I believe this was a hearing about establishing law and order

I hear there were a  lot of fun public comments but I still was hoping I wouldn't have to watch the recording of this one. Unfortunately, now I may have to.  

A New Orleans City Council committee on Wednesday voted to move the nomination of Mayor LaToya Cantrell's nominee for police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, to a full council vote, although the 4-1 vote was not technically an endorsement.

Kirkpatrick, a West Coast transplant and veteran police chief, seemed to garner support from committee members in a first-of-its-kind confirmation hearing. Council President JP Morrell's motion for "no recommendation" was something of a compromise after hours of virulent opposition from public speakers and a shouting match between Morrell and Council member Oliver Thomas.

Thomas said he had been leaning against voting to confirm but was open to changing his mind. He took offense when, in his view, council members seemed to presuppose a vote in favor of Kirkpatrick. Morrell and Thomas traded accusations of being out of order, and Thomas suggested they settle the argument outside before tensions cooled.

Imagine challenging someone to a duel right in front of the police chief. 

Anyway, it looks like the hearing and the public comment covered a lot of ground. The article doesn't catalog everything that might have been brought up. It does mention a little bit about Kirkpatrick's experience in Oakland although it isn't clear if that was addressed. 

In Oakland, Kirkpatrick took heat for what critics have called a lack of progress on that city’s court-enforced police reforms, and for her handling of discipline for officers involved in the killing of a homeless man, among other controversies. She was fired by a newly formed police commission. A licensed attorney, Kirkpatrick later won a $1.5 million settlement for wrongful termination after a jury ruled in her favor.

There's a little more to that story. I wrote a little about it a few weeks ago.  It seems to me like the candidate's actual record ought to have at least as much scrutiny as her promises to learn about "local culture" and so forth. But, honestly, this all seems like a formality at this point.

What are "pro-choice proclivities"?

 The entire premise of this Prospect article is wrong.  

Since Dobbs, voters in Republican Kansas, Ohio, and Montana have rejected far-right overreaching ballot measures and affirmed their support for the right to abortion even with curbs in place. In last year’s midterm elections, voters’ concerns about the loss of that right helped keep the Senate in Democratic hands and blunt the Republican wave in the House that overconfident prognosticators repeatedly claimed was nigh.

This fall, upcoming gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana will test just how deep the revulsion over these far-right Republican excesses runs in the South, and what those races may presage in abortion access politics beyond the region. All three states have Republican supermajorities in their legislatures. The Dobbs decision specifically affirmed a Mississippi statute devised to explicitly challenge Roe v. Wade. But many Republicans have been shaken by the backlash.

No. Louisiana's gubernatorial election will not test voters' aversion to GOP anti-abortion politics in any way.  I understand why national political analysts would like it to. It certainly could do that.  The mid-term results and the single ballot issue results this article cites do, indeed, indicate that abortion rights can be a winning issue for Democrats in supposedly "red" territory.  But that can only happen if the Democratic candidates run on defending those rights. The Democrat in our Governor's race is decidedly not doing that. 

The Prospect article wants to pretend that he is, or could be. But the closest it can come to achieving this pretense is to describe him as having "Pro-choice proclivities." 

Louisiana holds its open primary in mid-October. Gov. John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Democrat, is term-limited. Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running to succeed Edwards, sticks to the loud and proud extremes favored by the far-right Republicans on abortion. If he survives attacks from his Republican opponents in the already nasty “jungle” primary, he appears to be poised to romp over Democrat Shawn Wilson, an African American former state transportation secretary and first-time candidate with pro-choice proclivities and little statewide name recognition. Like their Mississippi neighbors, Louisianans mostly vote along racial lines.

To demonstrate those proclivities, the Prospect cites Wilson's extremely milquetoast rhetoric in support of rape and incest exceptions as well as the fact that he affirmatively answered a yes/no debate question about a hypothetical statewide referendum on abortion.  This is hardly anything.  Certainly it is not indicative of the "Post-Dobbs strategy" of full-throated support for abortion rights the article wants these elections to "test." 

In fact, in interviews, Wilson sounds very much like a 90s Third Way Democrat seeking to accommodate anti-abortion sentiment while also not posing a direct threat to an individual's "private decisions." 

In an interview last week, Wilson didn’t describe himself as being “pro-choice” like abortion rights supporters typically do.

The Democrat said he personally opposes abortion except in cases where a pregnant person was a victim of rape or incest – or their health is at risk. But he also believes his personal beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others, and that individuals need more flexibility to make their own decisions about ending a pregnancy. 

When asked about abortion, Wilson said he is “not interested in preventing folks from making decisions that are private,” and “I dare not question their doctor’s expertise.”

But after Dobbs, those private decisions are already threatened. State laws that are on the books now criminalize them.  Wilson is not promising to do anything about that. He's meekly defending a status quo that doesn't exist anymore.  During the third debate, Wilson was asked why he had begun the campaign with the words "Pro-life" displayed on his website but then taken that down. All he said was, "I am personally a decision maker for me and my family." We can barely even understand what that means for his family members, let alone what it might mean for the people of the state.

What a waste. The thing is, it is probably true that Democrats can make up some ground in GOP dominated states by running campaigns that speak up for abortion rights rather than just hint a candidate's "pro-choice proclivities." The "Dobbs strategy" does, in fact, seem viable.  Shawn Wilson isn't running on that, though. 

It's afraid

 The salt water wedge is backing away. 

The Mississippi River saltwater wedge threatening New Orleans-area water supplies has retreated more than five miles, marking another positive development after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced last week that the salt water creeping upriver wouldn’t arrive at local intakes until weeks after initial projections, if at all.

The wedge was at river mile 63.9 as of Monday, according to information available on the Corps website. It had reached River Mile 69.4, or about six miles south of Belle Chasse, as of Oct. 2.

No idea what happened. Maybe the rent was too damn high. 

It flows downhill

This new S&WB substation has gone on quite a journey. First, Entergy was going to pay for it outright. We thought that sounded suspicious. And lo and behold, it was. After that fell through, the plan was to pay for it out of the city's American Rescue Plan allocation.  But that also sounded suspicious to us because it was already clear the mayor wanted to spend that money on cops and discretionary nonsense. Those suspicions also turned out to be well founded and now here we are back where we always thought we would be.  

Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the City Council responded in unison last July when Assessor Errol Williams announced that citywide property assessments had jumped by more than 20%.

They said City Hall would not “roll forward” property tax rates under its control, meaning property owners would not face additional liability for a little more than half of all citywide millages.

But the Sewerage & Water Board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, has different ideas than his elected overseers when it comes to the utility’s tax rates. At the board’s Sept. 20 meeting, he said that he will argue for a roll forward, as the S&WB is in full tree-shaking mode to pay for a critical drainage power upgrade and a citywide meter replacement project.

Eventually the burden finds its way downstream to where the least important people are. And that's who has to bear it.

