. 

Other stuff upcoming

Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest.  We're right on the cusp.  Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.  

Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week! 

And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it. 

And now we have another to throw on the pile.

That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.

Susan Hutson will have plenty time to get more buy-in (or buy more people off) later

Susan Hutson's float (seen from way across the street because I had COVID) rolls down St. Charles Avenue in the Legion of Mars parade in February 

New Orleans's fav reformist Sheriff has not had a great time of things since her glorious elevation to that office. Maybe she just hasn't figured out how all the knobs and buttons work on the jail machine yet. Or maybe that whole notion about being able to steer the prison industrial industrial complex in wise directions from the inside needs to be rethought. Of course, Hutson would tell you, it just needs more money.

Sheriff Susan Hutson has quietly placed a question on this ballot that would expand OPSO's current property tax millage from 2.8 mils to 5.5 for the next ten years boosting her annual budget by about $13 million. Hutson hasn't offered a detailed description of her plans for the funding increase. She has called it a "compliance millage" which would imply that it is meant to help bring the jail into compliance with the dictates of federal oversight. But most of the money seems designated for staff raises and an, as yet, incomplete list of building improvements. As is often the case with the infamously opaque and unaccountable Sheriff's department, voters are just expected to trust whoever holds the office. In that regard, Hutson hasn't exactly inspired confidence.

There are three things that this Saturday's ballot measure would do and all of them are bad. 1) It will double the funding available to one of the most corrupt and unaccountable patronage wells in the city. 2) It will double the funding available to a jail that should by rights be emptied and closed.  3) It will also raise taxes on homeowners already getting nailed with rising insurance premiums. Landlords will inevitably pass these costs on to renters.  And of course the revenue generated creates no social benefit.

The thing is, it's not likely to pass. Not this time, anyway.  Every organization that regularly weighs in on such matters has come out against it. All of them have, in various ways, criticized the proposed millage because Hutson has no concrete plan for how it is to be spent. Which raises questions given how she spends money now. For example, DSA (one of the many orgs in opposition who I happen to be quoting here) points to this.

During this past Carnival season, Hutson's office was charged with coordinating the city's last minute mad scramble to staff parade routes with supplemental police and sheriff's deputies from around the state.  Law enforcement agencies have made it an annual routine to hold Mardi Gras hostage in order to shake down the city for money. This act has only grown more farcical in recent years and, this year, Hutson's participation has drawn particular scrutiny. According to reports, the Sheriff booked 13 or 15 hotel rooms for what looks like as many as 11 days and nights during the Carnival season, ostensibly for her staff and deputies. No audit can show exactly who used the rooms, though. After the story became a public controversy, Hutson announced the $18,000 hotel bill would be covered through private donations. This only raises further ethical questions, however. So does an expenditure of over $15,000 on a "conflict coaching" consultant to deal with the understandable push back from dissenting advisors among her staff. That money was poorly spent also. Hutson went ahead and fired four of her top staff anyway. At least one of them is considering filing for whistleblower status.

But after this proposal fails, it will be interesting to see what happens next.  The Sheriff's current millage doesn't actually expire until next year. So this is more of a trial balloon than a make or break gambit. I think the other reason it's on the ballot now is City Council already denied Hutson's request for the same amount of money last November so this would have been one way to work around that. In any case, it's just as likely we'll see a similar proposal appear on a future ballot.  The difference to watch out for then will be to see who, among the current coaliton of dissenters, will have been bought off ... er.. brought on board by then.

Surely, a winning slogan

Put it on a dang billboard

.@jefflandry says his vision is to make Louisiana more like Mississippi. #lagov

— Jan Moller (@jmollerLBP) April 26, 2023

Sounds like Fouad refused to rat on his friends

 He's a real one. We knew that.

Zeton has close connections to a number of local politicians, including Mayor LaToya Cantrell and several local judges. As a result, his indictment in December -- more than a year after federal agents raided the Magnolia Mansion, an event space he owned -- set off speculation that the case might mushroom into something more substantial.

