Meeting on LSU complex tonight

If you haven't heard, this is the word...

6:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Grace Episcopal Church

3700 Canal St.

More info here.

Does the Left care about progressive reform in the South?

I flagged a number of blog posts from two weeks ago about Texas Governor Rick Perry's secessionist rhetoric. If you're not familiar or not quite remembering, Perry spoke to one of those tea party things in Texas:

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Perry is facing a tough reelection road. Not only might Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson challenge him in the GOP primary, but some pretty strong Democrats (Tom Shieffer maybe?) could be waiting in the wings in the general. As a result, many viewed his foray into the world of organized tea bagging as a pretty predictable pandering to the ultra conservative base that he'll need to beat Hutchinson in a possible primary.

But by using the language of secession, Perry made national headlines. Maybe Perry was just being flip but politicians in former Confederate states that raise the specter of dissolution of the union should probably know to expect that comments like those he delivered are going to cause a commotion. That's not even addressing what it means when that rhetoric is used because the nation's first African American President wants to increase the marginal tax rate on the top 1 or 2 percent of income earners back to the rate it was under Reagan. Suffice it to say, the optics are horrendous if one cares about what anyone outside of the base of the Texas GOP thinks about you.

Obviously, I was pretty disturbed by Perry's rhetoric and other instances where professional conservatives have seemingly embraced the language of insurrection.

But I was also not particularly pleased with the reaction to Perry's comments by some of the more respectable progressive bloggers out there.

For instance, Matthew Yglesias:

Honestly, though, I agree with Mike Tomasky that if Texas wants to leave the union we should probably just let them go and I’d say the same for other southern states that feel oppressed by our efforts to use federal tax money to help them take care of their unemployed citizens. Back during the Civil War, the cause of keeping the union together was intertwined with the cause of fighting the great evil of slavery. But assume we just welcome migrants from the Republic of Texas with open arms if they want to flee north, there’d be no comparable problem with letting Texas leave.

A day or so later, he went into a longer policy-based rant about how secession might be handled.

Another favorite, Nate Silver, responded to Perry as follows:

Then he rattled off a series of points about how much better off the Democrats would be without Texas.

I don't think that Nate Silver or Matthew Yglesias actually believe that Texas should secede from the union or that the US would be better off without Texas or any of the other former Confederate states whose Senators and Governors have mounted stunningly politicized opposition to stimulus funding that would help their own states' flagging economies.

Yet, there's something quite unfortunate about their dismissive tone that's indicative of a larger pervasive and insidious national attitude toward the South. The problem is not just that people are too insulated in the culture of the Beltway or the major media centers of New York, LA, and Chicago; it's that for so many on the Left view the South derisively as purely a symbol of extremist conservatism while expressing so very little empathy for the people of the South who actually are suffering from the consequences of this kind of GOP-inspired institutionalized poverty.

For instance, let's take the stimulus bill.

When you really distill down what has happened, you basically had a bunch of ultra-conservative Southern governors and senators screaming bloody murder because the Obama Administration was giving them money that they could use to improve institutions, infrastructure, and services. While conservatives of course would argue that improved institutions, infrastructure, and services represent larger more intrusive government, the reality is that these are the poorest and least developed states in the country with huge populations of impoverished residents and minorities saddled with the most institutionally dysfunctional justice systems in the industrialized world.

When viewed using this lens, the resurgence of the extremist rump of the GOP has absolutely nothing to do with an ideological opposition to government spending, pork, or the national debt.

Instead, it is more indicative of a long-standing ideological refusal by wealthy Southern elites to do anything at all that might address the really messed up dynamics of race and class that are still disproportionately omnipresent throughout the old Confederacy compared to other regions of the country.

The attitude exemplified by Yglesias and Silver reaction to Perry's ridiculous secessionist rhetoric wasn't about bolstering an ongoing meme about how Southern politicians were working against the interests of their own constituents and how to help the residents on the ground that are fighting for reform from within.

Instead, it was about how obstructionist these politicians are and how best to usher their states clean out of the union.

That anything resembling secession would spell doom for the huge population already bearing the disproportionate negative impact of being born in the wrong region of the country didn't seem to cross their minds.

Rather than discussing how the mechanics of secession might work to the Democrats' advantage, I think it would be much more helpful to the majority of people from Texas, the rest of the old Confederacy, and to the nation at-large if progressives instead concentrated on how best to enact policies that will improve conditions in the nation's most at-risk communities and how best to organize for grassroots progressive reform from within.

The whole pervasive good riddance attitude is something that people in the South have become really sensitive to, consciously or not, and it alienates many that otherwise would really benefit from and support progressive public policy.

Update: Hendrik Hertzberg does the same thing starting at 9:00 in.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And more eloquently in this column.

Hornets Stink

Sad effort. They got dominated physically again, only this time at home. The team is obviously not responding to Coach Scott anymore. Totally lame. Denver obviously has a better team. I overestimated the Hornets and underestimated the Nuggets.

Like Old Faithful

1. Disease outbreak strikes
2. Media does lots of stories about disease and the rate of the outbreak.
3. Media wonders "Are We Prepared?!?!?"
4. Issue is politicized.
5. Threat subsides.
6. Celebrities raise money.
7. Outbreak becomes fodder for jokes. (Swine Flu is pretty good but then you remember Foot and Mouth)

This cycle can last as little as 4 months or as long as 18 months.

Bird Flu or SARS? Mad Cow or Foot and Mouth?

Of course none of this is to say that these threats aren't truly costly. Mexico is going through hard times.

But I'm going to start his one with some jokes.

Update: TPM's Daily Digest pretty much captures it.

Save Charity Hospital and Lower Mid-City Indeed!

Big props to the New Orleans Ladder for widgetizing the SaveCharityHospital.com logo. Now I've got one. And you can have one too. If you're cool, that is.

The Confederate States of the GOP

I for one would LOVE to see this poll question tried out elsewhere, particularly in the rest of the South.

Links

Good posts abound.

1. Jeffrey on Blakely

This latest about charitable contributions from ordinary Americans going to pay off Blakely's university salary is beyond the pale. This ordinarily would be a HUGE story but because so much other totally objectionable and offensive stuff is going on right now... Bill Simmons of ESPN coined the term 'the Tyson Zone' to refer to when a personality or situation gets so out of control that literally nothing could happen that would shock or surprise you. New Orleans entered 'the Tyson Zone' right around the time that we learned that White is black and Head is white. Actually, to pin point a very specific event, I would say it was when the city sent out a former attorney to invoke Huey Long's ghost in his argument against Arnie Fielkow's transparency ordinance. That was in December? Who knows? Maybe we've always been in the Tyson Zone.

