Nagin Still Chewing Over Shock Doctrine

Surely you noticed that Mayor C. Ray Nagin gave an interview to his friend, the great Irvin Mayfield. You probably saw an extended online summary of it from Frank Donze of the Times-Picayune. Or, you opened up your Saturday paper and found that same synopsis wasting all the good space in the weekly Orleans Parish Politics segment.

(Aside: That feature is my favorite thing the T-P does. The only time I ever actually buy the print paper is on Saturday and the only reason I do that is for this short weekly piece. Sometimes I feel like the editors see it as a dumping ground for extra stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else but I think a lot of people really look forward to this piece, so they should devote more space to it and concentrate more on making it consistently substantive.)

The separate, extended online version of that summary was available last Friday. Check it out.

The Times-Picayune synopsis focused on Nagin's comments in regard to the media and City Council but what he said was unsurprising and hardly newsworthy given how repetitive that tone has become.

The actual interview itself was conducted a week ago by the great trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and it's available here.

How many people read the article but didn't listen to the interview itself?

I bet not many of you actually listened to the interview.

I'm not necessarily saying you should have done so because listening to more than fifteen minutes of Ray Nagin has been known to induce immediate, permanent, and simultaneous blindness, hair loss, and impotence in some women and men.

But that's what I do for you here at We Could Be Famous. I risked sight, looks, and potency to sit through that thing. It was rough. The Mayor was chewing gum through the whole thing and there are a bunch of points where the mic really pics it up. You feel way too close to his mouth. It was gross.

I thought that the most remarkable point of the interview had nothing to do with E-maelstrom, his relationship with the Council, or his hatred of the media. No, the most interesting thing was when Irvin transitioned away from the politics stuff for a bit to ask about the Mayor's hobbies. You can listen to what I'm talking about yourself if you go to around the 43 minute mark when they come back from a break.

Mayfield: What are you reading right now? What is the Mayor reading?

Nagin: You know, I just, I had the book for awhile, Obama's Audacity of Hope. I just finished that one, which I thought was pretty interesting. And then I'm also reading The Shock Doctrine, Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. And she talks about, it's very interesting, she talks about how the Bush administration and others have used disasters as a means for transferring wealth or dollars from public hands into private hands. So I'm reading that one, it's pretty amazing.

Now to me, this is the much more interesting than anything the Mayor said about emails or Council. It exposes the degree to which the Mayor is in denial about his own culpability as a vessel for the very kind of punitive neoliberalism that Naomi Klein condemns in her book.

Of course, this isn't the first time that Mayor Nagin has mentioned Klein's book. In an interview he gave to Ethan Brown that appeared in Details this past November, Nagin indicated that he'd just picked up the book.

The writer Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine, describes actions like those as “disaster capitalism”: profiteering and privatization in the wake of shocks such as 9/11 or Katrina. So when I spot Alan Greenspan’s memoir, The Age of Turbulence, on Nagin’s desk and ask him about it, I’m surprised to learn that he’s not reading it but The Shock Doctrine, which he pulls from his briefcase.

"I understand exactly the premise that they're presenting," Nagin says, holding the book aloft, "that's for sure. Look, man, after this disaster there is big money! The shock-and-awe piece of what they're talking about is absolutely correct." I ask if he's read the chapter in which Klein laments that the public sphere in New Orleans is "being erased, with the storm used as the excuse." Nagin replies cheerily, "I haven't gotten that far! I just picked it up."

So even now that he's gotten further along in the book, it would appear that Nagin still doesn't quite grasp that when the book condemns Bush's disaster recovery policies, it also condemns his recovery policy. That's not just because Nagin was a Republican for so many years and worked for George W. Bush's election by speaking at the RNC in 2000 and donating to his campaign. And it's not just because Mayor Nagin was generally supportive of President Bush and Karl Rove after the immediate Katrina aftermath. It's because the Mayor's own policies, the municipal recovery agenda that he himself set, is the same type of neoliberal shock capitalism described in the book.

If he's interested in issuing an apology for generally supporting policies that prevented our displaced neighbors from exercising their right to return...

...I'd buy him a whole pack of Juicy Fruit to hear that.

E-maelstrom Unravels Hawaii Trip

The Times-Picayune sent three reporters to chase down a story American Zombie broke for us way back in 2006.

Now that's to congratulate Dambala, not to disparage Donze, Hammer, and Russell who wrote a must-read with audio of Nagin's bob-and-weave. Read all of it and then read behind it at AZ.

Once again....if anyone with the power to do so is listening...subpoena Imagine's credit card records.

That's Jim Letten's call I guess.

The key to the next door as far as public information is concerned is probably what's going on at Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Again, the T-P describes it very well.

We'll know so much more if Judge Rosemary Ledet unseals that deposition on Monday.

We're gonna get there.

Docs 4 Us

The Louisiana Justice Institute won a court case minor standoff with the city after threatening a lawsuit and has come into a small cache of pretty sweet documents. They ain't quite ready for nolapublicrecords.org, but they're available for your viewing pleasure here.

We've got ourselves a bunch of financial disclosure statements to troll through.

I've done a cursory browse through some of the 2007 filings, which I believe were required to have been completed by the end of July of 2008.

It appears that Mayor Nagin may not have completed his 2007 form until March 30th, 2009: the date of the legal decision to release the documents to LJI.

That's when his statement was signed and notarized at least. But perhaps we shouldn't condemn him for late signing since he was not the only one to do so.

The thing on Nagin's sparse form that raises the most questions for me is this:



It's tough to read but Nagin discloses his association as a "passive investor" to Stone Age LLC, which is the Nagin family granite counter top company that got that exclusive deal with Home Depot. What's interesting here is that in Nagin's 2007 filing, under "amount of interest," it says that that Stone Age LLC "ceased operations 1/09."

Doesn't quite explain what the company earned in 2007 now does it?

To compare, his 2006 form lists amount of interest from Stone Age as "40% collective," and was signed in August of 2007, which seems closer to appropriate.


So it's pretty obvious that he just filled out his '07 financial disclosure requirement, like, yesterday.


Check out some of the other financial disclosure forms at LJI's website. Midura's are not there for some reason and Clarkson's '06 forms are missing. But everything else from everybody else is available for your sleuthing pleasure.

UPDATE: Councilor Midura's records have been added now.

Checkered Past Comes Full Circle

Maybe you saw this in the paper on Friday:

The City of New Orleans must release to The Times-Picayune police department records of 10 officers, including Superintendent Warren Riley, related to any misconduct investigations or complaints, a judge ruled this morning.

"They're entitled to these records," Civil District Court Judge Robin Giarrusso said after a hearing in her courtroom. "Public records are public records are public records, and the citizens of this city have a right to know what's in them."

Yes, the public needs to know that it can trust the public integrity bureau. Given the NOPD's horrendous relationship with the public at present and by historic reputation, one would think that if the NOPD had nothing to hide, they'd be anxious to open up to the media about how they do business.

But as the article continues, we learn that it's not just the media that's been spurned by NOPD record keepers:

NOPD advocate groups tried to block another person's request for 16 decades' worth of police complaint records, suing the city and arguing in court Friday that the officers are entitled to a "right to privacy" that goes back to the framing of the U.S. Constitution. Their attorneys suggested at the hearing that they would appeal Giarrusso's ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal.

The newspaper intervened in an effort to allow the city to answer McCarthy's request.

Other parties, including the Orleans Parish Public Defenders, were also asking for the NOPD Public Integrity Bureau records. One woman had asked the city for every Public Integrity Bureau file dating to 1992.

So it doesn't seem to be Riley's reactionary stance to the "Times Pick-on-you," it's actually long standing NOPD policy. What might it be specifically about the public integrity bureau?

Again, the T-P's Gwen Filosa provides some historical context:

In 1954, the New Orleans police department created an "internal affairs" division, Mince said, but in 1995 then-Police Superintendent Richard Pennington abolished it.

"He said, 'We're going to have a public integrity bureau," she said. "He recognized the need to restore public trust in the New Orleans Police Department."

Riley in 2002 was part of a task force charged by Mayor Marc Morial to review law enforcement's performance, Mince added. The task force members agreed that "an educated and informed citizenry" was key to following the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

But there is A LOT more to it than what was included in yesterday's paper.

You have to remember what precipitated Pennington's move, or really what even brought Pennington into town in the first place. A few months ago, I happened to be digging into a little bit of NOPD history and became very much fixated on what was going on in the early '90's. Certainly these are not good times at the NOPD but what was going on before Pennington joined the force was mind-boggling. We're talking about some Wild West bullsh!t going on - from the rank and file all the way up to the top of the force.

Using Lexis-Nexis, I came across a 60 Minutes transcript from the fall of 1994 that gets at some of what was going on at the time. At that time, Joseph Orticke was police superintendent and the Department of Justice had just named the NOPD worst in the nation for police brutality. Without excerpting large segments of that transcript, Mike Wallace profiled several visionary crime fighters who deserve some description:

• Former NOPD officer Michael Thames was imprisoned for skimming from illegal gambling, drug, and prostitution rackets to the tune of $100,000 per year. When asked about the Rodney King beating in L.A., Thames responded that he didn't know what the big deal was because that was "kiddie-land" compared to New Orleans.
• Dr. Frank Minyard, New Orleans coroner (to this day - more on him some other time) defended his office against charges that it fudged an autopsy of Adolph Archie who wounded after killing a cop only to be intercepted by a mob of police officers on the steps of Charity Hospital, taken to a police station, and beaten to death while in custody.
• Antoine Saacks was a 28 year veteran of the force and the NOPD's second-in-command under Orticke before getting fired a week before 60 Minutes got to town. On a salary of $50,000 per year, Saacks boasted millions of dollars in assets related to number of schemes including a vice-squad extortion racket in the French Quarter, exacting 'fees' for permitting officers to moonlight as private security in the film industry, and by setting up an operation to capitalize on video poker by connecting Vegas firms to a mafia-connected Bourbon St. landlord named Frank Caracci.