Zeton himself encouraged the talk. He told a reporter last year that he was collateral damage in prosecutors' quest to reel in a bigger fish.

“I have no idea who is the big fish, but I’m not the one,” he said, adding: “This has nothing to do with artwork.”

Zeton said last year that the FBI had asked him questions about about his relationships with various political figures. But he also claimed he had little to tell them.

Indeed, the court documents released Wednesday do not say anything about Zeton's political connections.

 Instead he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Could get five years for that, potentially. Probably won't. In any case, on the other end of this a lot of important people will be grateful.

Congratulations, Mayor Oliver Thomas

I can't pay attention the Trump indictment. It just seems like so much boring celebrity gossip to me. Anyway, I missed this one a few days ago.  

In Louisiana, the flamboyant former Gov. Edwin Edwards, who spent eight years in prison on corruption charges, tried, and failed, to mount a political comeback with a run for Congress in 2014.

Voters in New Orleans were more forgiving of the City Council member Oliver Thomas, who was imprisoned after pleading guilty in 2007 to taking bribes, but was returned to the Council in 2021. Mr. Thomas spent years trying to come to grips with his transgressions both privately and publicly; at one point he even played himself in a theatrical production based on his downfall.

Clancy DuBos, a New Orleans political analyst, said that Mr. Thomas earned back voters’ trust by facing up to his guilt, and then engaging in extensive volunteer and community service work. “He’s seen as someone who’s fallen but he’s done a complete arc of redemption,” said Mr. DuBos. He thinks Mr. Thomas could one day be mayor.

It's always dangerous territory to find oneself in agreement with Clancy DuBos. But there is context.  This article had to be pointed out to me last night because I compared OT, not to Trump the way this story does, but to Paul Vallas who we all just watched lose the Chicago mayoral runoff.  This was a surprising development to me for a whole host of reasons. Chief among them being that the kind of Vallas coalition described by Chicago tweeters (privatizing NGOs, vestigial political machines, cops and real estate moguls stoking crime panic) is insurmountably dominant in New Orleans.

He already sucked as a centrist neo-liberal privatization fossil from 20 years ago, and then he went MAGA radio host as a hobby. Built a coalition of remnant Daley machine grifters, deluded billionaires, online reactionaries, and the police. Just an absolute demon of a candidate.

— Metra Eccentric (@MetraEccentric) April 5, 2023

All of that describes a figure like Oliver Thomas. He even has his own radio show! 

So, yeah, I agree with Clancy. If you're looking to place an early bet on #NOLAMayor 2025, OT is a good spot to lay some money. (Also pretty good spot to lay money if you're looking for a favorable parking contract but we knew that already.)  But the reason isn't because New Orleans voters are "more forgiving" so much as there just isn't any alternative for them to believe in here.

Island hopping

The insidious thing about charterization is that it not only destroyed the union but it also set workers on a long struggle to claw it back independent school by independent school.  Nearly twenty years have passed and so far they've won 6 out of 71 schools back. 

Living School joins Rooted School, International High School, Bricolage Academy, Morris Jeff Community School and Ben Franklin High School as organized collective bargaining units. Teachers in New Orleans who do not work at a unionized school can join United Teachers of New Orleans.

A small percentage of New Orleans' 71 charter schools are unionized. After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of public school teachers were fired and schools were taken over by the Recovery School District or transformed into charters, ending the contract between the city and the union.

And, of course, in the meantime, there have been thousands of lives uprooted and communities destroyed by the charter project that will never come back. Also one of the primary villains in this plot is about to be elected mayor of Chicago today.  

When Vallas went to New Orleans in 2007, the city was still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which had made landfall two years earlier. In 2003, a Democrat-controlled Louisiana legislature had taken control of schools across the state by establishing the Recovery School District (RSD), which took over “underperforming” schools, the majority of which were initially in New Orleans.

The RSD fired the district’s teachers, who were unionized and mostly Black, middle-aged professionals, and replaced them with younger, whiter, out-of-town TFA recruits. Dix Moore-Broussard, a longtime arts teacher in New Orleans, told the TRiiBE that after Katrina, the district laid everyone off. (In 2010 Duncan, who was then secretary of education, said Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”)

“We got notice that they weren’t opening the schools and we could go pick up our last check,” she said. “Everybody just got $2,000, and it was the most insulting thing ever.”