2. Red on Oliver Thomas and Ray Nagin

This is just really well-written and heartfelt. And totally right.

3. T-P on area politicians views on the rule of law


First of all, I have a hard time forgiving Cao for many of his votes to date, but by coming out for prosecutions of those who broke the law to authorize torture, he has shown himself at least to be honorable and human in a most basic sense. How one calls oneself a patriot, a defender of American values, while supporting unequivocal torture....

Senator Vitter, unsurprisingly, sees nothing wrong with torture. I think he's the worst Senator in America and I can't wait to kick him out of office. To simply tow the Dick Cheney line without at least demonstrating some level of introspection about American values and our supposed moral exceptionality... the man is a stooge.

If there's anything resembling fascism in America today, it's the rump of the GOP standing up enthusiastically in favor of torture. Some of these sickos don't just defend it, they celebrate it.

It makes me want to vomit.


--

P.S. According to several sources, Blakely is still scheduled to be out of here by the end of June.

Vay-Cay!

David Hammer: Attorney claims Nagin, Meffert took 'plenty of other trips' paid for by city vendor

Meanwhile, the attorney for two companies who are suing the city over a controversial crime camera project told The Times-Picayune that he plans to question the mayor about a series of other lavish trips when his deposition resumes. The attorney, Glad Jones, said credit card statements show those trips were also financed by NetMethods, owned by the city vendor, Mark St. Pierre.

NetMethods also paid for a vacation that former Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert, the mayor and their families took to Hawaii in December 2004.

Nagin and Meffert took "plenty of other trips" at NetMethods' expense, said Jones, attorney for plaintiffs Southern Electronics and Active Solutions, though he would not divulge the number of trips or the destinations. The two companies are suing the city and other contractors for what they claim were unfair labor practices in the handling of the city's crime cameras.

"They were destinations that didn't look like places New Orleans would have any business in, " he said.

We might be able to figure some of those out.

1. How about November, 2005?

Link!

Then Mayor Nagin took a trip to Jamaica, a place he called "the first place we are looking to rebuild and strengthen relationships" after Katrina.

2. How about November, 2007?

Link!

Then, Mayor Nagin skipped a critical budget hearing because he was rumored to again be on the beaches of Jamaica. Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett would neither confirm nor deny those charges, which originated when (former?) Nagin confidant and former Republican legislator Gary Forster mentioned it on his radio show.

-

I'd be willing to bet a few bucks that both of those were NetMethods-financed trips.

What others come to mind?

Shep Smith

At least there's someone at Fox trying to yell some sense into these folks.



Turns out Shep is an honorable guy. Good work. Keep it up.

He's been on a roll over there. He's got the attitude of a second semester senior and I like it.

Fishing

I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't pay the taxes you owe on time, but is this really news?

Mid-City is getting cheated

Big master plan meeting tonight for District 4 (Mid-City).

Check out what I mean.

Sometimes They Paid

The other times they paid him to pay.

E-maelstrom: Double Vision

Given my apparent famousness, it should be obvious to readers that I'm pretty much constantly having fancy orgy cocaine parties with other talented celebrities. We do drugs you've never even heard of, drugs that aren't even named until we name them. One thing that's really hot on the scene - excuse me - was hot on the scene, was something we called human ecstaopiajuana, which required a willing female to donate her body for use as something best described as a soft bong. Where on earth do we find these girls?

--

Back on April 6th, parts of former Chief Technology Officer and Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert's deposition in a civil suit related to stolen crime camera technology began to leak. I picked up on one new disclosure rather quickly, Mr. Meffert's admission that he'd let city vendors pay for his excursions to Visions, a gentleman's club known for its 2683 Myspace friends.

Specifically, Meffert said, "sometimes they'd pay."

--

Meffert and me, we're a different kind of famous.

He borrows his friend's Ponchartrain yacht for a party with the Mayor.

I, on the other hand, own my own yacht.

In space.

Gregory Meffert might have thought he was the cock of the walk getting to go out to Visions using "OPM," otherwise known as "Other People's Money" or the Vince Fumo Memorial Payment Plan.

But real celebrities, we don't go to Visions.

Visions comes to us.

--

I was sitting outside eating breakfast and recovering from one of my fancy sexy space-yacht parties over this past weekend when up walks this nice young lady who seemed determined to sit nearby. No complaints. It always feels good when blonds feel compelled to bask in my aura.

But when she decided to strike up an unprovoked conversation about the high price of mangoes in the Greater New Orleans area compared to the Austin market while I was so clearly busy looking for pictures of myself in Rolling Stone magazine, I became a little annoyed.

How do I get out of this conversation?

She uncrossed her legs to get up, "I have to go home to get ready for work."

Problem solved!

"I'm sorry to hear that, where do you work?"

"Visions on the East Bank."

At this point, the biggest, dumbest smile imaginable took over control of my face.

Visions on the East Bank

"You guys out there have done us a great service."

She made me explain at this point, after which she got defensive because I think she took away from my abridged summary that I was saying that Visions was somewhat at fault.

"Strip clubs get a bad rap."

"I agree. That's not what I meant."

Pause

"So do you know anybody named... eh never mind."

--

Mr. Meffert said "sometimes they'd pay."

Who paid all the other times?

I think we could find out pretty soon.

--

In other news, yesterday Mayor Ray Nagin was deposed in that same civil suit over stolen crime camera technology. I actually don't expect too much scandalous stuff to come out when the transcripts are released to the public. I imagine that lawyers for the plaintiffs will explore more than just the trips to Chicago and Hawaii - it won't just be stuff that's already been in the paper. But I don't think there will be anything earth-shattering.

I do think that we've now officially entered into some really bizarre legal territory that I hope someone can comment about.

Mayor Nagin has not yet retained private council. This has struck me as peculiar not because I'm assuming that Mayor Nagin is guilty of some criminal behavior, but because it seems inherent that there might be conflicts in terms of the interests of the Office of the Mayor compared to the interests of Mr. Ray Nagin. Bob Ellis is not Mayor Nagin's personal attorney. He's a city attorney.

And now that the city has taken legal action against Dell Inc., one of their own co-defendants in the crime camera civil case, it would appear that much more important for the Mayor to retain a separate criminal defense attorney. I mean, the City Attorney's office is simultaneously fighting charges with Dell while leveraging charges against Dell. I think that the T-P's Michelle Krupa asked about this in one of her most recent pieces but I can't find precisely where now that I'm trying to link to it... Michelle Krupa indicates that indeed that question was asked of Penya Moses-Fields in her article about the cross-suit.