In 1994, the Clinton Administration granted the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice new powers to take over troubled local police forces with poor track records on civil liberties, brutality, and racism. Only a handful of police forces were ever taken over but a certain degree of the law's effectiveness is derived from police policy adjustments made under threat of takeover. Given some of the issues illuminated above, certainly the NOPD was an early candidate for receivership takeover. Mayor Morial's decision to search outside the city for a new police chief in '94 resulted partially from this downward pressure out of Washington D.C. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the man he picked, Richard Pennington, was plucked from D.C.'s force.

After police pay was frozen for some time in 1982, starting salaries for NOPD officers was still so low when Pennington came in that they had to be doubled. Internal affairs was liquidated and the officers were dispersed. Pennington then created the public integrity bureau, moved it outside of precinct HQ and added FBI agents to its staff.

Chief Pennington's adjustments weren't a cure all by any stretch, as issues with brutality and corruption continued to plague the force to the point that the Department of Justice opened up an official investigation into New Orleans in 1996 to monitor the reform efforts.

The general consensus of the city seems to be that the Pennington era of the NOPD was a success. Significant progressive reforms were instituted that made a pretty noticeable dent in the city's crime stats and in public perception of safety.

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It is crucial to understand the context behind the decision to scrap internal affairs for the public integrity bureau.

Though those changes may have come regardless, the most direct catalyst was the murder of Kim Groves, which occurred just six hours after Pennington was sworn in.

Groves was murdered as a result of an execution order from NOPD Officer Len Davis, who was tipped off from within internal affairs after Groves filed a report that she had witnessed Davis senselessly beating a teen aged suspect.

At the time Davis ordered Groves' death, he was also one target in a wide-ranging federal drug investigation. Officer Davis was apparently one of at least 15-20 officers helping to guard cocaine warehouses run by undercover federal agents. Groves' killing ultimately short-circuited the drug case, as only ten officers ended up being charged. (At least according to the July 13, 1996 Washington Post article that helped me guide the narrative of this case.)

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So let's get back to Superintendent Warren Riley's defensive protection of records related to internal affairs and the Public Integrity Bureau. What was Warren Riley doing back in the early '90s?

Well, he was at Internal Affairs, assigned there in 1991 after several years between the maligned Narcotics and Vice squads.

In late 1997, Riley was suspended for three days without pay after an investigation of an incident that occurred in the months after the Groves killing and two weeks before he had been reassigned out of the new public integrity division that Pennington was creating.

Riley was on duty on February 17th, 1995, when Sharon Robinson came forward to report that she feared for her life because she'd just ended things with her then-boyfriend, NOPD Officer Victor Gant who had a long history of physically abusing her and had repeatedly threatened to kill her in the event that she left him.

Officer Riley did not file a report or open an investigation.

Months later, on April 27th, 1995, after Riley had been transferred to the 6th District, Officer Gant approached Riley to discuss Robinson's coming forward to Riley, for which she had apparently confessed. Gant told Riley that the couple's issues had been resolved.

Sharon Robinson's body was found drowned in a swamp days later.

Here's a 1995 article from UK Independent that profiled Officer Victor Gant after he was named a suspect:

The target of the hunt is a serial killer who, investigators believe, has struck at least 24 times. The FBI think that Gant may be the killer but they don't have enough evidence for an arrest. So Gant sits at his desk, suspended from patrol duty. If you have his telephone number, you can call him and hear his Louisiana drawl: "I can't really discuss the case, you'll have to talk with my lawyer."

Gant became a suspect after Karen Ivester was found strangled. Her body was dumped in the swamp about half a mile from Interstate 55, just 30 minutes from the French Quarter of New Orleans. As local police combed the scene they found a second corpse, another young woman. Sharon Robinson had been drowned. She was still dressed in her work clothes, a uniform from the Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. Before death, her head had been shaved. In life, Robinson and Ivester had been best friends.

Police inquiries at the casino revealed that Robinson had left work on 29 April this year at 3am accompanied by Gant, a 33-year-old officer who was once her boyfriend. The New Orleans Police Department immediately named Gant as a suspect. Then the FBI announced that the man who killed Robinson and Ivester had also claimed 22 other victims.

Twenty-one of the killer's victims had ties to prostitution, Ivester included. Nineteen were known prostitutes, including one man. There were two other male victims and there is evidence to suggest they were also prostitutes. According to NOPD sources, each body carried some distinctive marks that matched through all 24 deaths.

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Gant used to patrol in Treme and Algiers. Several residents say a group of New Orleans police officers has operated a string of prostitutes in the area for years. Some say they've seen brutal beatings and threats of murder and a few have claimed Gant was an associate of one suspect group which allegedly ruled through intimidation.

On a recent Friday night the bars along Treme's Claibourne Avenue were busy and outside each one there was a small clutch of women working the street. Many are scared, some are aggressive and few were willing to speak. When they do, they insist on anonymity.

"The police and the politicians don't really care about us," said one. "It took over a dozen deaths before those motherfuckers lifted a finger to find the killer. I knew two of the three girls who died but I wouldn't tell the police about it. I'd be the next one dead if I did." The woman then went further. "I saw the girl called Peach just a couple of days before she was murdered. The thing is, some of the cops were running the girls around here, they were pimping. Some people say Peach got out of line."

"Peach" was the name used by Karen Ivester. According to FBI investigators, Gant had told some acquaintances that he disliked Karen Ivester because she had persuaded her friend not to join her in prostitution. Local papers report that the Treme prostitutes have been victims of an intimidation campaign by a group of rogue police officers.

Upon the discovery of Robinson's body, Officer Riley wrote a letter to Major Loicano at the Public Integrity Bureau, telling him of Robinson's visit the previous February.

It was Major Loicano who ultimately reported Riley's violation, as we can see from the Major's testimony at Riley's appeal of the suspension to the Civil Service Commission in 1998:

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Now to bring it all back, lets get back to Filosa's article:

At issue was a request by newspaper reporter Brendan McCarthy to view any Public Integrity Bureau records kept by the New Orleans Police Department on Riley, along with his top three officers and the officers involved in the Jan. 1 fatal shooting of 22-year-old Adolph Grimes.

Certainly, we can understand how it is in the interests of Superintendent Riley and PANO (Police Association of New Orleans) to deny public records requests related to Internal Affairs and the Public Integrity Bureau. And we can also understand how it's in Superintendent Riley's interests to deny the public the right to inspect his own complaint records.

But I think it will be very interesting to examine common threads possibly bind all ten officers in McCarthy's request together. How many of Riley's top Lieutenants came from the old internal affairs outfit of the early '90s? What about from narcotics and vice of the '80s?

The most disturbing thing to think about is how the NOPD in total seems to have gone full circle back to the old pre-Pennington days. How many brutality cases have we heard about since Katrina? How many arrests of uniformed officers? And how much never sees the light of day?

Awesome

Link!

Is it just me or does it seem like there's some extra civic energy out there amongst the grassroots lately? Just a little bit. A few more crumbs than there have been.

TGIF

Quite glad it's the weekend, though I'm probably going to be using some of it to tie up some loose ends around some posts I've held on the back burner for awhile.

Yesterday was my 24th b-day so a big capitalized Thank You to all of those who wished me well via email, text message, twitter, facebook, phone call, the US postal service, carrier pigeon, candygram, telepathy, or actually in-person.

A couple of friends even bought me the hottest recession item out there:



I was given no choice but to where my new blue snuggie out at the bar, and yes, I did attach the clip-on reading lamp, which was included as a special bonus.

I looked like Mickey Mouse from Fantasia minus the wizard's hat and the multiplying brooms. And man did that thing smell like an ash tray this morning.

This must have counted as the first ever New Orleans Snuggie pub crawl, a phenomenon sweeping through other cities around the nation.

This obviously means that the Snuggie is already played out, even as an ironic joke.

I think the solution is to combine it with the Sham-Wow to create the ultimate warmth providing spill absorber, the Snug-Wow.

UPDATE: Still now word from Hollywood on my pitch to do the sequel to Snakes on a Plane, which I've given the working title Sharks on a Plane.

Jackie, Jackie, Jackie

Council President Jackie Clarkson went on Fox 8 this morning to talk shop.




Here's the important passage:

"I think Veronica White should be reprimanded and dismissed. That is not my prerogative. That is not Council's prerogative. That is the Mayor's prerogative. But I truly think what she did was wrong...

"When we can't get our own emails. When we can't make our emails accessible to the public... And she can get emails? That's wrong. And she's not even the City Attorney. I'm sorry, that's wrong. Whether it's ethically wrong, morally wrong, or legally wrong makes no difference to me. It's wrong because she's getting more service than the public. We can't service the public and she can be serviced? I'm sorry. Whatever motivated her is immaterial. It's wrong."

I'm sorry Jackie Clarkson, you're driving me crazy.

-

It's not Council's prerogative? Is she serious?