The boats must flow

There are priorities here that simply will not be questioned.  The matter of whether or not anybody can live in the city takes a very far back seat to the matter of how much profit can be sucked out of it.  Can you afford the rent/mortgage/insurance? Nobody cares about that compared to how much houses are flipping for in the neighborhood. Do your kids have a good school? Nobody cares about that compared to how much can be grifted away by private charter operators? Are you safe from floods? From poisons in your air and water? Nobody cares about that compared to how much oil and gas can be extracted and refined and sold into global markets. Is there a reliable source of fresh water nearby? Nobody cares about compared to... 

The Army Corps of Engineers has known for decades that its continual efforts to deepen the Mississippi River for bigger ships would eventually trigger the saltwater crisis that has now gripped the New Orleans area for weeks.

“This is certainly something that everybody knew was going to happen,” said Cecil Soileau, a retired Corps engineer who warned in a 1990 report that dredging the lower river would threaten the region’s drinking water.

Gotta have the boats.  Recall, also, the last big channel we dug for the boats also killed the city in 2005.  People are disposable. The boats, the oil, the money; that's what matters.

Very accurate leaning. The most accurate leaning. More and more people are saying this

 It turns out we've got plenty time left. 

A new forecast for saltwater intrusion moving up the Mississippi River has surprisingly bought lots more time for the New Orleans area — and raised the possibility that most of the city and Jefferson Parish could be spared from the threat altogether.

The change in forecast had to do with factors related to the river’s flow, work by the Army Corps of Engineers to elevate a sill and the Mississippi’s depth at the salt water’s current location.

The cone of uncertainty for the arrival of this wedge must be pretty wide. Who even knows the correct speed of salt anyway?  Anyway, the wedge isn't coming as quickly as they thought.  There's a bunch of reasons listed for that in this article. The river didn't lose as much flow as they thought it would. The salt is also sinking into a "pocket" in the riverbed near Belle Chase. Possibly a tandem float ran into a tree. I don't know. 

But it does change the plans a bit. Maybe by a $250 million bit, in fact. 

On top of that, based on modelling through November, the Corps now thinks the leading toe of the salt water — at the bottom of the river — could stop somewhere between river mile 112-113, or in the River Ridge-Kenner area.

If that does occur, the toe will not have reached far enough to cause salinity on the surface of the river at the locations of the West Jefferson plant in Marrero, New Orleans’ Carrollton plant for its east bank and the East Jefferson plant.

As a result, chloride levels in drinking water would be expected to remain below the 250 parts per million threshold for those plants. Surface water tends not to exceed that standard until the toe advances 15 to 25 miles upriver from it, given the wedge shape of the intrusion.

New Orleans may be able to avoid having to build an emergency pipeline to dilute the salt water at an estimated cost of between $150 million and $250 million. The Corps cautions, however, that forecasts could very well change. It now plans to update its forecasts for the public every Thursday.

That's quite a difference from just a few days ago when it looked like the pipeline wouldn't even make it on time. A similar effort in Jefferson Parish appeared to be moving faster which led everyone to begin making the usual jokes/trolls about comparative governmental efficiency.  Little did they know Orleans was "leading the way," the entire time. 

When it comes to where Orleans parish stands currently in its effort to mitigate the saltwater intrusion, when compared to neighboring parishes, Cantrell says the parish is ‘leading the way’.

“I'm saying don't believe the hype. The city of New Orleans, Sewerage and Water Board, we're leading in this capacity, or we're getting the responses that were due,” she said.

“Again, at the federal level. I've been always leaning in, always attached to the briefings, always advocating picking up the phone and calling myself so no asks have been done by anybody else. First, but me. But of course, echo, you continue to ask. And you continue to serve, circle the wagons to demonstrate why the solution is a collaborative one, that there's buy-in across the board, that we can actually get it done, that we have the talent to get it done. And we need the resources the federal government is listening, and the state is listening.”

Always leaning in, yes. That's what you have to do when you serve, circle the wagons.  But then we found out it is just as important to lean in with accuracy. 

"So, make no mistake about it, the city of New Orleans is not behind anybody, or anyone. The city of New Orleans is leading in this capacity. You know, regardless of what you hear," she said.

But not long after she said that, Jefferson Parish began construction on their West Bank pipeline. Meanwhile, Orleans is still nailing down contractors. Usually, the city's procurement process can take months. When asked if they were expediting the process, she said the city is moving ahead.

"So again, working aggressively every day. The contract and procurement process has started, in short order will be completed, because the time is now. We all understand that. And everyone is lean, leaning in with urgency, but also wanting to lean in with accuracy," Mayor Cantrell said.

On second thought, maybe the thing that's actually holding the wedge back is the great wall of sound that happens whenever the mayor speaks.  Whatever it is, it's working. Keep doing that.

In the park? On the park? Next to the park?

There's an update this morning on a plan to finally build a new City Hall. This time they're aiming to put it in what many of us have always believed is the only location that makes any sense; the same location as the current location... basically.   I say basically because they're actually moving across the street.  But exactly where across the street is difficult to pinpoint from the article. 

City and state officials have reached a tentative agreement on a complicated land swap that would allow a new City Hall to be built in Duncan Plaza, said Jay Dardenne, the commissioner of administration for Gov. John Bel Edwards, who negotiated the deal for the state. The swap, which still needs to clear several procedural hurdles, would also allow for a new Civil District Court building that judges have been clamoring for. 

City officials confirmed they've come to an agreement, but cautioned that much needs to happen before committing to the relocation plan, including subdividing Duncan Plaza and getting City Council approval — not to mention figuring out how to pay for a new building.

Back in May, when we first learned this might be in the works, we tried to get clarification as to how much of Duncan Plaza would be needed for the new building and how much would remain a public park. Although we didn't get a straight answer, I came away a little bit encouraged by the implication that the land under discussion was the vacant lot where the State Supreme Court building once stood and the Heal garage behind it.  But today, this looks a bit different. 

Again, this is all open to interpretation but it looks like the vacant lot is slated now for the new Civil District Court while the garage is out of the deal.  

The Civil District Court plan calls for its new building to go on the now-vacant site in Duncan Plaza that once housed the Louisiana Supreme Court before its move to the French Quarter. City Hall would be a separate building. Plans discussed last spring contemplated a 57,000-square-foot City Hall building and 32,000-square-foot court building. 

Is there enough room for all of that on the vacant part of Duncan Plaza? Or do they need the park too?  Seems like a simple enough question. But I still can't answer it.   

Congratulations

Congrats to the various landlords and contractors and politicians responsible for the deadly collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel construction site in 2019. You're all free to go. 

NEW ORLEANS — A state grand jury voted against indicting anyone for causing the catastrophic Hard Rock Hotel collapse four years ago, essentially ending a two-year criminal investigation by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams with nothing to show for it.

