We Could Be Famous

Dear My Entire Contact List. Re: Gulf Coast Recovery Act.

2010-06-11T12:04:00.003-05:00

I've been trying to send this around as much as possible.

Have you seen this?

Did you see or hear about this Anderson Cooper interview with Doug Brinkley last night?

Brinkley says he's got admin sources talking about unveiling a massive Gulf Coast Recovery Act? It sounds too good to be true. I haven't seen any other press reporting on it or confirming Brinkley. A massive public works project to rebuild coastline and related infrastructure has been desired above all else in S. LA since before Katrina and especially since. I can think of nothing that would be more meaningful to these communities. Even if Brinkley was jumping the gun, it would be a massive help to at least get a discussion going on something like this.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/doug-brinkley-administration-going-come-ou

Relevant transcript excerpted in my postscript.

Eli

BRINKLEY: Well, I mean, there are three things, I mean, I think, big baskets, going on.

One is close that well, get the -- capture as much oil as you can, keep the pressure on BP on the relief wells. Second is immediate cleanup. And I think more can be done by the Obama administration. And I -- and but I think the big third piece is coming, when President Obama comes to Florida and Alabama and Mississippi, and that is holding BP responsible for the Natural Resource Damage Act, for the Oil Spill Response Act. And, by that, I mean BP is going to end up paying somewhere from $10 billion to $15 billion, maybe even $20 billion, because they're going -- one of the only ways to save the Louisiana wetlands is going to be -- you know, the Mississippi River has been channelized for navigation.

Well, now the Mississippi River has to be redirected. It's going to have to be flooded and sediment pumped into these marshlands to save it. I think the Obama administration...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: So, no, wait. No, wait. Doug, is this just a hope on your part?

BRINKLEY: No.

COOPER: Or -- I mean, I know you have been talking to sources. Do you believe this is actually going to happen?

BRINKLEY: Yes. Yes.

And it's one of the reasons why the president is not talking to Tony Hayward. And they are going to come out with a large Gulf recovery act, because the oil and gas industry has been dredging. We have disappearing barrier islands. For 40 years down there, it's abused the wetlands.

This is a turning point. There is an appetite on Capitol Hill for Gulf recovery act. The Mississippi River is going to have to be redirected into the marshlands. And BP and Transocean and other, you know, operations, Cameron, other companies are going to have to pay up to $10 billion and $15 billion for breaking national acts.

(CROSSTALK)

BRINKLEY: In addition, for offshore drilling in the Gulf, Anderson, there will be a conservation excise tax that, yes, there will be offshore drilling, but Louisianians will start getting some of the revenue to stay in state.

CARVILLE: If -- if the president does that, I will be the biggest supporter in the world. He will be beloved in Louisiana.

If he -- if he has a restoration act and the kind of things that Doug Brinkley is talking about, who Doug, by the way, lived here. His wife is from here. He knows exactly what he is talking about. If there is that kind of action from the White House and this president, he will go down, in my opinion, as one of the great presidents in history.

And I have not hesitated to criticize him. But if that kind of action is -- that -- that kind of thing starts to happen, that's going to be a very encouraging sign for South Louisiana, and for the country, too.

COOPER: Doug, I mean, what percent -- I mean, you -- you -- you're saying this based on people you have talked to?

BRINKLEY: Yes.

Steps on the rubber, checks his sign, steps off the rubber, wipes his brow, adjusts his cap, steps back up on the rubber

2010-06-08T14:51:00.004-05:00

I've really been struggling to truly scale back my news consumption. It is, I've realized, a project. And it is one I've been working on for two or three weeks now with some important but limited success. The impetus for my effort was my decision to go to grad school but it could have just have easily been related to burnout. Geopolitical affairs have seemed especially volatile for the last month and especially over the last two weeks. It is extraordinarily stressful to read the paper these days, especially for friends of the Gulf. The national discourse has seemed especially frantic and inconsistent.