Then what was she thinking in 2004 when she supported slimeball Jay Batt's ordinance to have Veronica White removed from office? In fact, she was the only Councilperson to do so. Her little dance to abscond from her responsibility as a civic leader is transparent nonsense.

-

You're the Council President! Make yourself useful for something other than a ribbon-cutting.

--

Then Clarkson claims that she doesn't have access to your own emails and that she wants her emails to be accessible to the public. This is also a cruel falsehood. Brad Ott of the Commitee to Reopen Charity Hospital has been trying for well over a year to obtain Clarkson's records in connection to the LSU/VA side selection process. Not even a month ago, he had to hold a press conference to publicly shame her for her failure to comply with the law. Remember?

Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital

PRESS RELEASE & NOTICE:

Press Conference Contesting the City of New Orleans’

Law Department Louisiana Public Records Act Policy

Thursday March 5, 2009 / 10:00am to 10:30am

In front of New Orleans City Hall, 1300 Perdido

This Press Conference is being held in direct response to the City of New Orleans’ Law Department policy directive and practice of compliance with the Louisiana Public Records Act. We contend that the effective exercise of this directive thwarts the timely and complete fulfillment of Public Records Requests made by individuals and organizations concerned with influencing municipal governance and recovery from Hurricane Katrina in the city of New Orleans. The policy and its execution must be reconsidered – as well as any public policy decisions made as a result of the lack of public transparency with the lack of timely and complete compliance with the Louisiana Public Records Act.

The Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital specifically supports member K. Brad Ott’s November 13, 2008 outstanding Louisiana Public Records Request of New Orleans City Council President Jacquelyn B. Clarkson. Pursuant to Louisiana Public Records Act (R.S. 44:1 et seq), Ott request included “for review and possible copying any and all records, memos, agendas, orders, directives, surveys, notices, communications printed and electronic, including e-mail, by fax, and/or postal mail in regards to the public and collaborative party dealings of the proposed VAMC/LSU Academic Medical Center, Section 106 Consultation, National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA], and National Historic Preservation Act [NHPA] through November 13, 2008 … as well as the Rev. Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans.” (Bold type his emphasis)

The Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital contends Councilmember Clarkson’s Office as well as the City Law Department thwarted complete public participation in the decisions about the issue in which Ott’s Louisiana Public Records Request referenced. Deadlines for public comment without formal litigation have passed, effectively preventing alteration by the general public as well as by affected parties impacted by the New Orleans City Council’s authorization of funds in its 2009 City Budget for the expropriation of properties, homes and businesses within the Mid-City Historic District for the proposed VAMC/LSU Academic Medical Center – causing undue hardship and the potential internal displacement of area residents, workers and businesses. We are calling on Councilmember Clarkson and the City Council’s Attorneys to fulfill this Public Records Request, as well as to meet with similarly-situated parties to fully comply with the Louisiana Public Records Act. Other similarly-situated parties, individuals and organizations are invited to share their stories during this press conference.

Ott’s Public Records request is attached to emailed press notifications and will be made available at the press conference. We thank and credit The Times-Picayune and Nola.Com for links to the City of New Orleans’ Law Department Inter-Office Memo on Compliance with the Public Records Act, as well as the interview with Mrs. Clarkson regarding her handling of public records:

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Council President Jackie Clarkson: a do-nothing and a hypocrite.

Booooo!

Stacy Head steps up to the plate

The Councilor for District B has written a letter to the City Planning Commission in support of a full public town hall on the LSU/VA site selection.

By Hand Delivery
Edward Robinson
Chairman, City Planning Commission
1340 Poydras Street.
Suite 900
New Orleans, La. 70112

Re: Public Hearing on LSU/VA proposal March 16, 2009

Dear Chairman Robinson:

I believe that the decision regarding the location of the proposed Southeast Regional Veterans Administration Hospital and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Medical Center are decisions made by the federal and state government respectively. Nevertheless, as the costs and benefits of these hospital facilities will be felt directly by the citizens of New Orleans, I fully support a City Planning Commission public hearing. This would allow all parties of interest to present their respective positions. There appears to be confusion, misinformation, and legitimate questions that need to be vetted. You have my commitment to attend this meeting and I hope the entirety of the Council will do the same.

Please let me know your decision and I will assist you in any way I can.

Sincerely,



Stacy Head
Councilmember, District B

Wow.

How about it?

Give it up for Stacy Head!

It takes real political courage to be the first to stand up and say something. I hope all of our Council representatives will also get behind this effort.

---

So much for 'done deal,' eh?

Watershed Moment?

Today, a full 41 organizations joined together to announce a call on civic and state leaders to transparently evaluate the competing hospital proposals in a public setting.

More specifically:

ORGANIZATIONS IN THE COALITION ARE CALLING FOR:

1. Governor Jindal to order an independent, comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the two hospital plans.

2. The City Planning Commission and the City Council to hold public hearings on these critical planning issues.

3. The City Planning Commission and the City Council to include the hospitals in the current master-planning process.

There is no reason not to rally around this effort. Whether you're pro-Charity, pro-LSU, or agnostic, everybody can agree that the time has come to honestly compare the plans side-by-side.

It was heartening to see a diverse group of community organizations come together for something constructive given the gridlock that has become characteristic of pretty much all other civic issues.

[These may take a few seconds to load for you. Also, I apologize for the imperfections; I only had a regular digital camera to work with, people.]

Check out Broadmoor's LaToya Cantrell:


Press Conference 3/25 from Eli Ackerman on Vimeo.


And Charles Allen from Holy Cross:


Press Conference 3/25 from Eli Ackerman on Vimeo.


Here's a list of those organizations and I know that more have joined on since:

●American Planning Association
●Broadmoor Improvement Association
●Charity Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association
●Foundation for Historical Louisiana
●New Orleans Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital
●Coliseum Square Association
●Doctors for Charity Hospital
●National Trust for Historic Preservation
●Squandered Heritage
●Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association
●Smart Growth for Louisiana
●Preservation Resource Center
●Louisiana ACORN
●Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association
●Louisiana Landmarks Society
●GNO Affordable Housing Action Center
●Holy Cross Neighborhood Association
●New Creation Christian Church
●Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation
●Lower Mid-City Residents and Business Owners Affected by the LSU/VA Hospitals
●The Renaissance Project
●Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates
●Southern Christian Leadership Conference Louisiana Women’s Division
●French Quarter Citizens, Inc.
●Lantern Light Inc.
●Irish Channel Neighborhood Association
●Louisiana Justice Institute
●Lafayette Square Association
●Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development
●Mid-City Neighborhood Organization
●New Orleans Pax Christi
●Partners for Livable Communities
●C3/Hands Off Iberville
●Phoenix of New Orleans
●Restaurant Opportunity Center of New Orleans
●Social Justice Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Church
●The Townscape Institute
●The Urban Conservancy
●United Teachers of New Orleans
●Advocates for Environmental Human Rights
●Historic Faubourg Treme Association

Black, brown, and white. Uptown and downtown. Religious groups and neighborhood organizations. Professional associations and organized labor. Preservationists and activists.

It's all here.

One of the other speakers today was Dr. Sissy Sartor M.D, who also got a letter to the editor published in the Times-Picayune:

Re: "Unhealthy attitude infects LSU, " Other Opinions, March 20. Does LSU really care about returning health care to the New Orleans area? Unfortunately, I fear the answer may be no.

As James Gill so succinctly suggests, LSU officials have viewed the aftermath of Katrina as an opportunity to push forward their desire for domination in the local medical school internecine struggles. This desire seems to have suspended their good judgment in favor of propaganda and obfuscation.

At a health care forum in Jefferson Parish Wednesday night, Alan Levine, Secretary of Health and Hospitals said in surprised exasperation that we are no further along with this issue than three years ago.

Let me make a radical suggestion: Remove LSU from the management of the state charity hospital system and put it in the hands of a nonpartisan team.

We need a team that really cares about health care, not the money, not the power, but health care provision for those who so dearly need it.

Sissy Sartor, M.D.

New Orleans

Boom!

Now if we could just get our City Council and our CPC on board...

There is no escaping the E-Maelstrom

Well some 'lost' emails have apparently made their way to the press.

Gordon Russell stirs the seas:

A review of Meffert's e-mails from his last year at City Hall casts further doubt on his record. The correspondence shows that he was deeply enmeshed in the business dealings of a group of former associates at the same time he steered multimillion-dollar, no-bid city contracts, including the camera deals, to companies they owned.

Meffert's exact role in the companies remains unclear, but the e-mails show that he often participated in and directed decisions that had nothing to do with the firms' work in New Orleans. And he traveled with company members to drum up business in other cities, including Baton Rouge, Houston and Chicago, using his public position to open doors.

Do not miss this article. It will only continue to unravel from here.

Certainly takes all of the innuendo out of this WWL piece from yesterday, though I'm sure you didn't have much trouble making the connection yourself.

Meffert is already speaking through an attorney who promises that his client will be completely vindicated, which I think is some fancy lawyerin' mumbo jumbo signifying something no better than a plea deal with an agreement to testify.

**UPDATE: Clancy has confirmed that in fact, the feds have already had a little sit down with Meffert. The visit was "threatening" and "ugly," and Meffert is "scared."

This is what it's all about. The White to Washington leak of Council emails opened an entry path for the feds to do more work around the IT dept but never was the primary focus, though there will probably be some fallout on that front as well.