Thursday’s grand jury meeting was held in secret, but Angela Magrette, whose brother Anthony was killed in the catastrophe, told WWL-TV she was informed of the decision not to press criminal charges. The grand jury meeting was the last one before a deadline to file criminal charges. Next Thursday, Oct. 12, is the fourth anniversary of the catastrophe and state law gives prosecutors four years to file gross negligence charges.

Congratulations, also, to Jason Williams and his excellent decision making.  

Williams chose to have a grand jury hear testimony on the matter and vote whether to bring charges, rather than simply filing them. The grand jury returned “not a true bill,” meaning at least nine grand jurors heard unrefuted testimony and didn’t think there was enough evidence to hold someone criminally liable for the collapse.

Tick Tock (again)

Jason Williams' office is running out of time to bring indictments in the Hard Rock hotel collapse. It's been hard to know which party in particular has been dragging their feet the most these past few years.  Right now, Williams says the problem is OSHA. 

NEW ORLEANS — The federal workplace safety agency, OSHA, is refusing to cooperate with a grand jury probe of the deadly 2019 Hard Rock Hotel collapse until it resolves a long-delayed civil dispute with the building’s lead engineer, a target of that criminal investigation.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams subpoenaed OSHA’s Hard Rock investigation file more than two years ago

Williams said the federal agency’s refusal to produce the records as ordered by a judge now seriously hampers the criminal negligence case his prosecutors are presenting to the grand jury, with just two weeks left for it to return an indictment before a four-year deadline.

Williams said the lack of cooperation from OSHA is forcing him and his prosecutors to “fight with one hand tied behind our backs” as they present their case to the grand jury.

“It’s akin to enabling or covering up criminal activity because the clock is ticking. We only have a few more days before the clock runs out on this,” Williams said in an exclusive interview with WWL-TV. “If you had told me this would happen, I would tell you that you're a liar.”

Is it really that hard to believe, though? To some of us, it feels like the only possible thing.

Tick tock

For those of us reaching a certain age, the idea of bending all of reality to run on Sewerage and Water Board time does sound nice.  But I don't think it works that way.

NEW ORLEANS — According to the latest projections, Orleans and Jefferson Parish water intakes on the Mississippi are expected to have saltwater impacts by mid to late October. 

The saltwater wedge that now threatens the drinking water supply for nearly a million residents has reached Jesuit Bend about 20 miles south of New Orleans. 

Area leaders say a 10 to 12-mile-long pipeline will be needed to deliver fresh water from upstream, north of Kenner. 

“To be able to end up with an intake at that location and pump and pipe that downstream into our intakes and as well as Jefferson Parish’s does remain our most viable option,” SWBNO Deputy Superintendent Steve Nelson told the city council on Wednesday. 

 It is expected to cost up to $200 million to build the pipeline. 

 But as of Friday GOHSEP, the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness had not received a detailed pipeline plan or a formal request for state funding from the Sewerage and Water Board. 

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, city leaders also still haven’t applied for the necessary environmental permits to build the pipeline. 

Look, I get it. I hate deadlines too.  Never been one to meet most of the ones that applied to me alone.  But when it affects hundreds of thousands of other people... 

 Update: The two minute offense is cranking up! 

NEW ORLEANS — The governor's office has received and approved a plan to combat the saltwater intrusion in Southeast Louisiana, state officials said on Saturday. 

More details on the specifics of the plan, approved Friday night, are expected to be released by officials by the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans as the project moves forward. 

"The corps and the state received their proposed solution and didn't have any issues with SWBNO pursuing the procurement process," Officials in the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness told Eyewitness News on Saturday.  

However, the plan still requires the USACE to sign off on the environmental permits. 

 Plenty time left?

What do people need? What should people do?

In one regard, we're getting a lot of information about the salt water. We know roughly when it will get to each intake. We know it will be as long as three months before it is gone. What we aren't getting enough information about is what can/should be done about it and, more specifically, who should be doing what thing. 

For instance, it's become clear that, although we don't know the severity of the issue, there's going to be a problem with contamination through corroded pipes. There's going to be a problem with lead.

The city has incomplete and unreliable information about its 1,500-mile water pipe system. How much of it is encased in lead is unknown.

That’s “the million-dollar question,” said Adrienne Katner, a drinking water researcher with the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. “We have no idea how many lead pipes remain in the city, but in my field research it was rare for me to find a home without a lead service line.”

About 48 percent of the New Orleans water system was installed before 1940, making many pipes more than 80 years old. Lead was a common pipe material until the U.S. banned it in 1986.

It’s safe to assume the water from any faucet in the city has come into contact with lead, Murphy said.

“We’re a very old city, and we still have lead in everything from our distribution system to the feeder lines to individual homes,” he said.

About 88 percent of nearly 400 homes tested on the East Bank had lead in their water, according to a 2018 study by LSU. While lead levels were generally lower compared to the EPA's action level of 15 parts per billion, many health officials stress that there is no safe level of lead.

That sounds like a critical vulnerability to a citywide public utility. How do we fix that? Who is responsible for fixing that?  Nobody knows!  Some of these articles are beginning to suggest that each of us is just on our own to identify and purchase the appropriate expensive equipment.  

Luckily, if it's right for you, systems that work and won't break the bank are available for homes, and run about $200 and can be installed under a single sink.

These work through reverse osmosis, where a semipermeable membrane separates salt from water, Scientific American reported. Systems are available for whole homes, as well, but start at $1,000.

Reverse osmosis is the only way to remove man-made chemicals called PFAS that have been linked to health hazards. Some systems can also remove lead, in addition to bacteria commonly found in water.

Depends on whose bank we're thinking about breaking here, but for a lot of people, $200 is a lot of money to spend on something that *might* help.  If people need filters just to have safe water during an emergency then FEMA (the agency responsible for handling emergencies) or S&WB (the agency responsible for delivering safe drinking water) should probably get them for people. 

Of course we don't know if that's exactly the thing that should be done. (Better figure it out soon, though!) But if it is, then that's who should do it. 

 

Everybody gets a charter

It's very difficult for me to imagine anything good coming out of a structure and process set up like this. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell signed an executive order Wednesday that called for a comprehensive study of the city charter, kicking off a process that could eventually revise the bedrock document that dictates how New Orleans city government functions.

The 15-member Home Rule Charter Advisory Review Committee will be made up of eight representatives or appointees of local universities, three City Council appointees and four mayoral appointees, including a retired judge.

I have no idea why the university presidents have so much appointing authority in New Orleans. In their daily lives, university presidents are fundraisers. Their main job is to flatter donors, do corrupt real estate deals, and contrive ways to fire people.  I don't see why they have this unelected responsibility to determine the future of the city.  Beyond that, just giving the council and mayor some seats to appoint doesn't feel nearly inclusive enough.  Their should be bonafide workers' voices on a committee like this. Not just "experts" who claim to speak for them.

Also remember, this charter review is one of the many things that happen now solely as an expression of mayoral spite.

Cantrell first called for the creation of the new panel in May of 2022. The proposal followed her veto of a proposal by the City Council to change the charter to subject mayoral appointees to council confirmation.