But hey 6 of the 71 privatized schools now have their own little unions. Celebrate the little victories, I guess, but there's no justice here.

Cycling insurance subsidies

These little emergency patches to the failed market are going to keep happening. This one is about to happen twice, in fact. 

Donelon said he will ask the legislature to approve more cash for a second round of grants during the regular legislative session set to convene on April 10.

Insurance companies who get grant money have to match the value of the grant dollar-for-dollar and write twice the sum of that amount in premium every year. For example, if one company received a $10 million grant, it would contribute an additional $10 million in surplus funds and be responsible for writing $40 million in premiums every year in south Louisiana parishes.

Donelon noted on Friday that the program was all but a "verbatim repeat" of a grant initiative spearheaded after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc on the state in 2005. This time, though, insurers are not required to take policies directly from Louisiana Citizens.

Each time the new emergency turns the ratchet, the subsidies only "incentivize" insurers to remain in the market. But they do so at newly increased rates and less favorable terms for policyholders. So the true effect of each rescue plan is just gradual acclimation to ever-worsening circumstances.  

Maybe it should be the job of the democratically elected Insurance Commissioner to figure out a better solution to all of this.  But that seems hard. And, really, who even wants that job anymore?

Ok but why?

This can't just be explained away as a big, "Whoops! Turns out we didn't know how banks work!"  Although Dayen does at least entertain that possibility here. I guess you kind of have to given how stupid everything does feel these days. But still, no. It can't just be that. 

Contrary to their belief, Silicon Valley big brains are not the first ones to figure out that deposit insurance doesn’t protect their payroll accounts. Companies manage this small risk of bank failure through recognized insurance strategies. There are private-sector solutions like Intrafi’s Insured Cash Sweep, which essentially cuts up large accounts into $250,000 pieces and splits them across the banks participating in its network. CDARS, another Intrafi product, is a less liquid option that segments cash into CDs. Some prior FDIC officials have expressed anger at these schemes, but there also are cash management accounts with a “sweep” feature, or additional insurance to take out (this Forbes story has several examples).

Any risk manager worth their salt at a company knows of a panoply of ways to avoid the threat of bank failure on deposits. “The pain of having to explain this,” Porter said to me.

Importantly, SVB was part of the network of cash sweep banks; it had an offer on its website about it. But according to Adam Levitin, there were only $469 million in reciprocal deposits, which is where cash sweep would show up. In other words, almost nobody banking at SVB used them.

Why not? There are a couple of options. One, Silicon Valley startups are so bad with money that they never thought of this. (It’s incredible that Roku, which has been around for a while, had nearly half a billion dollars on hand at SVB, without hedging that risk at all.) The fact that VC big brains were toying with new types of deposit insurance this weekend that already exist (it’s like Uber reinventing the bus) raises that possibility.

The other possibility is that SVB wanted that money kept with them. There are very strange stories coming out about how SVB required companies to hold their money with them in exchange for venture debt agreements, and then gave cheap “white glove” service to founders: low-interest mortgages, lines of credit, and the like. SVB might have had a reason to want their hands on that money exclusively.

Is that sort of "white glove" service not precisely the reason FNBC executive Ashton Ryan was found guilty on 46 counts of fraud? Remember that? It just happened last month.  

Prosecutors convinced the jury that Ryan was the "quarterback" of a team of conspirators, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan McLaren put it in closing arguments.

The list of "scoundrels" he said conspired with Ryan included Mississippi developer Gary Gibbs, who testified that he was essentially bankrupt as far back as 2013. For years, Ryan kept lending him $1 million each month to cover up his insolvency, documents showed, as he spent the proceeds on a private jet, luxury cars and top-of-the-line fishing boats. Gibbs owed the bank $123 million by the time it collapsed.