Moses-Fields said Nagin's testimony Monday about the travels squares with what he has said previously and should dispel any notion that the mayor acted inappropriately. She added that Nagin was not a party to the conspiracy alleged by the plaintiffs and should be dropped as a defendant.

"It's very clear that the city believes that the mayor has done nothing wrong, " Moses-Fields said.

Responding to questions, Moses-Fields said neither she nor the mayor has received subpoenas from a federal grand jury investigating the crime camera program. She said she believes Nagin has no criminal exposure in the case and that he has not retained his own defense attorney; the city attorney's office will continue to represent him, she said.

--

One more thing to watch is the impending release of the City Council emails. Yesterday, a judge blocked their release after finding the action taken by the City Attorney's office to retract privileged information to have been "inadequate."

But that stuff is going to come out soon. Within a couple of weeks. I would advice you not be surprised if release of the Council emails was timed conveniently with the unsealing of Mayor Nagin's complete deposition transcript.

--

We're always receiving these improper gifts of coincidence in New Orleans.

Sometimes they pay. Sometimes we pay.

Been Busy

Apologies for the light posting here.

Wanted to second Suspect Device by flagging this Al Giordano piece. Good stuff.

Read it.

Afterward, I considered how it would read if he were talking about local organizing here in New Orleans...

BREAKING NEWS

SaveCharityHospital.com has obtained never before seen photographs demonstrating the condition of Charity Hospital just weeks after the storm in late September, 2005. It looks ready to take patients.

Also if you follow that link, you can access a recent propaganda video produced by LSU that plays up their contention that the building was beyond repair as a result of Katrina.

It would appear that conditions captured by the photos are out of sync with what's captured in the LSU video.

It almost looks like someone trashed the place after the fact.

Go check it out.

This is pretty much what I was trying to express

A thoughtful and articulate comment to this post:

me said...

I question the argument that Katrina was "color" blind in the sense that it affected blacks and whites the same. First, as a previous blogger points out, blacks were disprortionatley living in low areas because elevation costs more. When blacks first had an opportunity to buy where they pleased (1968 Fair housing Act) virtually all the above-sea level land was taken (the sliver along the river). They migrated first to the 9th ward and then their children to the East. All the studies showed that if you were black you were much more likely to have suffered severe flooding. So Katrina potentiated pre-existing racism--and the data indicate that color made a difference in who was most likely to be impacted by Katrina.

Second, whites had distinct advantages because of family networks and previous discrimination in housing and employment. The average extended black family found itself dispersed around the country: grandma had lived in the ninth ward; their middle class chilren in the East. In contrast, whites in flooded areas had relatives on how ground where they had purchased homes when blacks could not. Within a week after the flood, my block uptown had at least three families who had been flooded and were loaned homes or sharing homes. Because they did not have to leave, they held onto their jobs and began rebuilding their homes immediately. In contrast, blacks returning to New Orleans had no relatives to stay with as they attmepted to put their lives together; indeed, they were not allowed to stay overnight in the East even in gutted homes (the Vietnamese community for some reason had a special dispensation). In addition, resources and wealth affected how the storm impacted people. One poll showed that the majority of blacks who were in the shelters had no savings, though 2/3 were employed.

Bottom line is that because of racism past and present, any natural disaster will have a differential impact on African Americans in general and the poor specifically. This is important to acknowledge because it is not just a question of who suffered more (and some suffered tremedously) but that the recovery policies that were based on "common suffering" or "we were all in the same boat" failed to recognize that some groups had special needs if they were to return. One example is that renters suffered much more than home owners: they were not ensured a place to return; they were not compensated for contents of their homes, and most important, neither the BNOBC or the LRA allocated a penny in their initial plans to rebuild rental housing--while 70% of blacks rented. The rental policy was either just plain old racism to make sure the city was majority white and more affluent, or it was a byproduct of the notion of "common suffering"--that we all experienced Katrina the same way.

Of course Katrina was color blind--but the implication that its effects were race and class neutral is mistaken. Disasters potentiate old inequalities. We were not "all in the same boat" as Clancy Dubos once wrote: some of us were in the boat, some were clinging to the side, and some were adrift in the sea. By not addressing the inequalities during the recovery, we created racial distrust and anger. The first step to reconciliation of blacks and whites is acknowledging how Katrina affected us in different ways--and second that no one tried to prevent whites from returning, but there was a broad movement to prevent blacks from returning. One glance at the BNOBC map will tell you that virtually all black neighborhoods--rich and poor, were slated for demolition. While all the plan's targets were not black, all blacks were targets. That's an important difference

Have you been missing me?

I haven't been posting a lot here this week. It's because there's so much going on over at SaveCharityHospital.com. Head over there and add the Save Charity blog to your reader.


UPDATE:

Damn, 2 years at this blog = not famous.

1 day at new blog = slightly more famous

I think Sullivan might call this an "Yglesias award nominee"

From Danny Fisher at ORR:

I want to believe in these tea parties, I really do. But they bug me just a little bit. First of all, the Boston Tea Party was an act of outright rebellion by fed up colonists, this is a planned rally by the dorkiest segments of the GOP.

Already, organizers are trying to preempt any liberal backlash by saying “it’s coming, they’re going to call us racists.” This is exactly what Obama did in the campaign by “predicting” that conservatives would try to scare voters because he was “different.” It might have worked, he did get elected after all. The thing is, the vocal part of the anti-tax crowd overlaps with the lock-and-load gun lovers, the Jeffersonians and the John Birch Society. I hate taxes and government excess, but I would never trust any of these people under any circumstances. There’s internet kooks, then there’s the REAL kooks!

Glad to see some good folks on the Right are giving these things some consideration.

Kudos.

Save Charity Hospital

Sneak Preview!!!

For my blog buddies.

I'll probably refrain from discussing the hospital issue here at WCBF from this point forward. I'm going to be muckraking and blogging the LSU/VA/Charity debate from that mysterious place hidden beyond the above link.

Problem Solved!

NORA to change its name.

Who's Going?

Clear your schedules ladies and gents!

There's going to be a group tea-bagging in Metairie.









What kind of tea-bagging party would it be without a special guest tea-bagging from Steve the Sleaze?

Someone really should go. If State Rep. John LaBruzzo shows up someone should ask him if he's gotten paid yet for getting his tea bags tied.

It's pretty hard to believe tea-bagger in chief David Vitter isn't going to be getting in on that action.