That veto squashed by the City Council and the proposal went in front of voters. The new council oversight was approved by voters in last November's election.

After she "called for the creation" of the panel, City Council got right to work creating one. They were still working on that when Cantrell dropped this on them today. 

City Council President JP Morrell was unaware of the mayor's executive order until she signed it today, according to his spokesperson, Monet Brignac-Sullivan.

The council has also been in the process of creating a Charter Review Committee, Brignac-Sullivan wrote in an email.

"The process has taken longer than expected as we are responding to community input regarding the structure of the committee," she said. "We look forward to reviewing the executive order, and have no further comment at this time of the merits of the mayor's committee."

It isn't clear what will come of the council's process.

Why not just keep it going?  I have no idea what they're actually up to but it at least sounds like the council is taking the gravity of a charter review process seriously enough to gesture toward a more democratic guiding principle. Besides, who even knows if one charter is enough.  Might be good to have at least one spare laying around just in case.  Maybe one can be the Night Charter. 

 

Emergency pipeline

Don't panic. It turns out the thing we kept saying wouldn't be a problem is a bigger problem than we thought. But it's okay. We're just taking extreme emergency measures around you as you go about your day. 

Water barges will be insufficient to deal with salt intrusion at New Orleans' Carrolton plant and for the east bank of Jefferson Parish and construction of a pipeline to deliver water from further upstream is being looked at, officials said Wednesday.

Cost estimates for such an effort are currently between $100 million and $250 million and federal funding is being sought, New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board officials told a City Council committee meeting.

Article doesn't say a whole lot about logistics. But they do make it sound like the "temporary" pipeline can be built in the short time between now and when the salt water gets here to be of use. Which is sort of a surprise given the usual speed at which infrastructure happens around here.  

Anyway they also say that the pipeline can, in the future, become a "permanent solution" to salt water intrusion. This implies what everyone already knows; that this is likely to become a regular problem as the effects of climate change progress. It causes one to wonder how long the pipeline plan has been on the shelf. More to the point, why did they wait until the last minute to deploy a known solution to a known problem? 

Update:  Oh well maybe it won't be built in time after all.  

Contractors are offering assurances that the work could be completed despite the short timeframe, but officials are preparing for the possibility of making bottled water available if there is a gap. The city is also looking at water conservation methods, Arnold said.

That is very exciting! Also that says once it's here the salt water will probably be around for 3 months or so.  As usual, be ready to hunker down. 

Upperdate:  Ah and we have visual confirmation that operation pipeline is already underway 

Confirmed: temporary @swbneworleans water intake station for NOLA and JP being constructed on S&WB-owned land at IMTT playground on Anthony St. in St. Rose. Implying the Corps believes the salt wedge won't make it there. https://t.co/yw65r7r2iy

— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 27, 2023

Who appoint-a da chief?

On Friday, Mayor Cantrell (apparently back from France) swore in the person she expects to become the next  "permanent" (at least until the next mayor takes over, anyway) Police Chief. It's Anne Kirkpatrick. As the only of the three finalists who wasn't either a guy who killed a man on a party bus or a politically un-viable interim appointee, she's the perfect fit.

If confirmed by a council majority, Kirkpatrick will make history in other ways. She would become the first female to become NOPD superintendent, coming after Woodfork opened the door as the first female interim chief.

Woodfork, who was one of the three finalists for the job along with Kirkpatrick and Thedrick Andres Sr., was appointed in December to succeed ex-chief Shaun Ferguson when he abruptly retired.

Kirkpatrick, a 35-year police veteran with 20 years in leadership position, last served as police chief in Oakland, Calif. Like Oakland, the NOPD has been laboring under a sweeping federal consent decree to foster Constitutional policing and usher in sound training and leadership.

A few notes here regarding Kirkpatrick's prior experience. There are issues one would hope City Council will address during the confirmation hearings. But the tendency with professional job-hoppers is they are granted a clean slate in each successive city they skip away to. There's always another sucker somewhere. Our city appears ready and willing to become the next.

Anyway, a NOLA.com article raised a bit of this a few weeks ago. One incident highlighted there was Kirkpatrick's role in covering for the cops who rolled a whole SWAT unit up on a homeless man named Joshua Pawlik. They found him sleeping in a park and murdered him.

Kirkpatrick endured intense criticism over her handling of discipline after five officers were involved in the 2018 shooting of a homeless man they’d awoken. The federal monitor over Oakland police wanted much heavier discipline than Kirkpatrick was willing to impose, calling her analysis “disappointing and myopic,” according to reporting by the East Bay Times.

Ali Winston, a journalist who co-authored a recent book on the Riders scandal and policing in Oakland, said Kirkpatrick was brought in to help “break up a frathouse atmosphere” but caved to the rank-and-file.

“She claimed to reverse culture in the department but basically rolled back serious discipline on a number of officers and didn’t follow through with a mandate to ensure consistency of discipline, that all cases are investigated thoroughly,” Winston said.

John Burris, a civil rights attorney involved in the Oakland police reform case, agreed that Kirkpatrick went light on the officers in the case.

“She really made an effort to cover it up,” he said. “She went out of her way to shade things and interpret them in a way that was designed to protect the officers.”

I decided to check out Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham's book this article mentions.  In addition to her mishandling of the Pawlik investigation, it finds several other points of criticism to consider. Here is a quick summary. 

1) At the beginning of the Trump Administration, Kirkpatrick violated the city of Oakland's promise to protect immigrants and instead cooperated with ICE to conduct deportation raids. 

In 2017 Kirkpatrick put her foot on this third rail by ordering several officers to close off a West Oakland street to help ICE agents raid a family's home and arrest two men. The OPD issued a statement afterward claiming ICE was pursuing suspects who were "sex trafficking juveniles." Kirkpatrick said later that her department hadn't violated Oakland's sanctuary policies because the officers were assisting in a criminal "human trafficking" case, and she claimed one person had been charged with a "crime."

In truth, the case had nothing to do with underage sex trafficking, and no one had been charged with a crime. Instead, one of the detained men was charged with a civil violation for being unlawfully present in the United States. He was sent before an immigration judge for possible deportation.

2) The Oakland Black Officers Association alleged that Kirkpatrick discriminated against Black officers and recruits in various ways saying her conduct "hurts our members and the public at large"

3) Under Kirkpatrick, the Oakland Police showed signs of backsliding out of compliance with the dictates of its federal consent decree. Most critically there were problems with use of force violations as well as failures to complete investigations within an appropriate time frame. 

Thus far, the press in New Orleans has shaded Kirkpatrick's "experience" working under a consent decree as a positive. The conventional line seems to be, she is well placed to finally complete the task of getting NOPD into full compliance. But that isn't what her record actually tells us. Rather than work to comply with the consent decree in Oakland, Kirkpatrick worked with outside consultants and PR pros to launch political attacks against the court appointed monitor and call the whole process into question. 