Seeking transformational leader to fill crippling municipal vacuum

The James Perry campaign blog is slowly rounding into shape. It might actually get to be quite formidable, especially if we get more like this:

This weekend, I met a true coaching legend. I was not at a Hornets game or at the NCAA tournament, but at a park in the upper 9th ward. For over twenty years, this coach had been volunteering his time to mentor and coach kids in Sampson Park. When I told him I was running for Mayor, his eyes lit up. He immediately mapped the best way for a new leader to revamp the New Orleans Recreation Departmen (NORD). He provided practical solutions to simple problems. The lights at Sampson Park do not work, and parents park their cars around the field with the headlights on to provide lighting for children playing football, basketball and baseball. All he wanted was the lights on. He also said that NORD won’t give answers to basic questions about uniforms and travel for the Sampson teams. While he was telling me his frustrations, one of his young athletes, pulled him aside, “Coach, are we going to Indiana?” His face grimaced in anguish, “I’ll be right with you son.” When the kid walked away, he told me that NORD had promised his team a trip to Indiana to compete in a basketball tournament, only to revoke the offer a few weeks later. He had yet to tell the kids. Throughout his story, he kept excusing NORD, “I know they don’t have much money.”

Imagine his disgust when he sees Lee Zurik’s report on WWL Channel 4 news tonight. Zurik will report that New Orleans City government has failed to spend $14 million allocated in 2006 by FEMA to repair New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD) facilities. Like me, the Coach believes that the key to ending teen violence in New Orleans is investing in New Orleans teenagers. He nodded in agreement when I told him that we couldn’t arrest our way out of New Orleans’ high murder rate.

City leaders have their priorities wrong. On Feburary 9th, Mayor Nagin & Sheriff Gusman reopened Orleans Parish Prison, funded by $20 million dollars of federal and local money. The City budgeted only $4.6 million dollars to fund teen recreation programs in 2009.

Our City leaders believe they can arrest their way out of our crime issue, instead of providing opportunities for our teens.NORD’s 2008 budget was $4.5 million, and the city experienced 179 murders last year. In comparison, Baton Rouge’s Recreation and Park Commission 2008 budget was just shy of $40 million, and the city only had 58 murders. There is a clear correlation between quality investment in teen recreation and low crime.

Every citizen should write Mayor Nagin and the Council today and demand that they expend the $14 million and make NORD facilities available for all New Orleans teenagers, no matter what neighborhood they are from.

Yes! And conveniently, there is a hearing about NORD tomorrow on Council's agenda. Make sure to watch Lee's report tonight, I'll provide a link once it becomes available. (UPDATE: And here it is)

The Mayor's communications team is quick on the draw, they issued this presser toward the end of the business day today.

NORD COMPLETES MONTH OF VOLUNTEERISM

The Rehabilitation of Parks and Playgrounds Remain A Priority in
City's Recovery Efforts
This weekend, the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD) will complete a month of volunteer efforts to clean and restore the City's baseball fields in time for the season kick off. The final clean-up event will take place on Saturday, March 28th at Bodenger Playground located 3400 Kansas Street in Algiers. The Boy Scouts of America, New Orleans Chapter, will restore the field from 9a.m.until noon.

(Though the event in Algiers is just one of the projects, I find it quite interesting that we're using Spring Break volunteers to clean up a baseball field that didn't flood during Katrina. I don't think volunteers are coming down here to take the city's self-inflicted Pre-K deferred maintenance problems. But whatever I like baseball fields.)

Bolstering NORD - giving it legitimate funding and making it accountable - seems to me to be an efficient way to directly invest in this city's traumatized Post-Katrina generation. Our next Mayor needs to bring us back to the industrialized world in terms of social services. Our city's kids deserve a robust recreation department. But it won't be easy to make it work.

Jindal Declares GOP Problems Solved

This is some combination of hilarious and pathetic.

From his speech tonight at a fundraiser for House Republicans, according to CNN:

"Let’s agree on this tonight, the time for talking about the past is now over," Jindal told 1,200 people attending a House GOP fundraiser here in Washington. "It has been healthy for Republicans to look in the mirror. It has been healthy for us to realize and admit the mistakes of the past. We have done that quite a bit. I personally have done that quite a bit since the election last fall. It’s now been close to five months since the last election.

It seems to me that acknowledging the disconnect with the American people that precipitated two straight electoral blowouts is precisely the thing that Republicans are incapable of coming together to do.

But I guess just saying that the Party has already changed is pretty much the same as actually thinking about what those changes . . . um . . . would have needed to have been?

Cowen's Concerns Indicative of Swirling Skepticism

In a letter to the editor responding to James Gill's passionate criticism of LSU's entrenched stance in the debate over whether to restore Charity Hospital, Tulane President Scott Cowen asks the following questions:

-- Given the current health care reform movement, do we remain comfortable that the proposed hospital meets the medical needs of our wider community and its citizens, especially those who are under- or uninsured?

-- Do we have sufficient funds to build and operate the hospital without it being a drain on the state's future resources, especially in these economic times?

-- How can any new facility best meet the educational, research and clinical care needs of the institutions that rely on it to support and advance their academic missions? Some of these institutions include Xavier, LSU, Dillard and Tulane.

-- Given the importance and wide impact of this hospital to our community, who should own, govern and manage it to ensure that the proposed facility meets the needs of its various stakeholders while being operated in the most cost effective, efficient and transparent manner?

These are the issues that have been flagged at every turn by proponents of Charity. It is about time that LSU, the GNOBEDD, and the DDD be forced to provide legitimate answers. There has not been one public hearing in Orleans Parish on the matter. Not one. Not in front of the City Council. Not in front of the City Planning Commission.

Goody Clancy, the firm that just released a master plan draft online, was told not to evaluate the GNOBEDD or the LSU/VA footprint.

But it is clear as you're browsing the draft plan, that the issue of Charity Hospital was simply unavoidable. The public health challenges examined by Goody Clancy clearly underscore Mr. Cowen's first question above. Check out Chapter 9 on Health and Human Services (pdf)

What else?

And more still:

Given the distubing public health crisis, why are we so convinced that the LSU/VA complex is the way to go when there's another proposal on the table promises the same first rate medical care without nearly the same wait. LSU does not have the funding to proceed with their plan but they've blocked any and all attempts to evaluate it side-by-side with the alternative from RMHM Hillier. It could take another decade if we continue to subject our health care emergencies to their incompetent guidance.

Early Reaction to the Zoning Master Plan

That's right! A much-anticipated draft of the zoning master plan from Goody Clancy is available online.

This past November, I was pretty torn about giving any zoning master plan the rule of law given the nasty legacy of past planning efforts (see Back, Bring New Orleans).

But I reflected after the fact that the zoning master plan enshrined in law might be the only way to rebuild the sagging neighborhoods of places like New Orleans East, which has otherwise seen way too little institutional investment since Katrina.

So this is the area that I was most interested in upon the release of the plan.

Check out what's in store for New Orleans East on this pdf map.

The most remarkable decision was to zone for high density mixed use urban development around Read Blvd. This, to me, is precisely the kind of thing that the East needs. Without some sort of urban core, I don't see how the East attracts the kind of population it needs to continue to beat back the resistant footprint shrinkers who still advocate for the razing of that entire section of town. One example of what this kind of new urban development could look like is Atlantic Station in Atlanta. Given the rather nasty medium term outlook for the East, I think this kind of urban anchor would be a huge victory.

So I was disappointed but not surprised by the initial reaction of Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who "represents" the East. In a two paragraph response distributed via Vincent Sylvain's political consultancy email listserv, Willard-Lewis' primary message is a quite pathetic complaint that she was not given an advance copy of the draft before the public:

The Council President announced at the Recovery Committee on last Wednesday, that she wanted Council members briefed on the draft of the Master Plan developed by Goody-Clancy before there was public discussion. This was to take place before the draft was released to the community and press. Unfortunately I was never contacted by anyone regarding this briefing. Needless to say I was surprised to read in the local newspaper that the draft is on the website and the press had a copy before my office had access.

Of a greater concern to me were the recommendations in the draft regarding the development of eastern New Orleans. The consultants are recommending commercial and multifamily land uses. That is a major concern considering that eastern New Orleans already has high density multifamily projects which are not in proportion to the rest of the City. I understand this is a draft and I will be working with my constituents to address this disparity. This again points to the problem with citizens approving legislation, planning and zoning policies into law sight unseen.

Now let's not ignore this second paragraph, which is at least on-topic, though it may ultimately be deemed uninformed. It doesn't take much analytical skill to understand that Willard-Lewis' concern is that the East will become a dumping ground for the city's poor because she equates high density multifamily residential development with poor people. While this might demonstrate the Councilor's unsophisticated view of urbanity, it also underscores the class conflict inherent in a lot of the redevelopment debates that have occurred in the East.

Willard-Lewis should be looking to make sure that the rest of the city is building high density affordable housing as well and that it's not all just being concentrated in the East. This was a problem before the storm and it is certainly fair to be on the lookout for inherent biases in this regard. I have not yet gone into the specifics of the draft plan to see if that's true. But I doubt that Willard-Lewis had finished reading the entire draft plan herself when three days ago, she decided to stake out her oppositional posture.

A Bright Red (updated: The Case for Federal Intervention)

To what extent do White America's voting patterns in the Presidential election of 2008 inform us about racism in America?

To what extent is a local population's diminished support for Barack Obama in 2008 compared to the level of support for John Kerry in 2004 indicative of racism? What other factors might cause a population to be more enthusiastic for Kerry in '04 than Obama in '08?

538 has an interesting new map embedded in today's post about this subject.

This map, which was spread around the internet just after election day, compares how different counties voted in '08 compared to '04.