--

I've read a lot of bloggers comparing this inarticulate and target-less action to the inarticulate and target-less action that the Left perfected from the '80's until now. I think there's some merit to that if you're just talking short term tactic. I think the comparison becomes less useful as you take the long view. The Left and Right have tended to organize in ways influenced by generally different orientations toward various authority structures.


UPDATE: Jeez MSNBC is having too much fun with this.

Phelps

I love the Yellow Blog's latest.

Damn it.

Worst day ever.

There'll never be another like Harry K. I'm devastated.

UPDATE: Still so upset.

Some place near family and friends comes your baseball play-by-play announcer. Three hours a day, six months a year, every year since I could hear anything I heard Harry Kalas telling me about my Phillies. What a drag.

Broken Record?

On Friday, I posted what I thought to be a pretty innocuous link to really interesting looking online magazine that did a fairly expansive profile on Mayoral candidate James Perry. I posted it mostly because I thought the presentation was really interesting, the platform itself.

But a couple of people took a look at the content, which I thought to be mostly harmless and mostly accurate, and wrote some comments that really depressed me.

First and foremost, was an objection to a couple of sentences that a commenter flagged and discussed:

"They saw white ... leaders oppose the rebuilding of the most damaged parts of the city, which had been predominantly poor and African American."

Not true; monetary losses among the races were approximately equal, as has been established for some time. The poor were less able to return (because they were poor; it's a truism), not disproportionately damaged. What we have here is a repetition of the discredited TV Guide version of the history of Katrina: un-nuanced, misleading, and factually wrong.

This really ticked me off. It actually is true that African Americans perceived the BNOB green dot plan as an attempt to codify the closure of many predominantly poor and African American parts of the city. If you take a look at a map of the green dot plan, it's pretty hard not to deny that the plan was in fact attempting to shutter African American communities. In fact, the whole notion that neighborhoods would have to "prove" their "viability" before being granted the supposed privilege to rebuild is pretty indicative of the general attitude of the folks empowered to make decisions on everybody else's behalf.

That monetary losses amongst the races were equal may or may not be true, I don't know where that number comes from. But it's irrelevant either way because African Americans, as a result of decades and decades of personal and institutionalized racism, were systematically barred from accumulating the same kind of wealth as their white neighbors.

What percentage of those that died during the storm were African American? Was it 50/50?

No. Storm casualties were overwhelmingly African American.

Of the 150,000 residents that remain displaced from New Orleans, what percentage are African American? Is it 50/50?

No. Displaced New Orleanians are overwhelmingly African American.

The two sections of the city that sustained the most devastation, the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East, are those generally 50/50 communities?

No. They are overwhelmingly African American communities.

Were these communities also poor? Well they certainly weren't rich but I think a good argument could be made that they're mostly middle class communities. When you think of the types of jobs that middle class African Americans had access to over the last couple of decades, you think about nursing, education, and civil service bureaucracy. Well, after the storm, the major hospitals were kept closed, the entire public school teaching core was fired, and the civil service was cut in half.

Which community bore the brunt of those moves? Was it 50/50?

No. It was overwhelmingly the African American community of New Orleans that had to eat these damages.

And when you look at where the city is today, which neighborhoods are struggling the most and why?

Now that same commenter made a few more additional points that were more salient but I couldn't really read them to be honest. When someone denies the racial injustice of the storm and of rebuilding policy, listening further becomes difficult and meaningful conversation becomes almost impossible.

White New Orleanians simply cannot remain in denial about the racism in their midst if they hope to form positive coalitions for change with their African American neighbors.

That said, the same commenter went on to add significant nuance to his personal views after a regular anonymous commenter flagged them.

That same anonymous commenter chimes in often here at WCBF and I think generally makes too many flippant toxic points that conflate all white criticism of municipal corruption with every single racist policy ever created in the city of New Orleans.

This is also a totally counterproductive stance to take, one that erodes efforts to create coalitions around the plentiful common ground that exists between black and white in New Orleans.

I talk a lot about this coalition and this common ground. I don't think these are things that I'm just daydreaming about or romanticizing. Rather, it's real.

When white people recognize, amplify, and work to reverse the racism that exists in our midst, their critiques of certain corrupt African American municipal politicians become more credible and less susceptible to insidious arguments that the accusers are just being racist.

But on the flip side, when others say that all white people are racist, that all white people are responsible for the green dot plan, and that white people shouldn't call out the Mayor and others for corrupt practices, well that's also a non-starter when it comes to meaningful discussion of what we need to do to move forward.

Certainly this city's dynamics are much too complicated for any general discussion of race to be 100% accurate but I was quite shocked by the negative reaction to that article. I don't think it's wrong or inaccurate at all when writing an overview piece about the dynamics of recovery to generally couch the dynamics in terms a concerted effort to re-engineer the racial dynamics of the city through rebuilding policy or lack thereof. The problem comes when every white New Orleanian is put on that bus when in reality certain aspects of the African American power structure were way more complicit in this indecent recovery policy than some powerless white waitress or bartender.

Meanwhile, you have an article... and I know it was quite fluffy... but you have an article about a guy, James Perry, who has fought real institutionalized racism in recovery policy across the entire region, AND who has called out African American politicians for insidious defensive use of the race card to deflect from serious allegations of corruption, and all people did was complain.

That's flippin' pathetic. It ruined my weekend.

So I hope I was able to synthesize these thoughts in a manner that was reasonably civil. I really didn't feel like being polite.

This is awesome

You'll need to be able to listen to the sound. But you have to have to have to check this out.

Bravo to the Perry campaign for the frank discussion - I just hope you can make the rest of the city notice. (Nary a mention in this WWL election preview.)

Content aside, what a fabulous online media model they've got at FLYP magazine. Very impressive. They won me over and I'll be going back.

Alphonso Jackson's HUD not good for HANO

Katy Reckdahl has a decent summary of the latest scathing audit from the HUD Inspector General on the utility of the federal receivership of HANO.

I have a copy of the original report, which I can email to you if you contact me. I'm having the hardest time uploading pdfs this week...

Here are the passages that I thought really got to the heart of the matter:

HUD did not properly plan the receivership because it did not perform an initial
assessment of the Authority's condition or continuous assessments after the receiver
took over. In phase 1 of the recovery process, the receiver should have assessed the
Authority's condition, which would have established an inventory of the Authority's
problems. Although there was a February 2002 decision to terminate the
cooperative endeavor agreement and/or execution of the August 2002 memorandum
of agreement, HUD did not provide initial assessments of the Authority's operations
before or after the agreements were executed.