(Judge William) Orrick knew that behind the scenes, Kirkpatrick and other city officials, not just within the police department, were already criticizing (the federal monitor Robert) Warshaw, laying the narrative that it was the monitor's subjective judgments that were the cause of the recent problems, not the OPD's actual misdeeds. More pointedly, current and former officers were lining up to criticize Warshaw, claiming that his views on the OPD's backsliding were influenced by the hefty paychecks he collected from the city. Clashes with city officials and Department of Justice attorneys in Detroit, where Warshaw also served as court monitor over that city's police reforms, were cited as supporting evidence, and even and ex-NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton took shots via Twitter at Judge Orrick and Warshaw over the latter's alleged profiteering. 

Orrick made it clear he would have none of this in his courtoom: across sixteen years, the monitoring team exposed egregious scandals and reined in the OPD at crucial junctures, and it was trying to do this again. "I have complete faith in them and their ability, and they are the eyes and the ears of the court," he said of Warshaw's team.

Kirkpatrick's arguments before the judge in these hearings, though delivered with plenty of "we are doing progressive reforms here" type language, were little more than arrogant cynicism concerned primarily with political "narrative."  This, in Winston and Bondgraham's telling, is the moment where her insincerity became most clear. 

"So, your honor, the OPD is on the move," she said. "We are progressive. We are not regressive."

It was a presentation Orrick could appreciate, balancing the clear and obvious failures during the chief's twenty months on the job with some good work. But Orrick wanted a little more soul-searching from the police commander. "Before you go, Chief, what do you think is your biggest challenge?" he asked.

Kirkpatrick thought about it for a moment and answered: "the narrative."

An astonished look came over the judge's face for a split second before Orrick frowned and asked her if she meant to say communication. 

"No sir. The narrative that we are not moving forward," explained Kirkpatrick. 

"That's what you think your biggest challenge is?"

"I think that's a challenge," the chief replied. "I think there are other -- I think that's the challenge. I think that we do indeed have culture shift. I think that we have failed in explaining the proofs."

It was for these reasons that a citizen-led police oversight commission (no we don't have one of those in New Orleans) decided to fire Kirkpatrick.  Afterward, she remained defiant. Kirkpatrick held a political rally with the police union and their political allies denouncing the consent decree. She also filed a lawsuit against the monitor.  

While that T-P article cited above does acknowledge Kirkpatrick's politically framed attacks on federal police monitoring seem to be on the same wavelength as Cantrell's bucking of the NOPD consent decree, it also shrugs the notion off.  One would hope that City Council, proud as they are of flexing their muscles over appointment powers lately, might take a more critical view.  But something tells me they won't. We'll find out next week.

In the meantime, how about a movie?  That's right, Catch Basin Cinema is back. And in honor of the resolution of the city's police chief search, we watched a movie about another infamous episode in NOPD Chiefing history. It's 1999's VENDETTA, and it's a TV movie about the 1891 lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans following the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy. The movie stars Christopher Walken as sort of the Michael Hecht of his day, leading a Gilded Age NOLA Coalition to control the police department and keep working class communities in line for the benefit of business elites. Intrigue and mayhem ensue.  But what else is new around here, right?

Okay well what is the plan, though?

We get lots of quotes to the effect that "local officials are preparing for impacts" from the salt water.  Not a lot of information about what they plan to do.  Or even what they recommend that you do. Besides, just, be aware and prepare or something.  

Of course there are things that could have been done ages ago to prepare our vulnerable water utility to handle this very predictable scenario. But one thing we've learned about disaster recovery vs disaster mitigation is that the emergency no bid contracts that come with the latter tend to be better opportunities for the important people to profit. So, really, this is just the market at work.  As for you, personally, well, look, there's still time to prepare!

While there’s still time to prepare, the clock is now ticking for local residents and businesses.

“A little worried for sure. Especially with the holidays coming up cause not only do we have to deal with that, but we have to deal with the water possibly being contaminated with a bunch of salt water and so that’s going to be a big issue for us,” Debarbieris said.

Ok. How, though?  How do we prepare. Besides just panic buying water if we can find it?  Doesn't matter. What matters is you internalize the idea that whatever happens is somehow your fault for not preparing enough. That's always the way with this stuff. It's definitely part of the model for climate change response going forward. So get used to that. 

Age of cruelty

Picking up a thought we left off on a few weeks ago, about the closing off of political possibilities evidenced by the permanent intransigence of the anti-vax phenomenon, it's time to get back to our regularly scheduled pessimism. Today we consider the same reasons we will have to live forever with anti-vax mania can explain why we will also live under an increasingly cruel criminal legal system.

Our working thesis here is that Americans do not engage politically with any expectation that public policy can open up a better future. Indeed, most Americans don't believe a better future even exists.  And so no one expects the state can or should improve our ever worsening social conditions.  Instead, everyone who expends any energy at all on public affairs just wants to make sure someone besides themselves has to suffer the most.  Which is precisely what laws like this are designed to accomplish.

Lanieux, who had been arrested for aggravated flight from an officer, was prosecuted under Louisiana’s controversial habitual offender law, sometimes known as a “three strikes and you’re out” rule. The statute allows district attorneys to significantly enhance sentences, often by decades, for people with previous felony convictions. 

The goal is to protect the public from unrepentant, violent criminals, but critics contend prosecutors have abused the law by targeting Black men. Louisiana’s population is 33% Black, but 79% of those convicted in the state as habitual offenders are Black, according to a report last year from the Public Welfare Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Lanieux, who is Black, didn’t fit the profile of a violent repeat offender. He had been convicted for two drug possession felonies in the late 1990s, for which he received probation. But those, combined with the flight charge, were enough for prosecutors to apply the habitual offender statute.

“I ain’t never thought a two-year sentence would turn into life,” said Lanieux, who sat for 10 Zoom interviews with Verite News and ProPublica over six months from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. “They just throw you away for any little thing.”

No, the goal of habitual offender laws in not "to protect the public" from anything. The goal is to terrorize powerless people with an unmerciful, unjust and overwhelming police apparatus. Which, as you can see, is the exact purpose to which it has been applied.  As is the case with anti-vax, this is just mainstream politics at work now.  

The Verite article quoted above explains that despite a sustained, evidence-based criminal justice reform effort in the late 2010s, the ascendant reactionary movement is inevitably and swiftly wiping out any hope of progress. 

That’s when Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, who is considered the front-runner in this fall’s gubernatorial election, stepped in, filing a legal challenge to the law. 

It is seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed for an end to mass incarceration. Former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Landry, vowed to go after “Marxist” district attorneys who he said have allowed U.S. cities to be turned into “hellholes.” Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis echoed his political rival, boasting in August of his efforts to remove local prosecutors he accused of failing to uphold the law. 

Landry, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy and an Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, has blasted the 2017 reforms as a “disaster.” 

“We have incompetent mayors, and these woke district attorneys want to play a dangerous game of catch and release with criminals,” Landry said last year. “As governor we are just not going to put up with that.”