This map, however, subtracts African Americans to show how non-blacks voted by county in '08 compared to '04.


That's a much more nuanced depiction of voting pattern.

Look at the Old Confederacy in both maps.

Swish all this around in your mouth a little while as you think about where the most strident opposition to President Obama is coming from and as you consider New Orleans' position within the state of Louisiana and Gulf South region.


Late update:

Let me cut to the chase.

When I was thinking about these maps, and often when I consider the resources required to justly and equitably rebuild this city and make it sustainable over the medium long term, I have an internal debate about the extent that federal intervention will be required.

Not just in terms of money allocated, but in terms of direct imposition of policy on states where ultraconservative state leaders further isolate poor communities from critical resources in the name of false fiscal responsibility. Sort of like Louisiana right now...

I'd like to open that up to discussion.

Is the idea of federal receivership of Orleans Parish the most disgusting thing you've ever heard? Is it a necessary evil?

"no major policy decisions"

From Transom:

“At times the city feels a bit paralyzed and daunted. You may feel that way too, looking at us,”she said, going onto to say that that the city’s master plan, which was unveiled online in draft form online today, would be “one of the guides to help us form policy” moving forward.

Aside from the master plan, Reed said, “no major policy decisions… would be coming out in the next year.”

And that, she said, “is because of the (coming in 2010) change in administration.”

Deputy Director for Housing Policy Victoria Reed also assured housing wonks in the crowd that the city had funding from a foundation to do a study of housing needs in the next year. “So we will know what the needs are and where we should be focusing development,” she said.

Four years after the storm is definitely the appropriate time to possibly start a study on what our affordable housing needs might be.

We Must Pass Obama's Budget

I supported Barack Obama not just because I thought he could win an election, but because I actually wanted to see his policies and programs put in place. He said what those policies were on the campaign trail and now he's trying to implement them as President. He's keeping his word.

The budget he proposes is extremely ambitious. It sets up the country to finally deliver on some really important things, namely alternative energy and comprehensive healthcare reform.

Green jobs and healthcare coverage that costs us less green.

We need these things, we want these things, we deserve these things. Short term and long term.

But it's not just up to him. This is democracy. It's also up to us.


Right now, right-wing naysayers (who can point to no viable alternative plan) are putting pressure on moderate Democrats to water down the budget bill by stripping it of its most important and prudent provisions.

And we're on the front lines here in Louisiana.

The President needs the support of Representative Charlie Melancon and Senator Mary Landrieu, but both of them are waffling.

We need to put pressure on our elected officials to support the Obama budget.

Republican activists are very good about writing letters and making phone calls. I think that sometimes we don't think that these things don't make a difference. In reality, they do.

It takes very little time to make a phone call.


Rep. Charlie Melancon:

Washington, DC Office 404 Cannon House Office Bldg Washington, DC 20515-1807 Phone: (202) 225-4031 Fax: (202) 226-3944
Houma 423 Lafayette St, Ste. 107 Houma, LA 70360 Phone: 985.876.3033 Fax: 985.872.4449	Gonzales 1201 S. Purpera Ave. Ste. 601 Gonzales, LA 70737 Phone: 225.621.8490 Fax: 225.621.8493
Chalmette 8201 W. Judge Perez Dr. Chalmette, LA 70043 Phone: 504.271.1707 Fax: 504.271.1756	New Iberia 124 East Main Street Suite 100 New Iberia, LA 70560 Phone: 337.367.8231 Fax: 337.369.7084

And since he claims to be a closeted Democrat, let's also add Rep. Cao to the list:

Washington Office 2113 Rayburn HOB Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-6636 Fax: (202) 225-1988

.

New Orleans Office 4640 So. Carrollton Ave. Suite 120 New Orleans, LA 70119 Phone: (504) 483-2325 Fax: (504) 483-7944

Sen. Mary Landrieu:

	Washington, DC 328 Hart Senate Building United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Voice: (202)224-5824 Fax:(202) 224-9735 Email Senator Landrieu
New Orleans Hale Boggs Federal Building 500 Poydras Street Room 1005 New Orleans, LA 70130 Voice: (504) 589-2427 Fax:(504) 589-4023		Baton Rouge Room 326, Federal Building 707 Florida Street Baton Rouge, LA 70801 Voice: (225) 389-0395 Fax:(225) 389-0660
Shreveport U.S. Courthouse 300 Fannin Street Room 2240 Shreveport, LA 71101 Voice: (318) 676-3085 Fax:(318) 676-3100		Lake Charles Hibernia Tower One Lakeshore Drive Suite 1260 Lake Charles, LA 70629 Voice: (337) 436-6650 Fax:(337) 439-3762

Just take a moment. Three phone calls a day until this budget is passed.

From the inbox:

NEWS ADVISORY


WHAT: Metro Area Community Meeting on Healthcare


Hear from healthcare professionals, neighborhood organizations, housing experts, social justice advocates and urban planning specialists.

See how the residents of Lower Mid City have struggled to restore their neighborhood after the levee failures and floods of Katrina.

See a Video documentary on Charity Hospital featuring an interview with a former Charity Emergency Room Physician.



WHERE: Holy Angels Convent Chapel

3500 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans



WHEN: 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM CDT, Saturday, March 21, 2009



WHY:

Despite the fact that there has been no public input, no public hearings and no transparency of the process, LSU and Gov. Jindal are barreling ahead with a fiscally irresponsible, unsustainable proposal to destroy a recovering historic neighborhood to build an unsustainable medical center that will cost hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars and take at least four years more to complete than renewing, restoring and reopening Charity Hospital consistent with the RMJM/Hillier feasibility study. At the same time, the state is facing a multi-billion dollar deficit and our governor is proposing hundreds of millions in cuts to critical healthcare services.


We can have economic development and opportunities for everyone AND reopen the Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital.

A medical district for the metro area can best be built by renewing, restoring and reopening Charity Hospital.

The crisis of delivering health care to the physically ailing and mentally ill can best be addressed by renewing, restoring and reopening Charity Hospital.

The Lower Mid City Neighborhood can best be saved by renewing, restoring and reopening Charity Hospital.


Sponsors include:

United Teachers of New Orleans, Louisiana ACORN, Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, Fabourg Marigny Improvement Association, C3/Hands Off Iberville, New Orleans Pax-Christi, the Louisiana Justice Institute, the Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital…

Save New Orleans Adolescent Hospital

WWL:

Cecile Tebo is the first to admit that vast improvements have been made to the mental health system in New Orleans in the last year.

But a recent call by the state to shut down the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, or NOAH, and merge its services with Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Hammond is not one of them.

"The closure of NOAH is one huge dangerous step back," she said.

Tebo is with the New Orleans Police Crisis Unit. She said they receive more than 200 mental health calls a month, and she picks up about 250 adults regularly because of their severe mental illness. NOAH is often where she takes them.

"They have to have some place they can go for stabilization," Tebo said. "If not, it can become a very dangerous situation to others and to that individual and that's what scares me the most."

"The argument that closing one facility and merging it with Hammond is going to make New Orleans less safe is something I just flat disagree with," said Alan Levine, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary.

Levine is tasked with making cuts within DHH to meet severe state budget reductions. He tackled questions and concerns during a forum with mental health advocates Wednesday night in Jefferson Parish.

"Does he realize how much it costs for us not to treat people? The number of people who would be homeless in New Orleans, as opposed to in a hospital in New Orleans," asked Sylvia Pearson, Executive Director of The Extra Mile, Southeast Louisiana, Inc.

"Looking at cuts to community-based services on top of that puts people's lives and their families in real jeopardy," she said.

Governor Jindal and Alan Levine are being absolutely reckless with the lives of people from Orleans Parish. It's bad health policy and it's bad fiscal policy.

It is unforgivable.

We can't stand for it.

ACORN and SEIU are holding a press conference outside of NOAH (210 State) at 2pm, to chide the governor and also to pressure Senator Landrieu to support the Obama budget. Two very worthy causes if you ask me.

Gill DEMOLISHES LSU

He's just not going to stand for it anymore either.

Kudos to James Gill:

LSU is secretive, mean-spirited and focused only on the aggrandizement of the institution.

Wow.

The public will view LSU's pronouncements with the gravest suspicion from now on. LSU claimed it could save googobs of money by building adjacent to a new VA hospital, and sharing various services. Every developer seems to try the old "synergy" spiel these days, but this time it was more or less a con.

LSU was still bragging about all the money to be saved when architectural plans were released in January, showing two separate and independent buildings. In any case, the VA hospital is due to open in 2012, and cannot be designed to share anything with what is currently no more than a figment of LSU's imagination.

Even before LSU admitted as much a few days ago, it was well aware that its high-handed approach was not winning any hearts. But that was just too bad. "We are frankly sick and tired of people trying to define us as secretive, mean-spirited and focused only on the aggrandizement of the institution. We're simply not going to stand for it any more, " spokesman Charles Zewe said.

Well, what are you going to do about it, Charlie?

Charlie's going to continue to get upset. But he's going to continue to be on the wrong side of the issue and the wrong side of history. Big urban renewal projects that destroy historic neighborhoods in favor of huge parking lot-centric complexes are rarely judged as successes.

TARP Bonus Recipient Punishment Bill in Da House!!!

I've had mixed feelings about the whole AIG bonus controversy that's been dominating the news this week. Of course it's pretty insulting that everyone at the Financial Products division is getting big bonuses after basically bringing down the whole economy by themselves. And I'm pretty sure some of those cats should be going to prison for fraud.