There were similar stories for other borrowers like Kenneth Charity, a transplant from Washington D.C. who had plans to get rich in the post-Hurricane Katrina real estate market, but who could never file his taxes or other documents on time — or make meetings — as his projects floundered. Ryan kept lending to Charity until his debt reached $18 million.

Ryan's defense during his trial was laughable. In so many words, he said that he was just trying to help some guys out.  Maybe the loans were reckless or outside the bounds of what was usual, but he was being "altruistic."  He literally used this term. It's a popular one among financial criminals these days. What it amounts to, in Ryan's case, is an explicit admission of guilt. He knew the law and broke it anyway for... reasons. 

It's that what's going on at SVB? Because, as Dayen explains, any CFO at any of the firms banking there had to have known how to responsibly insure themselves against risk.  But they just... opted not to. Dayen also suggests the same firms still could have dug themselves out of the mess their own mess. (A mess they created and then triggered as if on purpose, it seems.)

SVB’s losses aren’t really that major in the grand scheme; the haircut that depositors would take under normal rules would be minimal. It might take a minute, which with payroll being due was a risk startups didn’t want to take. But they have well-heeled benefactors—the VCs shouting about the end of the world—who could have supplied whatever bridge support was needed for companies they still profess to believe in.

But they chose not to do that either. Why? So far the only answer seems to be, to see if they could.  But what else?

Billy is in trouble again

Billy is always in trouble.

The oversight of Louisiana's nine museums is plagued by lack of leadership, no coherent budget and low morale among employees that may be affecting museum operations, Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack said Monday morning. The report says the state Office of State Museum has not had a permanent director since 2016.

The review also said the office lacks a comprehensive plan for exhibits and lacks a clear budget for museum programs and exhibits. It said staff reductions totaling 42% since 2009 pose a major challenge for the sites. The Office of State Museum is part of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, which is led by Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.

The auditor's report is available here if you feel like looking through it. 

Also for some background on that vacant director's job, Billy fired the last permanent director. Soon afterward, we had this episode where the consultant then holding the interim position resigned in protest over Nungesser's "pretty strange crap" management. 

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been using a Lower Pontalba Building apartment and space in other state museum buildings in the French Quarter for his personal benefit and has engaged in a pattern of political interference with the agency's operations, the Louisiana State Museum's interim director said Monday while resigning in protest.

Nungesser’s interference includes attempting to override museum officials and board members who objected to plans to loan U.S. Sen. John Kennedy artworks for his office in Washington, D.C., and threatening to sell museum works of art on eBay to raise funds, said Tim Chester, a museum consultant who took the interim position in October.

“I have never encountered anything like this in the 40 years I’ve worked in the field, ever,” Chester said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange crap come down in museums, but this one takes the cake.”

There's just something about those Pontalba apartments, right? Anyway, a few years later, there was more consulting from another consultant. Their feedback was also bad. 

A 2019 report by the consulting firm Lord Cultural Resources said the current arrangement "creates political interference and tension, makes fundraising a challenge and could risk OSM losing accreditation."

Eventually (inevitably?) the FBI got involved.  In response, Billy implied the investigation was initiated by political opponents like, for example, Jeff Landry, who was expected to face Nungesser in this year's gubernatorial election.  And that's all very plausible. Although, Billy's crystal ball obviously needs a little polishing.  Here's how he saw things playing out at the time.

He also said he doesn’t believe Landry will run for governor, saying “he’s got bigger problems.”

“In an open primary, he can’t win,” Nungesser said. “I always thought John Kennedy gets re-elected and he runs (for governor). And listen, I welcome anyone to run. But let’s run in a fair race and let the people of Louisiana choose. If they close the primary you’re going to get the far right and the far left. And we got enough divisiveness in Baton Rouge.”

A spokesman for Landry declined to comment. A message to the Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority was not immediately returned Saturday.

Nungesser’s fiery speech came after FBI agents interviewed one of his staffers as well as legislators in a probe of his office, he said. Nungesser said he didn’t know what the probe was about, but heard it was at least partly related to grants from his office.