The initial assessment would have provided the details needed to identify problems
with the Authority's operations. The assessment would have been an inventory of
problems that would have provided the receiver with a road map of the management
areas in need of improvement and would have provided the foundation for
documenting improvements through periodic reports.

--

The lack of assessments and reports continued after Hurricane Katrina. If HUD's
receiver had performed an initial assessment in phase 1, that assessment would have
had to have been significantly revised due to the Hurricane Katrina disaster on
August 29, 2005. However, neither HUD headquarters nor the receiver could
provide evidence to show that it reassessed or performed continuous assessment of
the Authority's condition after Hurricane Katrina.

--

The current receiver explained that before Hurricane Katrina, the Authority was
mostly involved in redevelopment, while after the hurricane, it was mostly
involved in recovery efforts such as asset recovery and rehousing displaced
Hurricane Katrina victims. The prior receiver confirmed that his priorities
included providing housing to displaced public housing tenants who wanted to
return after the hurricane and redevelopment. However, neither receiver could
provide documents to support these assertions.

--

During most of the receivership, there was no documented recovery plan which
covered all aspects of the Authority's condition. The current strategic
improvement plan was not implemented until after we began our audit in April
2008.

HUD did not properly monitor or control the receivership at the Authority.
During much of the time that the receivership was in existence, it was apparent
that HUD had not established a clear operating structure and reporting chain of
command. This condition is evidenced by the lack of documents to support the
receivership's actions and results in improving operations at the Authority.

According to interviews with HUD staff, until April 2008, the former Secretary of
HUD and some of his executive staff were intermittently involved with the
receivership. However, due to a lack of documentation, we could not evaluate the
extent of their involvement in the recovery of the Authority or how their
involvement was coordinated with the Assistant Secretary's oversight and the
receivers.

--

Aren't you glad we rushed into a poorly conceived public housing redevelopment program that was so clearly a vessel for handing out favors to cronies of incompetent HUD chief Alphonso Jackson?

It doesn't surprise me that there was "a lack of documentation" and "no documented recovery plan." You don't exactly want "a clear operating structure and reporting chain of command" when you intend to hand out contracts to personal friends and political allies.

I would love to see Attorney General Holder open up an inquiry into Mr. Jackson's tenure at HUD. I know the FBI was investigating him at the time of his resignation. I wonder if charges might still be in the offing.

There was a sad lack of reporting on Mr. Jackson's hidden agenda, especially as it relates to New Orleans post-Katrina. Ezra Pound of the National Review may have been the only professional investigative journalist to really delve into Jackson's dealings in here. It was his attempts to extort the city of Philadelphia that ultimately lead to his resignation, but I don't think the media ever truly examined out the extent to which Jackson made HUD into his own personal political fiefdom. Whereas Talking Points Memo devoted months and months to uncovering the politicization of the Department of Justice, there was no such organizational push to look into Housing and Urban Development. I wonder if we would have found a similar scope of departmental corruption.

--

Mary Landrieu is right to call for the resignation or replacement of all of the top HANO officials that are holdover appointees of Mr. Jackson.

It's such a shame that this was so poorly administered.

Federal receivership can and should be an effective means of cleaning up chronically ineffective or corrupted municipal departments. I'd like to see a lot more federal involvement in the administration of certain municipal departments here in New Orleans, especially now that we have President that presumably won't be appointing stooges like Alphie J.

Another Year, Another Deadline

Last year around this time, I was blogging quite a bit about a poorly conceived policy that proposed to evict residents of FEMA trailers.

Councilor Stacy Head was out front pushing these evictions even though the continued use and sometimes abuse of formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers had almost everything to do with the lack of affordable housing and almost nothing to do with people being too lazy to fix their homes. A decent compromise was reached when Cynthia Hedge-Morrell proposed a compromise that exempted the more heavily storm-damaged Districts D and E from that deadline.

FEMA ultimately extended that deadline as well - to the end of February and then again to May 1st. That's this May 1st. But as the article behind that link indicated way back in February, it was already likely that the enforcement of the May 1st deadline would result in evictions of a few thousand of our neighbors.

May 1st is now just a week or so away.

The truth is that people need to get out of these trailers. Many of them have dangerous levels of formaldehyde. But a cancerous trailer is better than the street.

FEMA caseworkers were put out there to inform people of the upcoming deadline but I'm not sure what kind of actual assistance they were able to provide.

I'm not an expert on these programs but I think that if you opted into the trailer program, it means you weren't involved with DHAP (Disaster Housing Assistance Program) or with other housing choice vouchers to get an apartment. The waiting list for Section 8 assistance is endless, and there's no cutting the line.

If I were to venture an educated guess, I'd say that the vast majority of people still inhabiting FEMA trailers are not just being lazy about home renovations or finding their own alternative housing. Rather, I imagine a huge percentage of current trailer inhabitants are senior citizens on fixed incomes. Another chunk of people have been victims of contractor fraud and waiting on litigation or otherwise do not have money to get their house up to livable standards.

Now, ideally, none of this would matter. The city would have a decent enough affordable housing supply that the thousand or so senior citizens could be given rental vouchers or whatever else and that would be the end of those awful trailers. But HANO only today announced a plan to begin renovations that should have been immediate priorities three years ago.

The rental market isn't nearly as bad as it was twelve months ago, but that doesn't indicate that a significant amount of affordable or subsidized housing has suddenly become available. Especially when we're talking about folks living purely off of their social security checks or families struggling with medical issues, etc.

FEMA will likely have to extend it's deadline once again as a result. Unless it's suddenly acceptable to throw senior citizens onto the streets. I hope that's not the case.

Senator Landrieu and Congressman Cao need to step up and make sure that nobody falls through the cracks.

Backtracking

It's been very interesting to observe the way that the Times-Picayune and other traditional media have covered the unfolding E-Maelstrom. The focus has shifted away from the various email-specific issues involving Veronica White, City Council, and the Mayor's Office of Technology to a seemingly singular fixation on a Nagin family vacation to Hawaii that was funded by a contractor with ties to the MOT and to former Chief Technology Officer and Administrative Executive to the Mayor, Gregory Meffert.

Though American Zombie wrote about this improper trip back in 2006, the mainstream media only recently got the confirmation necessary to go to print with the allegation. Of course, the release of Greg Meffert's deposition from a related lawsuit confirms that in fact, the Nagin trip was financed by city contractor Mark St. Pierre.