But the media feeding frenzy seems awfully contrived and the Congressional reaction has been transparently contrived. It all seems like they all watched the Jon Stewart drubbing of Jim Cramer and felt like they just had to find something to get really angry about. This AIG stuff is outrageous but no more outrageous than any of the other nasty stuff we've been hearing for months and months about the larger Wall Street environment or some of the more specific things about private planes and refurbished offices, etc.

However, the Congressional Democrats felt the rage and proposed a plan to do something about it - to recoup the bonus money back for the taxpayers by taxing the hell out of the assholes that got paid to destroy the economy. And it passed the House of Representatives just now by an overwhelming margin.

Here's how YOUR Louisiana Representatives voted:


01 Steve Scalise: NAY
02 Joe Cao: YEA
03 Melancon: YEA
04 Fleming: YEA
05 Alexander: YEA
06 Cassidy: YEA
07 Boustany: NO VOTE

An Hour With C. Ray Nagin

If you're parsing today's interview and find a statement to be particularly silly, dishonest, or interesting please flag it in the comments below with either a time or some transcription.




And part II is available within the player.

Tourney Time!

I love college hoops!

Here's my Sweet Sixteen:

Louisville, Wake Forest, West Virginia, Michigan St., UConn, Purdue, Missouri, Maryland

Pitt, Portland St., Villanova, Duke, UNC, Gonzaga, Temple, Oklahoma

Elite Eight:

Louisville, Michigan St., Purdue, Missouri

Pitt, Villanova, UNC, Oklahoma

Final Four:

Louisville, Pitt, Missouri, UNC

Championship:

Louisville over Pitt in a classic.

Most compelling scenarios that kept me up last night:

Memphis v. Missouri
Nova v. Pitt
Gonzaga v. UNC
Wake Forest v. Louisville
West Virginia v. Kansas

Louisville has the easiest draw in the dance. In fact, I think that whole side of the bracket, West and Midwest, is way way softer than the other side. In the West, I like Missouri but I have them winning by default almost because I don't think UCONN is on their game right now. Between those two regions, I'm really only intrigued by Wake Forest, Louisville, and Missouri, but Wake gets a horrible draw having to play Pitino's squad in the Sweet Sixteen. On the other side of the bracket, I think UNC, Gonzaga, Nova, Duke, Pitt are all Final Four caliber teams.

The problem I have filling these brackets out is conference bias. I love the Big East and learned Mid-Major appreciation by watching a ton of A-10 hoops back in Phily. I've long been a Temple fan and always end up putting them through to the Sweet Sixteen regardless of how soft their squad is. (Though this year they are a legitimate threat because Dionte Christmas can actually light up the scoreboard, and Temple never has anybody that can score individually.) I have very little respect for Big Ten basketball, I think it's the sloppiest conference out of all the majors in the country. But this happened to me a few years ago in college where I was watching like 4 or 5 games a week and thought I really knew what was up. I was convinced that the Big Ten was garbage and the Big East was phenomenal but Michigan State, which I probably didn't even pick into the Sweet Sixteen ended up ruining my dreams by the end of the first weekend of play.

Conference play is weird like that. Refs, which stay in-conference, can really set the tone of the league and make good teams look bad and bad teams look good. The Big Ten is ugly but sometimes when those teams get out of conference they have this edge because they've learned to fight for rebounds and garbage points.

So that calculus gets in my head and then I end up trying to balance and overcompensate and and and... in the end I just end up using weird personal tie-breakers to determine my picks if I don't have a clear sense because I've watched a team.

Teams get extra points when:

They're from Philly or have players that played public league ball.

They have players with really sweet nicknames or really sweet hyphenated African last names that announcers struggle to pronounce.

They have really badass young coaches that show their emotions via enthusiasm rather than anger. (So Bruce Pearl of Tennessee over some jerkoff like Bob Huggins of West Virginia.)

Great point guards that know how to distribute the basketball.

Teams that run the full court press. (See Missouri)

Teams get deductions when:

Their coach has slicked back hair a la Rick Pitino, Gordon Gekko, Pat Riley, or 90's era Billy Donovan. (I know I have Louisville going all the way, but that's because they're that good. They win in spite of Pitino hair.)

They're from Utah

They rely on an annoying white guard that either shave their head or thank God excessively. (Exhibits A and B, Drew Neitzel from Mich. State a few years ago and J.J. Reddick from Duke a few years ago. This year I'll be rooting against Arizona and Syracuse under this rule.)

Also, have you seen Barack Obama's bracket? Weak!!!!! The only time all four 1-seeds made it to the Final Four was last year. The guy calls almost no upsets. I predict that my bracket does better than Barack Obama's. This is the lowest moment of his Presidency.

Find Nearest Wall

And bang your head against it.

Confirmation?****

Sure City Hall has finally acknowledged a federal probe into the E-maelstrom but can anyone confirm the fresh rumor that the MOT's Anthony Jones has been asked to clean out his desk?

--

*Confirmed: Jones suspended 120 days, not fired.

**The Times-Picayune makes it officially official. 120 days without pay.

***WDSU adds to the intrigue. Travers says "some City Hall employees have been actively shopping for defense attorneys." That would be excluding Veronica White, who has already retained the services of Ralph Capitelli.

****WWLTV says the decision to suspend Jones came from interim CTO M. Harrison Boyd.

Very interesting, this last bit.

Good Start Byron Clay

I've generally been very critical of the modern Southern Christian Leadership Council at WCBF.

This is something, however, that I can enthusiastically support. Good stuff from their new interim Prezzy, Byron Clay.

Reconsidering Public Education in New Orleans

It's been many many months since I've talked about the state of public schools, which had previously been one of my more consistent beats.

I was pretty demoralized by the way the School Facilities Master Plan went down and the results of the Orleans Parish School Board elections only compounded my misery.

I've been trying to rethink how to approach the issue of public education given that some of the things I had been trying to fight against or force compromise on have become established reality.

One of the things I'd been emphasizing was the disorganized and reckless charterization and privatization. I was worried that the RSD had no real game plan for the eventual restoration of local control over schools. The implications of having such a balkanized administrative model over the short term were alarming; the potential for waste is important enough, but inattentiveness to general admission traditional public schools was scariest.

Although this is anecdotal based off of different things I've heard and read, I have noticed that, lately, there does appear to be increased concern in regard to poor performance at RSD schools. But one thing I think is disingenuous about the RSD is that poor performing traditional schools are almost set up to fail. Poor test scores provide the impetus to bring in charter operators to take over. This is happening at Frederick Douglass High School, for instance. Though the building was in sound condition, it had been slated for closure as recently as this fall; the award winning writing program, Students at the Center, was made unwelcome. In this kind of environment, how can a successful program be implemented? It can't.

But low and behold, Frederick Douglass High School has been saved because a charter operator, KIPP, is now interested in the facility.

Now you may find this kind of approach - helping schools into academic bankruptcy via systemic confusion or neglect - to be pretty disingenuous. And so do I.

Still, Paul Vallas has pretty successfully implemented what he set out to implement - the largest experiment in charterization in the nation's history. Whether that translates into higher achievement for students is another matter entirely. So is whether or not this model is economically or physically sustainable in the medium or long term, given that Mr. Vallas has made me look smart for predicting that he'd stretch his own budget to the max by spending one time revenue on recurring costs.

I advocated for a model resembling something closer to pilot schools in Boston, which allow for the academic exploration and experimentation that was the impetus for progressive embrace of the charter concept in the first place but without the same risks associated with unadulterated private charter boards. The pilot model allows for successes in one school to be replicated in others. Charters organizations, on the other hand, become like mini corporations, and successes are too easily treated as trade secrets. It's the difference between a true public education system and a for-profit education industry.

On the national level, people that have been alarmed by the ramrod approach of some charter proponents do not necessarily have an ally in the Obama administration, depending on whether early stances on issues like merit pay for teachers (which sounds better in theory than it might be in practice) foreshadow other policies.

Given the 'success' of Vallas' charterization plan and the larger momentum of the privatization movement on the national level, local advocates of true public education need to think through where they're at on certain issues and reorient in order to make the best of the new calculus.

One thing I'd like to see is a real shake up at UTNO. I don't know if that means management changes there, since I'm not particularly familiar with who's in charge. But it does mean that there needs to be a focus on organizing the younger TeachNola and TFA teachers. Things like merit pay appear to be on their way. UTNO would be wise to be ready to make sure that the measures used to determine achievement are fair to teachers. Beyond that, there needs to be a plan that grants good teachers legitimate stable job security without entrenching bad teachers. Given that UTNO's relevance has cratered, now is as good a time as any to reorient, as painful as it might be to do so.

On the issue of charters, I think at this point it's hard to just dig in and fight against the charters. It's not that it's an unstoppable freight train, it's that the train has already passed our station. What I think we need to do moving forward is force the RSD, OPSB, and the various charter operators to come up with a road map to local administration where charters cede some degree of control to a centralized body responsible for forceful oversight. In other words, whereas I'd been advocating that we move from traditional public schools directly to something resembling pilot schools, perhaps it's useful to think of the current balkanized charter landscape as the middle step in between the overly centralized OPSB of the past and a pragmatic pilot model that restores the voters of Orleans Parish to their rightful role as overseers of their own schools.

To that end, I found some of what was in this article to be extremely heartening given my low opinion of the new OPSB and the sober reconsideration I've been giving to some of these issues.