He added that investigators have been calling lawmakers and others who stayed at the Lower Pontalba apartments in the French Quarter, which his office operates. He said he doesn’t know whether the FBI or state auditors are looking into that.

“I'm not blaming anyone for that, but it's a coincidence that I haven't seen any polls but everybody tells me, 'They can't beat you for governor if you run in an open primary.' Because I help everybody. And I don't crucify anybody just to make a political grandstand.”

Well, here we are in March 2023 and Kennedy is not running. Landry is running. And Billy, who was told by "everybody" that he was unbeatable is the one with bigger problems now.

Commercial STRs in the queue now

After a decade of dealing with this, we have reached the point now where City Councilmembers can no longer pretend they do not understand the problem. But they can still pretend they are trying to do something about it. Until they don't. 

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday took another step to rein in short-term rental permits in commercial areas, passing a temporary ban along some busy corridors abutting residential neighborhoods.

The motion, which passed unanimously, aims to close a loophole that critics say lets investors build what are essentially hotel suites next door to full-time residents. It prohibits renewal for a more than one quarter of the New Orleans' 1,200 commercial short-term permits, although permitting officials said they will make exceptions for those issued within the past six months.

It's the same process as what is happening now with residential STRs.  The new regs will inevitably grandfather in everything that currently exists and create new language by which the problem can continue to expand even as councilmembers claim to be "reining it in." Then in another couple of years we will "discover" that the new system is still bad and tweak it some more.. but grandfather in the next batch, of course. Repeat forever. Or at least until nobody actually lives here. 

How many cops does it take to go move five barricades?

This turns out to be a very complicated question! 

Part of the problem, according to officials, is that the 1971 ordinance that created the mall does not specify which agency is in charge of blockading the streets. The ordinance only states that Royal Street is to be closed to traffic from Bienville to Orleans streets on weekdays between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and weekends between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. It provides no other instructions.

At an April 25 City Council committee meeting, which coincided with the reopening of the mall, NOPD Deputy Chief Hans Ganthier said in the past his officers, musicians, and even sanitation workers took it upon themselves to erect and take down the barricades, but there was never an official policy. At the time, Ganthier was commander of the 8th District, which includes the French Quarter.

NOPD Lt. Samuel Palumbo told council members that going forward his community liaison officers would be in charge of the barricades during the week and a traffic officer from the supplemental police patrol program might move them on the weekends. Neither has happened. 

When Ellestad asked Ganthier for an update at the end of last year, he said the deputy chief sounded less willing to help than he did at the council meeting. 

Even some of us old heads might not remember all the way back to 2019. So this article helpfully reminds us that the city took advantage of the Hard Rock hotel collapse to "temporarily" shut down the pedestrian mall and kept it that way for a few years because of... something something pandemic. The reasons given for all of that were vague. Who knew the lower five blocks of Royal was such a critical artery for emergency response?  

Well now that the emergencies are over.. or at least now that they have been allowed to fade into the background with all the other noise.. the pedestrian mall was supposed to be back.  But, for some reason, nobody remembers how to move the barricades or who is supposed to move them. 

But Ellestad, who was at the managment district meeting, said the issue was not just about the city’s failure to put of barricades, but the fact that performers are harassed when they try to do it themselves. Ellestad said that often comes from a private security patrol that is managed by FQMD itself, called the Upper Quarter Patrol. 

“A lot of these problems actually come from the Upper Quarter Patrol enforcing,” Ellestad said. “The barricades aren’t there. Performers try to set up the barricades and then the private enforcement will tell them that if they move the barricades they will be in jeopardy for citation or arrest. So if FQMD is not going to be part of the process in creating a plan, is it possible then to make sure they’re not involved in the enforcement?”

The French Quarter is crawling with cops. NOPD cops, Harbor Police cops, State Police cops, the private cops who work for various businesses as well as those contracted to FQMD.  None of them can figure out how to move a barricade, although they are available to stop you from doing it. 

What we don't see addressed with much depth in this article is the matter of why this situation persists. All we are told is that Councilman King hasn't taken any action and the mayor's office didn't comment for the story. Obviously it isn't happening just by accident.