I've also been interested in a couple of interesting pieces that question what our increasing use of the internet and gadgets are doing to how we think and live. Basically, our attention spans are being tested and so are our ability to analyze larger, long term phenomenon. I don't think I've fallen into the hole but I've certain walked around the edge and peered into it. Certainly, it took me a lot longer to read my latest book than it should have.

---

I've been trying to spend more time with my favorite past time, the great game of baseball.

I happened to be watching the Tigers play the Indians live when poor Armando Galarraga lost his perfect game bid to a horrendous blown call by first base umpire Jim Joyce.

The immediate reaction to the mistake from chatterers was to call for expanded instant replay use. The argument was that since we have the technology, we should digitize the baseball rule book in order to eliminate human error from the game.

Yet the incredible class with which the perp, Joyce, and the victim, Galarraga, conducted themselves after the blown call turned out to be incredibly heartwarming and wonderful. It was such that after the immediate calls for replay, there were glowing columns and reports about the great lesson America had just learned about sportsmanship. In all probability, Galarraga's near-perfect game will be remembered for longer and more fondly than an actual perfect game would have been.

And so had instant replay been in place, we all would have been denied what is undeniably an awesome reaffirmation of the beauty of imperfection and the irreplicable nature of the human touch.

(Though for the record, I do think there has got to be an unintrusive way to use replay to overturn really bad calls in baseball.)

The calls for the mechanized reduction of human error come amid a context in which player evaluation decisions are increasingly being made with the assistance of computerized evaluation of player statistics and ability. The movement within professional player evaluation and popular with fantasy baseball players seeks to project what a player "should" do statistically speaking. The popularity of these methodologies has ushered what some have probably already referred to the "Moneyball era" of baseball team personnel management. The idea originally was that teams were relying on less-than-appropriate statistical measures or on unquantifiable measures like whether a player's was "clutch."

But it's not hard to imagine what happens when the pendulum swings to far in that direction. I believe the success of the Phillies in recent years is due, in part, to the organization's emphasis on a player's individual personality and on team chemistry. It has gotten to the point where instead of a particular measure of player skill being poorly evaluated by baseball GMs, the most undervalued baseball commodity comes from imprecise and difficult to measure judgement of a player's character.

(Though for the record, I do think a lot of GMs are still foolishly making really boneheaded personnel decisions based on their 'guts' instead of on what can be and already is measured.)

The other area in baseball in which there is an increasing clamor involves the length of games. Some, even within the world of baseball fandom, argue that baseball takes too long. Indeed, baseball has lost market share to the NFL. There is so much irregularity in baseball. There is no clock so games can last from anywhere from one and a half to four hours. That makes it difficult for busy people to stay attentive and it complicates television broadcasts.

(Though for the record, I appreciate the initiative umpires may already take to keep players moving within the rhythm of the game.)

I've enjoyed considering these somewhat related movements in baseball toward mechanization, digitization, precise calculation, and strict time management. To an important degree, they seem antithetical to the whole point of baseball in modernity and related to my struggles with my attention span when it comes to gadgetry and the internet.

What happens when the very things that are designed to require intense concentration and attention to detail, and which are characterized by imprecise rhythm and artistry, become overrun by our impulse to eat, chew, and move on to the next one?

I am absolutely not concerned about baseball or worried about the encroachment of impulsive reactionaries upon it.

But I have been considering the tension between our apparently shrinking attentions spans and the nature of leisure and deep thought.

What was this 'sposed to be?

2010-06-02T14:06:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago, I made the final decision to attend grad school this coming fall and quit, for the first time since I launched this blog in 2007, writing about New Orleans.

I wanted to take some time to enjoy my last month in New Orleans, to have a leisurely staycation in which I would slowly sell off my possessions to finance some restaurant goodbyes. I wanted to try to reevaluate my work here over the last couple of years, to try to paint a big picture in my mind.

What was this all about and what did I learn?

The reflection process has, so far, been way less successful than that which is forcing me to retire snug pairs of pants at an alarming rate.