Later this week, several groups, including the Committee for a Better New Orleans/Metropolitan Area Committee, the Children's Defense Fund and the Urban League, are expected to announce a new coalition that will explore the future of public education in the city, including the question of long-term governance.

"Everything related to public education will be put on the table, " said Keith Twitchell, president of CBNO/MAC. He declined to release more details until the formal announcement, which is expected Thursday.

--

School Board President Woody Koppel said the board does not intend to "sit idly by" and wait for someone else to determine its fate.

"I believe we need an opportunity, as a community, to openly govern our schools, " he said. "I think that people want to have schools that are run by people who live near them."

It's going to be messy, but hopefully hitting rock bottom this past fall will force us to figure out where the path upward is.

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I've also been sitting on some really dynamite stuff in regard to how the federal stimulus package touches New Orleans schools but it's all still raw information. I've been really busy but hopefully by next week I'll have something to publish for everyone about that.

Abso-lutely

Signs the Mayor might be psychopath.

Nagin: "It's out of my hands"

On that point, we can agree.

Unfortunately, WDSU does not let us embed videos. However, you can go check out what he had to say about the e-maelstrom if you click here. He seems to be in pretty good spirits about it. He's went for the friendly denial route instead of the agitated badgering of the media routine, which was a wise choice in my opinion.

I'm looking in your eyes right now Robyn

Is the Rush Radio morning team Castor and Wolensky trying to incite a news feud?




Travers v. Eyebrows?

Will Lee Zurik punch Travers Mackel in the face to reassert his dominance? I think he should.

Especially since Travers didn't break shit. He just read some stupid blog.


And brickbats (sorry Gambit) for those dumbass radio hosts. You're going to get stuck if you stick your nose any further up in there.

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WRNO had been running this really excruciating promo for their morning show where Robyn tees off on Michael Phelps smoking pot that really makes my blood curdle. Something about her voice combined with her argument It's one of those things. Forever more, I'll possess an irrational hatred for her because of that one promo. I can never, ever, under any circumstances tune into their show - no matter who's ass they're smooching. Unless it's mine. I'm cheap that way.

BOSS FUMO GOES DOWN

I've occasionally mentioned Former State Senator Vincent Fumo here before, who represented me for most of my Philadelphia life. He was as corrupt as they come, a classic machine boss.

He literally lived in this castle on a hill in the middle of his dense urban district.


Today, he was found guilty of all 137 counts against him. Bail has been set at a full $2 million.

His ass is going to jail!

I can't even begin to describe the significance of this moment.

Vince Fumo was my nemesis. I can't tell you how many rants I went on to my dad or to my friends around the lunch table at school.

And now he's kaput.

Vince loved to pick up the tab at fancy restaurants with a credit card he nicknamed 'OPM,' or 'Other people's money,' which he created for himself using a sham nonprofit organization. He borrowed yachts that were property of a museum. He used his legislative aides as personal gophers and bagmen. He alienated everyone in his family. Anyone wanting anything had to kiss the man's ring. Perhaps most emblematic was the time he ordered a hit on his neighbor's dog.

Good luck in the big house Vince!

Bad Cao

Lame!!!!

Newt Gingrich loves courting Louisiana pols.

E-maelstrom

Okay guys, that's the name of this scandal, at least as WCBF is concerned. I need something to tag these posts with and I just can't wait around anymore for the proper democratic process to provide a better idea. It's all happening too fast. So there you have it: E-maelstrom.

I think that's pretty good. It describes the email controversy AND the larger scandal-sucking vortex that the email controversy seems to be precipitating, which is what I'll be discussing at length in this post.

Fair?

Fair.

Many of us have been on the edge of their seats as confirmed and rumored reports of Federal raids and computer seizures have proliferated between City Hall whisperers and blogging interneters.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate known fact from unconfirmed report and reasonable speculation from straw grasp.

I won't promise to do that here but I will attempt to express a little bit of what I know, what I want to know, and what I expect to know.

If you've been reading the blogs this week, there's a certain difference between what has been discussed online and what has been good enough to print in the mainstream press. WWL, WDSU, the Times-Picayune, and the like aren't totally missing the boat. I think they're wise to be cautious. Certainly the Mayor's people are anxious to find bad reporting on which they can capitalize to obfuscate what's really going on.

But us web operators can help make up for whatever analytical boldness might be lacking in the mainstream press during these early public stages of what is clearly a very complicated scandal.

Mr. Clancy DuBos is straddling those two worlds quite nicely and has been a great read lately, particularly his coverage and analysis of Judge Ledet's court and the legal angle of the Council email leak element of this. In fact, his superb post today is the impetus behind my post now.

One thing we're all seeming to be in agreement about is that this is only partially about the 'unusual' leak of City Council's emails to Attorney Tracie Washington and the Louisiana Justice Institute.

Briefly for the uninitiated, Tracie Washington went around City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields and the normal protocol for a public records request by submitting a request for three years worth of Council's emails through Sanitation Director Veronica White. This occurred in early December, just hours after WWL's Lee Zurik submitted a request through the City Attorney for a year's worth of emails and calendar appointments from the Mayor. That request remains unfulfilled after the Mayor's office claimed that the emails had been lost or inadvertently deleted, though it is important to point out that city policy mandates that emails are backed up on a remote server every three months.

This was also amidst a political storm around Veronica White, who was clashing with Council over poorly kept records and her department's 2009 budget.

The Nagin administration and those associated with Washington's Louisiana Justice Institute have been couching the release of Council's emails as unorthodox and unusual but totally above board. Beyond that, they've described the controversy around the release of the emails as exposing the hypocrisy of Council's repeated calls for transparency from the Mayor's office.

In truth, there is no love lost between LJI and the Mayor's office. Washington has habitually expressed her distaste for Mr. Nagin and his destructive policies. But on this matter, the early noise in the press was pretty similar.

So why is it such a big deal that Council's emails were released anyway?

Well, if the records request had been fulfilled following proper procedures, nothing would have been wrong with it. We all have a right to see what our public officials have been doing with their time. However, because the disclosure of records was done without the knowledge of Council or Council's attorney, there could be any number of things released to the public that would have otherwise been redacted, and for good reason.

Email correspondence with federal law enforcement, email correspondence about federal investigations, email correspondence with whistle-blowers should be protected from public release because of the possibility of criminal obstruction of justice.

And as Clancy points out, there was likely correspondence between Council and Council attorney's about a lawsuit AGAINST the Mayor and City Attorney:

Why did Moses-Fields meet with Hatfield and Boyd to discuss how to protect privileged information? In fact, why did Moses-Fields get involved at this or any other point in a request for City Council records — particularly when she knew full well that the council has its own independent legal counsel? Moreover, she knew at the time that the reason the council hired its own lawyers is because it was considering litigation against Moses-Fields and her client, the mayor. Moses-Fields obviously knew or should have known that some of the council emails would contain attorney-client communications, which are privileged, and she also knew damn well that she had no right — and no authority — whatsoever to review or even to see those privileged communications, particularly when she is legally adverse to the parties and the attorneys who are engaged in those communications.

So there may be criminal activity involving the release of the emails at a number of contact points. Certainly a bigger issue would be that the Mayor's Office of Technology has direct 24/7 access to Council's email files. This seems like a huge breach of basic municipal separation of power and opens a lot of troubling doors. I can confirm from knowledgeable sources that many members of Council and Council staff have operated as though their emails were tapped and being read by the Mayor's people for some time. I can't accurately say if that means three months, six months, or twelve months but my best guess is that this has been going on for longer than the time line of the e-maelstrom scandal.

Yet, one wonders whether Councilors were as careful with their words one would think they'd be knowing that their correspondence was being read - given the excitement one can infer on LJI's end about the bounty of information that could be in those emails related to the demolition of public housing, the LSU/VA site selection process, or whatever other nefarious words or dirty deeds could have conceivably been discussed via email.

Nevertheless, it would appear to me that even in isolation of some of the other issues I'll get to in this post, the release of Council's emails by the Office of Technology and the Sanitation Director represents more than a procedural anomaly. Criminal behavior seems a very likely possibility.

Let's take a look at some of the players on the email leak side of things and see where that takes us in terms of the larger scandals to which we've been alluding...


1. City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields

Clancy's analysis seems pretty clear:

The law is crystal clear on this: attorneys who come into possession of adverse parties’ documents or communications that may be privileged have an ethical duty to notify the attorneys for those parties immediately — and to avoid opening, reviewing or otherwise violating the privileges that attach to those documents or communications. So, why exactly did Moses-Fields admit to an intent to review (and perhaps actually review) emails that she absolutely knew contained privileged information and/or communications between an adverse party (the council) and that party’s attorneys? [snip]

Why did it take Moses-Fields, by her own admission, two weeks to notify the council’s attorneys that a public records request had been filed for documents that probably contained privileged communications between the council and its attorneys? What was she thinking? Or better yet, what was she reading?

Beyond that, Moses-Fields has already given a sworn deposition on the matter that is extremely vague but still exposes certain vulnerabilities depending on how facts play out. Either way, it is probably reasonable to speculate that Penya Moses-Fields could find herself in much hotter water than she's been in to date.


2. Louisiana Justice Institute Attorney Tracie Washington

City Council's own attorney Steven Lane has seemingly, on a few different occasions, largely exonerated Ms. Washington in terms of her role in acquiring the emails from Sanitation Director White. However, Washington has indicated in interviews that she's proliferated some of the emails to unknown people or groups that have asked for them. I'm not a lawyer but it would appear to me that she exposes herself to a certain degree depending on the parties to whom she passed on the emails and depending on whether she bares any legal responsibility for the content in the emails, whether she's read them or not.