There are plenty of comments in the story from the street performers who have been affected by the mall closure but nothing from anyone who might be opposed to reopening it.  Which is strange because such comments do exist on record. Of course, it's perhaps expecting a lot of old heads to remember all the way back to 2015... even if those old heads are the very same reporter writing this week's story who also wrote this back then. 

A coalition of French Quarter businesses led by Brennan's restaurant has asked that the New Orleans Police Department permanently close the Royal Street pedestrian mall and reopen the street to vehicles during the day. The request reignites an almost 40-year-old debate over access to Royal Street and whether pedestrian-only hours hurt or help the Vieux Carre.

Brennan's general manager Christian Pendleton cited the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernadino, Calif., and Paris, as well as last month's mass shooting in Bunny Friend Park in New Orleans' 9^th Ward, in making the request.

Hey there's always an emergency somewhere that might justify the policy change you want. The Brennan's cabal had to throw a bunch of them out there before the right ones came along. Anyway let's see who else was in on that.

The letter was signed by representatives of every business in the 400 block of Royal Street, including Latrobe's, Brass Monkey Antiques, Ida Manheim & Pugh, Moss Antiques, LolaNOLA, the Martin Lawrence Gallery and James H. Cohen antique weapons and rare coins. Pendleton asked that City Hall "leave Royal Street open every day, and at all times."

You think maybe some of them are available for comment now?  Might be worth an ask.  There are some choice quotes some of them delivered the last time around.

Rosemary James, co-owner of Faulkner House Books on nearby Pirate's Alley, said the mall "should never have been enacted in the first place," that it "serves no useful purpose whatsoever," causes "terrible traffic problems" and "poses a threat to (the) safety and security of those who own property and businesses in the French Quarter and who actually pay taxes."

Yesterday, MACCNO tweeted an acknowledgement of people "working behind the scenes to find a compromise." I guess these business and property owners must be the side that is being compromised with?  Maybe someone will check back in with them to see.

"Along with"

 Seems like "along with" might be a bit of a stretch in this passage. 

A development agreement for the former Six Flags amusement park has been finalized, nearly a year after Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration chose Bayou Phoenix to take on the project.

The agreement will eventually allow the group led by businessman Troy Henry to access the site and begin pre-construction work. Details of the agreement were not immediately available, but Bayou Phoenix has proposed to build a warehouse on the 227-acre site, along with a water park, hotel, ball fields and other amenities.

If I had to guess at what's going to happen, at the very least I would assume the warehouse project is, "prior to" any remaining development which could be pending for a very long time.  

This doesn't yet say what, exactly has been agreed to.  Back in November, it was clear that Henry was seeking private control over a public asset beyond which was either legally or morally appropriate.  We'll see what he got soon, I guess. 

Update: Case in point, re: public investment going toward private profit.  Apparently the city is chucking in another 1 million dollars toward Henry's warehouse. 

Of course right up until then it was fine

Jeff and Shane have decided they are gonna put off the deal where they give each other bullshit gigs for a while. 

Guidry is Landry’s top political ally and a major donor to his campaign. Landry also hired Guidry to serve as a “special agent/investigator” for the Attorney General’s office.

Landry reported making between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2020 and 2021 from his role on the Harvey Gulf board, where he provided legal advice. Several experts said the arrangement may run afoul of a law that says the attorney general must devote his full time to that office, as well as of ethics laws that prohibit public officials from getting certain payments and gifts outside of their state salaries.

Landry’s campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment on his resignation.

“He just felt he needed to resign from the board in 2022 to run for governor in 2023,” Guidry said, adding that Landry didn’t provide a lengthy explanation for his decision. Guidry said he replaced Landry with a former schools superintendent from Michigan. The company’s website indicates the new board member is Ronald Wilson.

We'll see how they feel after the election. 

Company town

The highlight of yesterday's City Council hearing about the Cantrell Administration's stonewalling of union organizers came from JP Morrell. 