Quick note about bit where your next Governor is identified as an "Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm."  I have no idea why that information is relevant here. But as long as the reporter/editors decided to throw it in, they should have at least put it in the correct context. 

During the campaign, Landry caught criticism for claiming to be a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. It was technically true, but it had the effect of leaving many, including some in the media, with the mistaken impression that he had served overseas. In fact, he was stationed in Ft. Hood, Texas, reportedly working as a driver for a general.

Landry refused to acknowledge the obvious rhetorical puffery. “The only reason I didn’t go (to the Persian Gulf) is because the war ended so quickly,” he said. “I certainly never tried not to go.” 

Anyway, back to this matter of all politics being about finding someone to punish now. To illustrate this, let's take a look at what the "Marxist" District Attorney New Orleans elected under the mistaken impression he would change things here in the "hellhole"  is up to now. 

Upset with what he argues are low bails set in magistrate court, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams threatened to pull his prosecutors from first appearances if its commissioners don’t take accountability for decisions about jailing people suspected of crimes.

In a Tuesday letter to Criminal District Court Chief Judge Robin Pittman, Williams wrote that the court’s magistrate judge and its four commissioners often delve well below the bail recommendations of his prosecutors.

“I have strongly considered instructing my [prosecutors] to no longer appear at first appearance dockets,” Williams wrote, suggesting a move made by his predecessor, Leon Cannizzaro, to abandon those proceedings.

The guy who ran on a promise of ending cash bail says the bail is not high enough! Does Jeff Landry know about this?  Do you think he would like Jason better if he did? Hard to say, but just to be safe he's all charged up to throw some more kids into the dungeon. 

Williams’ call for higher bail amounts comes even as the city's jail population has swelled to its highest levels in at least four years — even as murders and other reported violent crimes, except for rape, have declined, according to publicly available data.

On Thursday, more than 1,220 people remained in custody at the Orleans Justice Center — a number last seen in August 2019. The jail population has increased by more than 20% this year, the data shows.

Despite Jason Williams's enthusiasm for high bail and mass incarceration, the leading candidates for Governor* continue to hammer away at his Marxist hellhole.  So far I've watched three gubernatorial debates this election season. During these, the Times-Picayune's newly endorsed Stephen Waguespack repeatedly called for harsher measures in New Orleans. Waguespack says he wants more surveillance and more arrests. During the LSU debate, he said that the French Quarter is "out of control" and endorsed Billy Nungesser's proposal to turn it into a state park. Jeff Landry's intentions toward the city are similarly aggressive. He recently told Tucker Carlson that “The place is being run like a third world-country," adding that as Governor he would use the most extreme measures available to "bend it to his will." 

Which raises the question, how much more cruel and punitive do Wags and Landry want our burgeoning police state to become? Because if conditions at the Parish Prison are any indication, things are pretty bad right now. 

Four jail supervisors walked out during their shifts inside the Orleans Justice Center on Friday following multiple fires, at least one stabbing and a feces-throwing incident in the lockup, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office has confirmed.

The deputies returned to their posts later that day after speaking with sheriff's office brass.

OPSO spokesperson Casey McGee said low staffing, coupled with a swelling jail population, have created an environment conducive to fights, disciplinary infractions by incarcerated people and uses of force.

Uh oh the Sheriff's office is understaffed. I think we know what comes next.  Actually, it's already happened. Recall that earlier this year, Sheriff Hutson asked voters to approve an additional $13 million in property taxes to help her run these torture chambers. They said no but, clearly, it doesn't end there.

This is a classic scenario.  The more people they cram into the jail, the more staff the Sheriff needs to hire, the more money the Sheriff can demand.  It's the vicious cycle people were told they were electing this Sheriff and this DA to end. But here they are. Definitely not ending it. Instead they are each caving to political pressure to run the other direction.  No doubt the result of this fall's election will push them even further. 

Today, The Lens points out that the jail population is approaching a "cap" imposed by City Council in 2019.  What happens if it runs over?  Nobody knows. But given that our politics only favors more and harsher punishment for the least powerful, our guess is, probably nothing.

*FWIW the Democrat on these stages, Shawn Wilson responded "yes" to one of those rapid fire yes/no questions asking whether the State Police, in light of the fatal beating of Ronald Greene, have a racism problem.  A few moments later, however, Wilson ducked back in to apologize for that answer which he would like to change to "it's complicated." 

Nobody wants to administrate anymore

One thing that's become clear over the course of the last decade is that the absolute worst thing you can do for this generation of "public service" leaders is put them in a situation where they're actually expected to do the public service.

New Orleans' public works department is again without a leader after acting director Sarah Porteous resigned her post a little more than a year into the job.

The city has been without a permanent public works director for two and a half years. Porteous replaced the previous acting director, Josh Hartley, who left in August 2022. Hartley took over in the spring of 2021, after the last permanent director, Keith Lagrange, left to work for the City of Mandeville.

Porteous submitted her resignation Sept. 6, and her last day is Sept. 27. A spokesperson for Mayor LaToya Cantrell said a replacement has not been chosen.

The public works director manages some of the city’s most vexing infrastructure challenges, including clogged catch basins and old drainage pipes, blinking traffic lights and a $2 billion road repair program that has dogged Cantrell throughout her tenure.

Oh no, we have all this money that we're supposed to use to fixed the pipes and roads and stuff!  Nobody in politics... or, really, upper management anywhere.. wants a job like that. They all went to school and trained to manage the "doing more with less" con. The gig is supposed to be about cutting services and reducing staff through "innovation" and contracting things out then taking that resume and bolting to the next job.

The context that makes that seem appropriate is supposed to be a permanent austerity regime. You can't give anyone in leadership who was educated after the 1980s a big pile of money and tell them to go build some infrastructure. All they know how to do is strip it down and sell it off. Don't ask any of these people to actually deliver anything. That isn't what they're here for.

Age of quackery

 This is just mainstream politics now.  

“There’s no question that the anti-vax movement is a larger entity now. It’s better funded, it’s better organized — and it’s been quite prolific at spreading its message,” Kanter said. “There’s a lot of families that have unfortunately fallen victim to that.”

Richard, whose district includes Crowley Kindergarten, said as vaccines have become more politicized, hesitancy has grown. The percentage of kindergarteners whose parents asked for them to be exempted from standard immunizations more than doubled in Acadia Parish over the past two years. Other parishes in Acadiana have seen a similar trend.

“The entire concept of vaccinations has become controversial,” Richard said. While numbers for the current school year are not yet available on a parish-wide basis, Richard doubts that they’d show a rebound in vaccinations. “I would not be surprised if the numbers are static or even lower,” he said.

This doesn't have anything to do with "the science" and who understands it.  None of these people is making a rational choice based on having been told the good information or the bad information. Rather, they're making a deeply felt statement about who they are and which side they are on.  