The other issue for LJI involves optical perception. The narrative of events also lends to questions related to Washington's awareness of White's pull in the Mayor's Office of Technology. Washington's past willingness to get involved in Bill Jefferson's legal defense and other similar efforts has seemed to undermine her credibility on this issue as an impartial seeker of public records, even amongst some regular allies. On the other hand, Jay Arena has started a petition on her behalf that has seen low traffic but has yielded some high impact signatories, such as former Mayor Marc Morial and Color of Change's James Rucker.

(I don't think anybody is disputing Washington or anyone else's right to see Council's emails but the petition text seems to consider some of these legal issues to be totally without merit or implicitly directed at Washington herself, which makes no sense given that Council's attorney Steven Lane has repeatedly reiterated the legitimacy of Washington's request and has not alleged wrongdoing on her part that I'm aware of. In short, and as someone that has supported a lot of Washington's work around social justice issues and who has tried to understand the argument coming from the LJI side, I think that the communications strategy at work here is absolutely ludicrous given the legal nuance and the emerging federal criminal investigation. I also, however, would like the legitimate public information within Council emails pertaining to actual important stuff - like the LSU/VA site selection process - to be released as soon as possible.)


3. Sanitation Director Veronica White

White has drawn the brunt of the legal activity related to this case so far, as it has been confirmed that federal agents have seized her computers. White has retained the services of a high profile criminal defense attorney and the Nagin administration has not been as publicly protective of her as they usually are for employees that have come under fire in the past, including White herself on a number of previous occasions.

Given the tenuous political situation in which she found herself back in early December, many are suspicious that she maliciously circumvented municipal protocol and potentially broke the law in order to prematurely leak these emails as a result of her professional troubles with Council and personal troubles with Councilwoman Stacy Head in particular.

A couple of related unanswered questions:

(a) Did White communicate to Washington that she would be willing and able to expedite a public records request pertaining to Council's emails and how?

(b) Did White see any email content? [Especially important given that much of the most recent correspondence included was likely to pertain to her own performance as Sanitation Director]

(d) Who else was aware of the request and when? [Did White collude with other administration officials in the Mayor's Office of Technology or elsewhere in the administration to expedite the records request or view the data herself?]

Another issue for White, is an emerging investigation into a bodyguard assigned to her who has ended up aiding a recall movement against White's enemy Councilwoman Stacy Head. From my view, this is tangential. It's not totally irrelevant but doesn't necessarily appear to have much bearing on some of the other elements under consideration.


4. Chief Administrative Officer Dr. Brenda Hatfield


Dr. Hatfield essentially acts as the Mayor's Chief of Staff and is heavily involved in every function of the executive branch. She was present at many of the meetings about the Council email release and will likely have to corroborate the testimony already provided by Moses-Fields and otherwise disclose what she knew and when. The Mayor has delegated the responsibility of investigating the matter and recommending disciplinary action in this matter to Hatfield but it isn't entirely clear that Hatfield herself might be deserving of reprimand for, at the very least, being totally unaware of what was occurring between White and the Mayor's Office of Technology over a two month period.

She's certainly going to be asked what she knew and when she knew it. The known details of her involvement remain sketchy at best.


5. Interim Chief Technology Officer M. Harrison Boyd

In the deposition(pdf) given under oath by Penya Moses-Fields, it was on February 28th that someone from the Mayor's Office of Technology finally came forward to disclose that Council's emails had already been placed on CDs and released to Tracie Washington.

8. On February 28, 2009, the Director of the Mayor's Office of Technology informed the City Attorney's Office that at some point in time prior to February 28, 2009, he had provided Veronica White with one set of discs containing emails of the City Council.

It has been assumed that this is a reference to M. Harrison Boyd and this has been repeated in accounts in the mainstream press. I'd like to know if in fact anyone has explicitly confirmed that it was Boyd who produced the emails on discs to White.

The reason I'm skeptical is that it seems extremely counter-intuitive that Boyd, a recent hire from out of state, would knowingly take part in such blatantly legally ambiguous activity involving the emails of a separate branch of government.

Assuming that he was in fact responsible for obtaining Council's emails from the server, putting them on a disc, and handing that disc to White, well then he's going to be in some serious hot water. Some questions related to this scenario:

(a) Why weren't White's request for records on behalf of Washington greeted with skepticism?
(b) Were their orders to produce the emails from elsewhere in the administration?

However, I wonder whether the deposition refers to someone else entirely from the MOT, or if Boyd was holding himself accountable for the actions of another staffer within his department.

And that brings us to...


6. Former Chief Technology Officer and current Management Information Services Enterprise Director Anthony Jones

Now we're cutting closer to the heart of the matter.

It is believed, though it has not been confirmed by the mainstream press, that Jones' computers have also been seized by federal agents. Now, this could be because Jones was in fact responsible for the release of Council's emails, not Boyd as implied by the deposition of City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields. But it likely has a lot more to do with Jones' illegal activities during his time as CTO from 2007-2008. Both the Inspector General and a separate auditor contracted by the city have issued reports highly critical of Jones' conduct around the award of contracts related to the city's crime camera program.

From the Times-Picayune's David Hammer:

Last week, when the city's independent inspector general alleged years of questionable contracting and $4 million in overpayments for an often-inoperable network of crime cameras, Mayor Ray Nagin's administration released its own audit of the camera program. It focused almost entirely on the last two years of the project, when Jones was interim chief technology officer.

The most troubling findings by PFM Group of Philadelphia were that Jones filed false invoices to hide the camera project's costs, and accepted plane tickets to a conference in Colorado from a contractor that earned millions on the camera project in a no-bid arrangement. The report called those actions, which Jones denies, "potential misconduct and unlawful activity" and recommended that the city inform law enforcement.

Jones was demoted in August, mainly because he had falsely claimed to have a college degree. He also overstated the number of college credits he earned on at least one job application.

Jones is almost certainly going to be charged with several crimes, that is, unless he agrees to testify against others. What others?

That the Mayor's audit focused only on Jones' administration of the MOT and crime camera program is indeed quite telling.


7. Mark Kurt, Former Chief Technology Officer
8. Greg Meffert, Former Chief Technology Officer

Greg Meffert was a huge donor to both of Ray Nagin's mayoral campaigns and served as CTO and as something of a Deputy Mayor from 2002-2006. Kurt was a private sector associate of Meffert, was brought in by Meffert to serve in the MOT, and was subsequently named as Meffert's successor. The two gentleman, along with other private sector associates, are involved in a tangled web of insider contracting involving all aspects of the city's push to modernize technology and information systems under Ray Nagin. Blogger Ashe Dambala from American Zombie has cultivated a number of knowledgeable sources and has systematically broken down the graft starting in the summer of 2006 with the publication of a story detailing some of the contract trading and the existence of a corporate yacht owned by Meffert associates and enjoyed by the Mayor himself. He stayed on the issue through 2007 as the crime camera program was expanded and his breakdown of the IG's recent report helps illuminate the systemic corruption in the Mayor's Office of Technology.

Some areas in which contracts were handed out between associates of Meffert and Kurt involve the design and maintenance of several city websites - including the tax assessor's database and cityofno.com; the design, implementation, and maintenance of the city's short-lived wifi service; the design, implementation, and maintenance of the city's maligned 311 call system; installing and maintaining the crime camera system; maintaining city email servers across all departments including City Council; and much more.

The city contracts, which bilked the city out of tens millions of dollars or much more, provided affiliated individuals and corporations a spring board to national prominence and untold wealth.

Scariest is what we might find once investigations begin to reveal the lengths to which cronies went, not just to conceal their crimes, but first and especially to maintain the power necessary to continue to wring the city of every last penny though various no-bid and bid-rigged contracts. What we do find, we'll find first on American Zombie, so make sure to bookmark him.


9. The Honorable C. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans


Ray Nagin and Greg Meffert are neighbors on Park Island, an exclusive and obscure cul-de-sac off of City Park.


View Larger Map

Meffert and various associates from the city's fledgling IT community bankrolled Nagin's campaign in 2002 and his reelection in 2006 with tens of thousands of dollars in contributions.

The chief target of the federal investigation must ultimately Mr. Nagin. It has been reported on AZ but unconfirmed by the mainstream press that the Mayor's computers have also been seized by federal agents.

The ultimate legitimacy of all of these investigations and possible seizures will rest on whether or not US Attorney Jim Letten is able to gather enough evidence of collusion/conspiracy between the Mayor, Meffert, and Meffert's associates to file charges that stick. Thus, all the interest in the Mayor's email archives.

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What is increasingly clear is that there is else behind the swift action by federal investigators in regard to the release of Council emails, something else that has is only tangentially related to this one procedural miscue by the administration.

(Though it does seem like there may be criminal activity involved with it specifically, possibly on a number of levels.)

Rather - and I this most certainly isn't the first time I, Clancy, Oyster, or Zombie have made this point - the council email release controversy is a convenient pretext to fast track an ongoing and incredibly grave longer-term investigation into the overall politicization and corruption of the Mayor's Office of Technology.

Perhaps more consequential in the most immediate short term is what this e-maelstrom means in terms of the operation of municipal government. Where there was once a high-tension environment toxic to coalition building, now it is probable that there is only totally demoralized gridlock. Even now, though the e-maelstrom has only begun to escalate, it is simply impossible to imagine Council being able to do anything in concert with the Mayor's office.