My self-imposed rehabilitation and semi-retirement from writing has not stopped me from impulsively and compulsively reading the news about New Orleans, especially as it relates to the BP disaster. I just can't quite seem to quit it, at least not while I'm here experiencing the smell of it all and trying to pump up stories like this one with national media. It has been impossible to think cumulatively while simultaneously considering the daily intricacies of the unfixable oil catastrophe and coverage of it in the media.

I spent all weekend exiled in the woods to dry out a little bit. It did wonders for the soul. When I get to Philly and am at the ballpark, I think I'll be able to separate myself even more successfully.

I'm not sure I will now be able to successfully deliver to you a meaningful or interesting series that will review and revise this blog. There's too much to say.

A couple of people have said that I should write a book. It is probably true that I've got a few hundred pages worth of long-winded feelings, rants, and analysis about recovery from the failure of New Orleans' levee systems and the state of politics and governance in New Orleans more generally inside of me. But that doesn't mean it would be the least bit entertaining. Or even interesting or useful.

So what I thought I'd do, since I have resolved not to "blog" (in the sense that I refuse to "cover" anything anymore), is to try to get my own gears going by restating what I think my mission was back when I started We Could Be Famous right after the second anniversary of Katrina in 2007.

Let's see.

I was 22 years old and had just graduated Tulane University the previous spring. I was an enthusiastic student but was feeling kind of lost in terms of what to do next. I spent the entire summer backpacking through Mexico and if I knew anything it was that I wasn't ready to join the traditional 9-5 workforce in any field.

I certainly knew what my interests were and felt like I had pretty well-defined values. I care about helping beleaguered cities and knew that I would eventually find a "career" that allowed me to do that. But fresh out of college and full of that totally irritating combination of exuberance and ennui, I decided to feel out my own path.

I also saw an opportunity.

I was an early adopter of "blogs" (I still really really hate the word 'blog') as important sources of news and opinion. In Philly, I noticed the efforts of people who were starting to upset the traditional Democratic Party machine by mounting electoral challenges to ward leaders. I was amazed and inspired in 2004 as the long-shot Dean campaign, which I admired but never supported (not that I'd be ashamed to say if I did - I liked that liar John Edwards in '04), used the internet to get people organized in real life for real life purposes. I was amazed and inspired by the way it seemed like short video clips or short snarky comments by a few well positioned and widely read liberal curmudgeon outsiders could shake up the mainstream news. Even though the internet and the blogosphere (another word I detest) wasn't that different from what it is today, it kind of felt like the Wild West, especially at the local level. To put it crudely, it seemed like if you were funny and made consistent arguments, famous people would link to you and then you would be famous too.

(That inelegant conclusion was part of the thinking behind the tongue-in-cheek blog name of my blog. The other part was that I was very interested in the way that the characteristics we expected of entertainers were increasingly indistinguishable from those we expect from political leaders. I felt like 'fame' had basically become equivalent to 'success' and hoped to make snarky superficial commentary about this into a running theme. I pretty much abandoned this within the first few weeks of publication.)

I noticed and was troubled by the fact that it didn't seem like there was anybody talking about New Orleans regularly among the liberal/progressive/netroots bloggers I read. It seemed like a big hole to me since the correlation between the near-destruction of New Orleans, the deterioration of the Bush agenda, and the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 seemed so strongly correlated. It was clear to me that New Orleans was, in September of 2007, clearly not recovering - something I deduced from living here without a whole lot of reading - and I assumed that my fellow progressive liberals from around the country would be interested in finding out why and in helping. The other thing I deduced from living here was that local political leadership was totally and remarkably pathetic. I felt like an overwhelmingly awesome city overrun with liberals and Democrats ought to be able to organize itself to put really strong, articulate, and unwavering progressive leaders into City Council, the State Legislature, and Congress.