We don't live in a time when politics can be about policy choices doing anything to bring people a better life or better future. Nobody believes in any of that stuff. All that matters in politics now is sorting out who is good and who is bad and who deserves to be punished. So once a question... any question.. but in this case, a question like, "should I vaccinate my children" becomes embedded in cultural identity like this, there's no going back from it. We're stuck here.

The little lords are mad now

See, this is what we were getting at with this.  I don't really know what any of these people are like. But the general notion is this. One assumes that Frank, who built the business, or his son Don who took it over and ran things during the golden age, were the real patricians. One assumes they would have just quietly allowed the little jet plane controversy play out without them. It's really Jeff Landry's problem to deal with.  They're fine no matter what.  But here's third generation Greg (retired, by the way, which makes it even worse) getting absolutely red and mad on Facebook. 

 

@AGJeffLandry/@JeffLandry’s “private citizen” buddy, Greg Mosing, is big mad. #lalege #lagov https://t.co/4STWQw0dp8 pic.twitter.com/Juwzcz7XvL

— FactCheckAGLandry (@ag_landry) September 8, 2023

Greg notes here that he retired "after developing successful businesses." He's not talking about THE family business empire; the source of his inherited fortune and seed of these businesses he says he "developed."  This doesn't mean Frank and Don were the good guys or anything. It's just that they had better things to do than fly all the worst people in the country around on "Rockstar One" and angrily clap back at anyone who asks about it.

Folding up the con-profits

One of the interesting things about the recession* we're headed into is the specific way the non-profit sector is going to implode. 

Earlier this year, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) abruptly laid off its entire helpline staff. The announcement came just two weeks after the helpline workers voted to form a union, Helpline Associates United (HLAU). Workers were informed that they were being replaced by an artificial-intelligence chatbot named Tessa.

NEDA, the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support to people struggling with eating disorders, launched the helpline in 1999. The organization claimed that the layoffs were unrelated to the success of the union effort—a claim that the workers and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union representing them, categorically dismissed. Rather than having a phone helpline staffed by human workers, the association planned to run an online chat helpline operated exclusively by Tessa.

Incidentally, that's the A.I. bubble in a nutshell right now.  Capital is always looking for new and innovative ways to operate more efficiently ... um... intimidate workers into submission.  Does the chatbot even work?  What a ridiculous question. Everyone knows that's not even the point. 

Helpline staff continued their work when NEDA did a soft launch of the bot in late May. But within days, major problems emerged. People shared stories on social media about their disturbing experiences with Tessa; in one case, it dispensed weight loss advice. But shortly before NEDA planned to entirely eliminate the phone helpline and transition to Tessa on June 1, the organization announced that it would shut down both the helpline and the chatbot. NEDA no longer offers any resources by phone or online chat.

Who cares if a robot can actually replace the workers or not. Who cares if the job even gets done at all! This is far from the last we'll see of this phenomenon. So many ostensibly do-good missions will be thrown in the trash just so that workers can be punished as management hoards what's left of all the drying up donor cash.  And that cash is definitely drying up. This is very likely just the beginning.

 

* Yes let's call it that. We can argue about the technical "health of the economy" metrics in a different post later. But the short version is, in this economy people have been abandoned. Housing and health care costs are up. The COVID era safety net measures have been yanked away. Wealth concentration is worse than ever. Union density is lower than ever. And nobody has any belief that there's a better future ahead. The fact that stock prices haven't totally tanked doesn't help most of us. The fact that unemployment is low doesn't mean people have jobs that actually sustain them. 

Love the smell of naptha in the morning

I mean, you'd better get used it.  Or at least you should probably always assume it's there one way or the other. Nobody's going to tell you until much later if at all. 

When St. John the Baptist Parish residents woke up on Friday, August 25, they saw a plume of black smoke above the Marathon Petroleum refinery between Reserve and Garyville, Louisiana. Marathon told residents and parish officials that the fire started that morning around two tanks storing naphtha — a type of partially refined petroleum used as an ingredient in gasoline.

But the naphtha leak actually began at 6:50 p.m. Thursday, August 24, 15 hours before residents in the area were evacuated, according to a report to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting all oil and chemical spills. The Louisiana State Police were notified about half an hour later. 

Naphtha is a colorless flammable mixture distilled from crude oil to make solvents and gasoline. Exposure to this kind of hydrocarbon mixture can cause headache, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

No worries, of course. The important thing to remember is that no matter how bad it seems, no matter how many trees fall down or buildings collapse or refineries explode on any given Thursday in Louisiana, rest assured, we're still finding ways to make sure somebody makes money off of the disaster.  

For example,

CTEH, an environmental consulting firm companies hire to perform environmental testing during industrial disasters, was also at the fire that Friday morning. CTEH has been accused of downplaying the danger of chemical and oil spills, including the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the 2010  BP oil spill, the 2005 Murphy oil spill following Hurricane Katrina, and when Texaco (now Chevron) was accused of dumping 18.5 billion gallons of toxic wastewater for years into the Ecuadorian rainforest.

“They called in a company who has made a long practice of never finding any problems,” Rolfes said. “This company has never found a problem and never will. And that is why Marathon called them.”

Louisiana’s air monitoring efforts did not begin until about 1:12 a.m. Friday morning, about six hours after the naphtha leak began, according to Wilma Subra, a Louisiana-based  environmental scientist and toxics expert, who reviewed the LDEQ reports for DeSmog. “They didn’t start the monitoring for a good little while,” she said.

That's the good old resilience economy in action, right there.  Good work if you can get it.

A bigger haul

Torres is poised to take over the Richards' contract now. After that, he's bidding on Algiers as well. 

Contract negotiations will follow Tuesday’s selection. If they are successful, IV Waste will take over from Richard's in the new area on April 1.

At that point, Torres would control nearly three quarters of the city's 153,000 curbside waste and recycling pickups outside of the French Quarter and parts of the Central Business District — and that might not be all. On Wednesday, the same committee is scheduled to select a new hauler for Algiers, with more than 18,000 service locations.

IV Waste is also vying for that contract.

These are some of the biggest, most lucrative contracts the city lets to anyone and now Sidney is closer to collecting them all. So that's what he's won.  What do we get out of the deal?

The administration also allowed the contractors to cut service frequency in half, to once-per-week, to avoid disruptions in the future. The service cut is now permanent, since going back to twice-weekly pickups would further balloon what the city must pay.

Cantrell last year hinted that an increase in $24 monthly sanitation fees on water bills may eventually become necessary, despite the service cuts, since the fees don’t cover the costs. She has more recently dropped those hints, however, as outcry grows over rising taxes, insurance and other costs of living.

Over the long haul, what happens is you pay more and get less while one trash hauler hauls away more and more of the loot. 

Team Jeff and Liz

We're about to install quite a package in two of the highest statewide offices next year.  It didn't come cheap. 

But Landry has made it obvious in several other ways that he is not just quietly backing Murrill but actively pushing for her with his supporters.  The two candidates share political advisers. Landry’s longtime political consultant, Brent Littlefield, is also working for Murrill. Murrill’s campaign manager, Jason Hebert, is running Protect Louisiana’s Children, one of the political action committee’s supporting Landry’s election efforts.