But is taking a contractor-funded vacation so outrageous or uncharacteristic for a Louisiana politician? Someone following this peripherally might question why the T-P has it's top investigative reporters chasing down a story about $2000 vacation.

It's because this isn't about an unethical and possibly illegal vacation to Hawaii. Rather, this is about trying to establish the facts around what might prove to be an enormous criminal conspiracy at City Hall revolving around the Mayor's Office of Technology. When you start to add up the dollars that exchanged hands between the municipal government and the various contractors with ties to Mr. Meffert, Mr. St. Pierre, and their cronies, you're talking about tens of millions of dollars. Maybe hundreds of millions. It's years of a failed crime cameras, yes. But it's also years of a failed 311 system. It's customer service kiosks at City Hall. It's all sorts of various municipal websites. It's the no longer available city wi-fi service. It's all sorts of technology purchases. All of that stuff (and unfortunately more) is in question.

It's not just about tax dollars wasted, it's also about what would have instead been invested in more plentiful and efficient city services that weren't there when we've needed them the most.

The recent series of articles in the Times-Picayune, I presume, is laying the groundwork for future reporting detailing the scope of corruption. That's why it has seemed like many of the articles that they've published since the end of March haven't yet provided anything particularly earth-shattering. The T-P needs to reestablish a lot of the background data that many internet insiders already understood before they can credibly start publishing new revealing details.

Ray Nagin's media availability yesterday was remarkable because it seemed to lend credibility to the inquiry at hand. Last week, Ray Nagin offhandedly dismissed reporter questions about the trip to Hawaii as a personal attack. This has been his typical response to most all tough questions about his record as Mayor. We know the tone well. Yesterday, however, Mayor Nagin's answers were delivered with a slight touch of basic humility that I thought was noticeable and notable, particularly when questions turned to his own low approval ratings, etc. (some video here, more detailed description here).

Certainly, he continued to deny any wrongdoing in the Hawaii matter and had his own interpretation of the approval ratings that absolve him of any real responsibility for anything, but the fact that he held stood outside of City Hall and held a question and answer session with the press indicates that the facts and allegations swirling around his administration can no longer be avoided and/or defiantly cast as a media conspiracy against him. I think that there is some implicit acknowledgment that the Mayor is in trouble - that this isn't just a game.


UPDATE: Here's full video of Nagin's media availability from yesterday afternoon. On seeing it in entirety, I think I was basically right; there's a little more furrow to his brow. He's taking this a little bit more seriously than he seemed to last week.

Mayor Ray Nagin Addresses Ethics Questions

UPDATE II:

It's also quite hilarious that Mayor Nagin decided to give Jim Letten unsolicited advice about how to select a jury. What would he need a jury for Ray?

Deposition Depot (updated)

I spent too much time yesterday trying to figure out how to upload large deposition files to blogger. Thankfully, WDSU has done a lot of that work for me. They have large portions of Greg Meffert's deposition online and available.

These links are to 'dsu's pdf downloads...

Pages 1-100 are here.
Pages 101-200 are here.
Pages 201-332 are here.

There are other loose bits floating around. As I'm able to corral them in a linkable fashion, I'll be aggregating them here on this post so that everything's all in one place.

And if you find something interesting reading through the deposition, please do drop us a line at WCBF.

Also, if you'd like to sneakily print out a big copy for me on your giant office machine, I will totally not reimburse your company. But I will buy you a beer. Deposition kegger anyone?

UPDATE: Meffert's lawyers have dropped their attempt to reseal the deposition. It is now all completely public and should be available for our reading pleasure shortly.

UPDATE 04/08:

When I started this blog, I always dreamed I'd get reader comments like this:

It's 3:55am and I just completed reading each pdf and started looking for the 1000 page download because I'm a masochist. Summary and observations following.

You have to hand it to the attorney, those suckers can drum on you forever until you're about ready to admit to whatever they want to hear.

In these downloads every once in awhile Greg would have several clever comebacks and really get under the attorneys skin - the comment about the refrigerator was priceless; Greg's a scumball but even I have to admit that was funny.

In short, Greg came off at best as utterly incompetent. He tried to push the image of that he was so overworked and got 300 emails a day I don't remember these things, etc.

The attorney really raked him over the coals of his website reporting his accomplishments with the cameras and made him admit it was BS.

The attorney did try to trap him multiple times into having him explain what other people thought/meant/said without him being there - this didn't work out for the attorney very well.

Greg needs to learn to pause for his attorneys to object, he was far to fast with his answers which I could see him getting himself into further trouble.

As far as Gregs skills as a manager in IT, let me explain no one is this friggin clueless. Greg also shows in several instances he understand budgets, he understands some key technology aspects, etc. But this was one of his pet projects, no one in his position wouldn't brush themselves up on these things due to the cost, the questions they would get asked and the eventual notoriety if it worked.

He practically admitted to writing the RFP for the original vendor of the cameras, which is not a best practice and then for him not to have an email trail about modifications to the RFP and those that need to sign off on the RFP like the City Attorney and other approving authorities/stakeholders for that kind of money and cross department initiative, is ridiculous.

Meffert is using the same old tired politician game, I don't know, I don't recall, I didn't read the entire email, etc. He did have some good counter points about Drake and the budgets, I have my team provide the same info and it has nothing to do with budgets, the are just giving me projections.

There is alot he is hiding, that is for sure and you can tell that by the timing of the contract and the players involved.

Full disclosure: I knew Chris Drake and others at the City Hall IT dept personally during this period and Chris is a heck of a guy. I can assure you Chris was at best a pawn which pretty much is proven in the depo - Chris did what he was told, he's not the brains behind this - that would be Meffert and St. Pierre.

Good stuff. There's nothing like combing through depositions at 4 in the morning... Jury is still out on Mr. Drake though. We'll see how things turn up. It does look to me like Meffert was one of the kingpins, but then again, that's who they were deposing so of course questions are going to be geared toward illuminating his role.

Visions

Man oh man. I'm starting to collect bits and pieces of Greg Meffert's deposition in the ongoing lawsuit at Orleans Civil District Court , which was released today. The T-P now has confirmation that City Contractor Netmethods, owned by Mark St. Pierre, paid for a Nagin family vacation to Hawaii. They've also posted a bit of the deposition. I'm going to put as much of the deposition online as I can over the course of the day during my free time.

But the part available from nola.com in the link above, I thought everyone might like this line of questioning where Meffert basically cops to getting an unknown number of strip club adventures picked up by the Imagine tab.




"Sometimes they'd pay."