Lloyd Permaul, the executive director of AFSCME’s Louisiana-based chapter — which Cantrell previously acknowledged as city employees’ bargaining unit — told Verite that while Tuesday’s meeting should help, he doesn’t know exactly what is going to happen next.

“I don’t know how to tell you how I feel coming out of that meeting,” Permaul told Verite. “I can’t even tell you I’m optimistic with the group I’m working with up there, to be honest with you. I don’t know.”

Permaul said that he hasn’t faced similar issues with the other government agencies he deals with in the state, including in Baton Rouge, Jefferson Parish and Plaquemines Parish.

“She’s the only mayor within this state that hasn’t met with me,” Permaul said.

“We are supposed to be the blue island in a state of red,” Morrell said, referring to New Orleans’ reputation as the most Democratic-leaning part of the state. “But everything I’m hearing is that this city is more hostile to unions than Jefferson Parish is. Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

JP's full comments are better if you watch the video. Lot's of "this is stupid!" and I think at one point he even says, "This is the most asinine thing I've ever heard in this chamber." The sequence starts around the 1:39:00 or 1:40:00 mark. This link should get you there.  

At the same time, though, JP's casting of New Orleans as "the blue island in a state of red" is simplistic and misleading. Especially when it comes to labor politics. JP and anyone who pays a lick of attention should know well that this city's power structure both in and out of government is generally conservative and viciously anti-union.  The Cantrell Administration, in particular, is closely allied with the city's business and non-profit elite where the dominant ideology promotes privatization of public services and the outsourcing and gigification of work. 

With regard to city workers in particular, her administration has exhibited constant hostility. Just a few examples would include the tacit approval of Metro Disposal's use of prison labor to break a strike, the freezing out organizing efforts at EMS, Public Works, and NORD a well-documented and dishonest attempt to de-fund the library system, and an attempt to relocate City Hall premised explicitly on a plan to downsize the permanent workforce.  In 2020, the mayor moved to replace a member of the City Civil Service Commission for the stated reason that the commissioner was too favorable to unions. 

So, while, we can certainly understand and support Morrell's outrage yesterday, his framing of the matter as though it should come as some sort of surprise may actually do more harm than good. The first step to building a stronger working class and a more union-friendly city is recognizing the size and scope of the challenge. And pretending that Cantrell's behavior is some kind of outlier instead of entirely representative of the rabidly anti-labor company town we actually live in, does not help with that. 

Just pick a number

So let's see. The recall campaign spent its final month loudly boasting that it had enough signatures to trigger an election.  They would not tell anyone how many signatures that was, exactly. Instead they literally said, "trust us," to anyone who asked. Then they suddenly discovered... very nearly at the last minute, in fact... that they might lower the threshold they already claimed to have met by filing a lawsuit.

Why were they not concerned about this at the outset of the circus?  They didn't say.  How many signatures are actually on the public record, they were the custodians of? Still not saying. Can the newspaper see them, in accordance with the legal agreement they had signed? No, that is actually none of your business now.  Instead we must focus on the lawsuit because "ACCURATE VOTER ROLLS, WASTE AND FRAUD MUST BE STOPPED, ARGLE BARGLE, ETC." 

Or... maybe we'll just make up a number instead. 

The LaToya Cantrell recall campaign's lawsuit against Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin is close to being settled, a lawyer for the campaign said at a virtual court hearing Wednesday.

Recall lawyer Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue told the judge overseeing the case, Jennifer Medley, that the two sides were putting the final touches on a deal that would resolve the lawsuit, which alleges that the recall's signature goal was artificially inflated by thousands of names because of errors on the active voter list.

Sources said Tuesday that the two sides were trying to settle on a number that would set a new minimum cutoff for the recall petition, which must currently prove that it has collected 49,976 signatures to force a vote on Cantrell's fate.

The Registrar of Voters is apparently dismissed from the lawsuit now. So we're no longer even asking anyone to re-canvass and get that accurate count we were so concerned about five minutes ago.  Instead we are going to resolve the "artificially inflated" signature goal by artificially deflating it. 

This whole thing has always been a joke.  I do hope that's finally sinking in for anyone who might have taken it seriously.