The Republican Attorneys General Association, where Landry is a member of leadership, gave Murrill a very early endorsement in February over her two Republican opponents. Likewise, the Republican Party of Louisiana, where Landry has great influence, backed Murrill early over Stefanski and Maley last month.

On a more personal level, Landry’s wife Sharon donated $5,000 to Murrill, the maximum allowed by an individual in a campaign cycle. Cajun PAC II, a political action committee supporting Landry and run by his brother Benjamin, also gave Murrill $5,000, according to a review of campaign finance reports.

Murrill’s most prolific campaign donors also tend to be longtime, major supporters of Landry.  Her top 15 campaign contributors — those who have given her campaign at least $12,000 combined through personal accounts, family members and businesses — have also given money to Landry, his PACs or the Louisiana Republican Party’s efforts to elect him.

Four of Murrill’s top five campaign donors — people who have given her campaign at least $20,000 — are Landry mega donors. Each gave at least $125,500 to Landry’s gubernatorial election efforts, according to a review of campaign finance records.

That article includes a table listing some of the more prominent high rollers that Liz and Jeff share among their donor rolls. It's a real fun group. 

Ratchet only turns one way

Bob Marshall, God bless him, is still trying to get people to "listen to the scientists."  It should be clear by now that was never going to happen and is never going to happen. The reason for that is right in front of Marshall's face He writes it out in the last sentence of this passage, in fact.  I'm still not sure he gets why it matters though.

What did you think during last couple of decades when scientists “warned” that sea level was rising more than three millimeters a year? Or when they were “alarmed” that the temperature was warming “so fast” that in 5 to 10 years your average summer heat might be 87 instead of 86? And when they said we had to quickly cut our use of fossil fuels to prevent these increases?

No big whoop, right? Three millimeters is about the width of a penny. And what AC unit can’t make that one-degree uptick in heat disappear?

So, you probably agreed with the fossil fuel industry and some politicians when they shouted scientists down and even ridiculed their findings.

“Why so much alarm about tiny changes!” they yelled. “We’re not going to disrupt our lives (and our profits) unless something B-I-G is going to happen, and happen soon!”

I don't know who is the "you" Marshall thinks he's addressing these comments to but it's a little more than condescending the way it reads.  I mean, I know I can speak for an awful lot of Louisiana residents when I say, yes, Bob, we fucking know all of this.  We've been here this whole time too. 

The problem is not now nor was it ever a matter of us plain folk understanding what's being done to us. Rather the problem was always and continues to be, what happens to us is immaterial compared to the universal imperative to maximize profits. It's insulting that we have to read this, "You didn't listen" horseshit now. We listened. We knew. It didn't matter.  These are not our sins to atone for. We're just the alienated subjects of an uncaring capitalist regime. There was nothing we could do about it. Stop blaming us.

 Anyway here's where we are now. 

And the worst news those climatologists were trying to explain you may still not have heard: Those increases will likely be permanent because of the heat baked into the system by unchecked human-produced emissions for 150 years.

There is no known way to quickly roll back those tiny changes. The only thing we can do now is reduce the rate of increases in the decades ahead by quickly transitioning off most of our fossil fuel use. Otherwise, the deadly and costly impacts we are now suffering will continue in frequency and intensity.

"You may still not have heard." Jesus Christ he's still doing it further down in the column! Anyway, since "there's no known way" to fix the problem now anyway, it appears as though the fossil fuel producers have won.  What does Bob want us to do now?  Feel guilty? Will that solve anything?  

The ratchet only turns one way here and we've already cranked it past the critical point. The challenge now is less about stopping the climate disaster than it is about protecting people from its effects.  But to do that, we'd need a politics that understands the class and wealth inequality and its effect on the power dynamic.  But instead we get misguided lectures about how "you" may not have heard the scientists. And if that's all we get then it's going to be rough time riding out the next century.

We're back, baby!

Tripping the light fantastic, and whatnot

NEW ORLEANS — The Sewerage and Water Board reports some pumps went offline during Monday's storms. The utility says two pumps on Interstate 10 near the Metairie Road exit were "tripping offline."   

A spokesperson with the Sewerage and Water Board says the operators were able to turn these pumps back online, and the water has now receded. This comes as Orleans Parish is under a flash flood warning until 6:15 p.m.

All the idle little lords

Our post yesterday about who is profiting from the coming carbon capture "bonanza" introduced us to William Gray Stream, heir to the Stream family oil fortune. As a function of his inherited status, Stream has spent time buttering up politicians and sitting on important state boards and stuff. But, like a lot of these guys, he hasn't really made or created anything.  He tried to make somebody else's tech startup work for a while but that didn't seem to pan out. Now he's likely to reel in passive income from federal carbon subsidies. 

There are a ton of guys like this running around now at this stage of empire deterioration. Little lords who didn't build the thing they own now by accident. But their ownership of the thing holds dire consequences for the rest of us. (Yes you are supposed to conjure an image of Elon here.) 

Today, we're reading this story about Jeff Landry's latest ethics charge. Landry has a number of shameful relationships with wealthy benefactors that ought to disqualify him from holding a major public office on sheer principal. But we're way beyond that now. 

At least one flight did violate the law, the state Ethics Board thinks. On Friday, Landry said on Facebook that the Ethics Board charged him over one of the free flights from a top donor. A Republican, he labeled the charge "election interference," and blamed Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who appoints the board members. 

The flights show ties that do not turn up on public records between Landry and some of his top backers. 

Greg Mosing of Broussard, a wealthy businessman who also ran a pro-Landry PAC called Make Louisiana Great Again, said he took Landry on a host of trips on a Bombardier Challenger jet in recent years. The destinations included Hawaii, Dallas, South Dakota and South Carolina, dating from 2020.

Really looking forward to seeing any criticism of the candidate derided as "election interference" for the next month or so. The thin skin on modern Republicans is amazing.  

Anyway, that's not really the point here. What is the point is the link in this story elaborating on Greg Mosing, "wealthy businessman."  Let's take a look at how he comes by that. 

Frank's International's roots date back to 1938, when Frank Mosing founded Frank's Casing Crew & Rental Tools, an oil well casing company that he initially operated out of his garage in Louisiana. Over time the company expanded into oil field services, including manufacturing pipes and connectors for oil and gas wells. Now called Frank's International, it has manufacturing facilities in 60 countries and is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Frank's grandson, Donald Keith Mosing, serves as the company's executive chairman and was previously its CEO and President. The company went public in 2013; the Mosing family still owns more than 75% of the company

Way back in 1938, Frank Mosing tinkered around in his garage at just the right time to end up an oil field services small business tyrant. And the rest is history. And now Greg gets to fly Jeff Landry to CPAC so he can complain about wokeness. 

These are the guys who are turning the wheel now.  And none of them have the faintest idea how it even works.