It's all part of the e-maelstrom. A nice wink toward Mr. Gordon Russell and Mr. Frank Donze for this line in today's writeup about the deposition release:

The new court filing raises new questions about the already-controversial business dealings between the city and its technology vendors, dealings that have attracted keen interest from federal investigators. The motion also brings Nagin deeper into the maelstrom, which so far has mainly swirled around St. Pierre and Meffert, one of the mayor's top aides and most trusted advisers until he left City Hall in 2006.

I'll take it! Yes!

UPDATE: A recently married man found the myspace page for Visions. Might be a good place for Rising Tide IV.

Hello?!?!?!?

Guess what?

People don't think Ray Nagin is a good mayor.

An annual quality-of-life poll done by the University of New Orleans found widespread dissatisfaction with local leadership, with just 24 percent of those polled saying they approved of the job Mayor Ray Nagin is doing and 48 percent approving of the City Council.

24%!!!!!!

Those are lower approval ratings than either George Bush or Dick Cheney ever got. Those are sickening numbers. Maybe we'll finally get real about standing up to his destructive policies. Or, you know, we could continue to be deferential as his administration crumbles and as we squander whatever goodwill we had left with the rest of the country.

Aspirant Mayors who have not consistently called out the Mayor for his various failures will not have any credibility to replace him.

MLB 2009!!!!!!!

Preface:

I won't reminisce about the joys of last year's championship because a new year is upon us. It isn't my style to discuss my religion like that. It's a private thing - something for you and your tribe. Just know that when you win a championship after a drought of 20 years or more, it pretty much frees your soul and allows you to do previously impossible tasks like exposing a corrupt municipal government or talking to women that are way out of your league.

One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how to address all of the drought-era superstitions I've developed over the years around the Phillies. I haven't really blogged it, but for those of you that don't know, I'm a HUGE baseball fanatic. I'm kind of over-the-top.

One superstition I have is that I never publicly pick against the Phillies. NEVER! Under any circumstances. For instance, last season I impulsively left town for South Philly when we got to the NLCS. One of the great characters from my life, Upstairs Dan (who occasionally drops by WCBF as an anonymous commenter), decided to torment me with an impossible scenario. He cornered me and demanded to know what I would do if I could only have one of two things - either the Phillies win the World Series or Barack Obama wins the Presidency. Now this was truly unfair. Obviously I couldn't possibly pick against the Phils in the middle of a deep playoff push, the first time we'd made to the NLCS since I was eight years old. But would I really doom the whole country to another GOP administration in the midst of a worldwide financial crisis of our own making? The Phils are obviously going to continue to be competitive but it was now or never for Barack Obama.

I picked my Phillies! I said F-U to America and my integrity as a committed progressive blogger. It happened. I meant it. Upstairs Dan was incredulous. How could I? He threatened to put it on my blog and ruin my "career." And I didn't hear the end of it. The Phils kept on winning. Lucky for me, Obama won the Presidency and I got the best of both worlds.

So now I have a little bit of a conundrum. I'm about to publish my 2009 predictions but I'm having a real internal debate over whether or not I'll be able to sleep at night if I pick the Phillies to finish any worse than 150-12. I mean, we're the champs. I won. I don't have to just pick the Phils because all I have in life is springtime optimism. Plus I don't think the Phillies had the greatest off-season. I don't think replacing Burrell with Ibanez is an upgrade. I've always respected him as a player but Ibanez is getting old. And I'm not sure how functional it is to bat lefties at 3-4-5. Plus Hamels pitched A LOT of innings last season. Our bullpen overachieved. It's tough to repeat in baseball...

What will I do...


MLB 2009!!!!!!!

American League

AL EAST

1. Boston Red Sox
2. Tampa Rays
3. New York Yankees
4. Baltimore Orioles
5. Toronto Blue Jays

This is an incredibly tough division to win. I worry about the Rays falling back to the pack this year but their roster is just so impressive. I think they got lucky with injuries last year. The Orioles are going to hit and they finally have a game plan after a decade in the wilderness.

AL CENTRAL

1. Cleveland Indians
2. Chicago White Sox
3. Minnesota Twins
4. Kansas City Royals
5. Detroit Tigers

This is tough to handicap. The Indians have been a favorite of baseball purists for the last few seasons but they've kneecapped themselves with poor first halves. They're due. The Royals will be better surprisingly competitive and I could easily see them finishing third over the Twins, who I think play soft, and the Tigers who I think are going to have to shed talent and salary for economic reasons starting in May or June.

AL WEST

1. Oakland A's
2. Los Angeles Angels
3. Texas Rangers
4. Seattle Mariners

I thought the Angels were the best team in baseball last year but I really hate what they did this off season and I think the AL WEST is suddenly amongst the weakest in the game. The Mariners have a better roster than they've proven on the field but they don't work well as a team. They need a new plan. I like the risks the A's took this winter. They'll need to be especially healthy.

AL PLAYOFFS:

Boston over Oakland
Tampa over Cleveland

Boston over Tampa


NL EAST

1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Florida Marlins
3. New York Mets
4. Atlanta Braves
5. Washington Nationals

The top four teams in this division are all capable of making the playoffs. It's going to be a bloodbath. I hate the Mets so I'm picking them to finish in third behind two playoff teams. "K-Rod" is going to have a bad year, Santana is going to get hurt, and Jose Reyes is going to continue to earn the resentment of his teammates and the rest of his league for his lackadaisical effort and his overall badditude. The Marlins are really really talented. They might be the best team in the National League secretly.

NL CENTRAL

1. Chicago Cubs
2. Cincinnati Reds
3. St. Louis Cardinals
4. Milwalkee Brewers
5. Houston Astros
6. Pittsburgh Pirates

The Reds are secretly really balanced and have finally changed the culture of the franchise after dumping losers like Adam Dunn. The Brewers lost too much pitching but I was tempted to dump the Cardinals down into fourth because I really just don't like them.

NL WEST

1. Los Angeles Dodgers
2. Arizona Diamondbacks
3. San Fransisco Giants
4. San Diego Padres
5. Colorado Rockies

This division is getting better quickly. If the Giants can figure out their starting eight, their starting pitching could be the best in the league, Barry Zito renaissance or not. The Padres seemed willing to unload assets this off season but I don't think they're too far off from being competitive.

Florida over Chicago
Philly over LA

Philly over Florida

World Series: Phillies over Red Sox

Back to back champs!!!!

I couldn't help it guys. I can't not pick my hometown nine!

But if Boston beats LA in the World Series instead, I wouldn't be too surprised.

Too Nice

I had big plans to write copiously all weekend long for the reading pleasure of my lovely and loyal readers.

But did you see the weather outside?!?

There was no way in hell I was going to miss out on all the springtime fun. Plus who the hell was going to sit at home reading my blog on a Sunday as divine as this one?

In other news, my Philadelphia Phillies start their championship defense campaign tonight! Go Phillies!

My Official Major League Baseball Outlook is in the pipeline for later. Not only do I promise that it will be better than my aborted NCAA March Madness picks, but I guarantee that I will beat Nate Silver's powerhouse PECOTA system.

Everyone knows that authentic baseball fans make better nerdy political pundits.

Correlation and causation bitches!

Sad

Link

Some of those on the Right who have been so flippant about giving mainstream credibility to fringe conspiracy theories need to more think more seriously about what they say. This guy was obviously unstable all by himself but given the stresses that this economy is already putting on people, some of the more ridiculous secessionist rhetoric needs to be toned down. I think a little self-censorship might be appropriate, don't you? A little bit. I think elected Republicans should voluntarily publicly disassociate themselves from some the nonsensical fear-mongering as a way of marginalizing the tin-foil hatters that are clearly getting some people irrationally paranoid.

Nobody wants this or anything like it to happen again.

In Case You Didn't Notice

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the 2010 budget resolution.

Charlie Melancon did the right thing and voted for it even though I'm sure he was getting lots of pressure from his more conservative constituents.

Everybody else from Louisiana voted against it, including the increasingly indefensible Joe Cao.

He's constantly talking about how in the middle he is and how much consideration he's giving to these things but increasingly it seems like he's just blowing smoke. He also voted against the Republican alternative budget (known as the Rep. Ryan April Fool's Joke).

I'd like to know exactly what kind of budget Mr. Cao would prefer.

His nay vote against this budget really ticks me off.

What exactly does Mr. Cao stand for on any national issue of substance? So far, he voted for SCHIP. That's the only matter on which he's actually taken a stand against the embarrassing paramilitary shell of the Republican Party to do something productive for the people in his district.

Are you f$cking serious?!?

Jim Cramer on February 3rd:




Jim Cramer on March 3rd:




Jim Cramer yesterday (April 2nd):

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"We ended the Depression. We are done."

Pretty unbelievable reversal.

Put this guy out of his misery.

It's so embarrassing to me that Cramer is a Philly guy. Mathews at least has an authentic personality. Cramer must not be from the city itself like Mathews is. I'd put money on it.

Tea Parties, Really?

I always try to listen to a little bit of conservative talk radio in any given week. I think I'm finally starting to understand the myriad of ways that restoring the marginal tax rate on the top 2% of income earners to what it was under Clinton and Reagan pretty much represents fascism.

Beck, Hannity, and Rush have recently spent a lot of time getting excited about a new book by their friend, another conservative radio host named Mark Levin, who has one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard in my life. Levin's new book, Liberty and Tyranny, is apparently a big seller. It's a big hit with the tea party crowd. He hasn't yet sent me a copy for review but I'm pretty sure the general thesis is that the New Deal was the worst thing of all time and that progressives since Woodrow Wilson have been party to a gigantic conspiracy, weaving in and out of latency in order to subvert the constitution.

I've been disgusted as anger on the Right has manifested itself in high gun sales and wild flailing comparisons between pragmatic Democratic governance in the public interest and Hitler's Germany.

Some of the comments are shocking and abhorrent but when actually listen to these shows, there's something ironically adorable about what these hosts actually spend most of their time trying to get people to do.

Think about it.

The reality is that the macho men of talk radio are devoting huge chunks of their programming in order to promote tea parties and book discussions.

Lift your pinkies gentlemen, it's considered polite.

Seriously though, the attempted allusion to the Boston Tea Party rebellion against British taxation during the buildup to the Revolutionary War might have worked once as a conceptual mobilization. But effectively now that this is a long-term conservative campaign, it comes across more like a bunch of grown men talking about tea parties. The historical reference is totally lost.

--

To get a reading list for your next tea party, you could listen to New Orleans' Rush Radio, 99.5 WRNO. Recently, these guys have been running a series of commercials featuring edited clips of amounting to a campaign by the morning show to ensure that US Attorney Jim Letten is retained by the Obama administration. My personal views on this have evolved. For awhile I thought of him as overrated and replaceable but now I'd prefer to keep him on just in the interest of investigatory continuity. Anyway, the ad is all about the 'Lettenpalooza' going on 24/7 at WRNO and then cuts to an announcer who says:

"99.5 WRNO - because WE live here too."

The emphasis is all theirs.

Now what the hell is that supposed to imply? That the white conservatives who control all of the wealth in the city plus all of the wealth, power and influence in the region and state are the feeling oppressed? I'd bet that if you measured WRNO's listenership by geography, it would disproportionately originate from the majority- white, majority-conservative parishes that encircle Orleans Parish.

No reason to feel lonely guys. As Glenn Beck would remind you, "We surround them."

What is SO objectionable about healthcare reform?

Mary Landrieu, Charlies Melancon, and Anh Cao are mulling over President Obama's budget proposal, which promises to make significant down payment on healthcare reform and sets up a program to control harmful pollution and spur the development of renewable resource technology.

I love this budget proposal. I think it is exactly what the country needs right now.

I need affordable health care options. So do tens of millions of my American neighbors. And our country needs to get off of foreign oil. Our industries and businesses are going to need to adjust to environmental realities.


This is a prudent and moderate proposal that will help this country emerge from this crisis with a stronger social safety net and a robust new green jobs sector.

This budget puts mechanisms in place to do these things. But our Representatives are still sticking their fingers up into the wind.

And guess what?

The people of this nation are in favor of it and this new President's agenda by huge margins.

But they really need to hear it from us. The conservative talk radio crowd makes phone calls and sends letters. We need to our voices to be heard over theirs.


Call 'em up in D.C.

Rep. Melancon: (202) 225-4031

Rep. Cao: (202) 225-6636

Sen. Landrieu: (202)224-5824

Get Him Outta Here Already!

Speaking of disaster capitalism, I happened upon HANO's website last night. Guess who's face is still plastered all over the place?

Hint: The most consequential thing he ever built was bridge between the Bush and Nagin administrations.

He was mostly in the business of demolition and displacement and was defended by Nagin even after he resigned in disgrace for a record of politicized contracting practices, corruption, and extortion.



C'mon HANO. Take this monster off of your website. He resigned a year ago. We've had two new HUD secretaries since then.