And so I set off to work on several things simultaneously. I wanted to use the internet to help other New Orleanians successfully build a progressive political movement on the local level. I wanted to use the internet to help New Orleanians explain the recovery process to a national audience. I wanted to find myself professionally and figure out where, within the wide world of beleaguered cities, I could be happiest and most helpful.

I was just talking the other day to Brad V. about the how ironic it is that, as proud as I am of my efforts and the "successes" that have resulted, I've essentially failed on every single front. I feel successful in that I am now going to an elite graduate school after having built up a tremendous network of friends and colleagues through my basically well-regarded work as a blogger/writer and political organizer. But those successes are really just a personal silver lining from what was really an across-the-board failure. I accomplished zero of the goals set forth in the previous paragraph. Maybe it's unrefined to put it that way since I feel like I've landed somewhere respectable on the success continuum and not simply at one pole or another but it is what it is.

I accomplished zero of the goals I set forth when I started this blog.

I have learned a lot of useful lessons though. Without making any promises, I'd love to figure out a way to share some of them. I'm not sure if I can get it together to put together a grand conclusion about New Orleans and the recovery but I figured I'd at least get started on sorting my thoughts by restating what I think I said or felt my mission was and going back over the assumptions that lead me to start this project. Maybe if you haven't purged WCBF from your reader, you have some questions or suggestions that might get me going.

Rustoleum

2010-05-19T17:32:00.002-05:00

Does this thing still work?

As I said in my farewell piece for the Lens, I am heading to SIPA at Columbia to pursue a master's degree.

I really need to 'quit' the news and find where I put my attention span. I'll really need that for school. But I would like to continue writing.

So I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with ye olde We Could Be Famous blog.

We Could blog at The Lens

2010-01-19T12:22:00.002-06:00

I'm going to be blogging at The Lens, with increasing frequency as some of the kinks with the site redesign are ironed out. My hope is to establish a regular intellectualesque conversation that I hope long time and new readers will enjoy. I'll elaborate on that idea later on.

In the mean time, my first post is up now.

Go read the super important things I have to say.

#Nolamayor piques national attention

2010-01-14T11:02:00.004-06:00

The campaign to elect the next mayor of New Orleans has attracted a wave of national attention. The AP, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times all wrote reports within the last week to brief readers about the mayor's race and the real possibility that New Orleans will elect a white mayor for the first time in over a generation.

Check them all out and see if you agree with the analysis:

Campbell Robertson of the New York Times, "Race Assumes Central Role in New Orleans Vote"
Richard Faussett of the Los Angeles Times, "In New Orleans, a white candidate leads the field"
Kevin McGill of the Associated Press, "Mostly black New Orleans could pick white Mayor"

State Senator Ed Murray's exit from the race and the collective gasp of many members of the city's African American political elite when he did, seems to have been the impetus for the wave of national dispatches.

The three stories are not appreciably different, but do emphasize different reasons for the loss of African American political unity.

McGill points to the decline of African American middle class neighborhoods as a result of the Katrina tragedy as "undercutting efforts by black candidates to raise money and build voter support."

Faussett describes "buyer's remorse" in the African American community and points to universal disapproval of Mayor Nagin in polls and ongoing federal investigations.

Robertson's piece similarly discusses "buyer's remorse" and - I love this line - the "low wattage" of most contenders prior to Landrieu's entry. Robertson's description of "the franchise" and the significance of political power for the African American community is also very interesting.

Black professionals refer to the office as “the franchise,” the counterweight to the economic power of New Orleans’s white elite. For the past three decades, the black private sector — the lawyers, businessmen and architects — has relied on the franchise: they may not always be able to become board members at the city’s white-owned firms, but black professionals turned to the city government for contracts and jobs.

I think these are damn fine write-ups all things considered. How about you all? Any nits to pick?

City Council ordinance seeks to limit Mayor's discretionary powers, but only this one time

2010-01-13T14:54:00.007-06:00

Yesterday, I wrote about the potential for increased federal scrutiny over the manner in which D-CDBG funds are being monitored by the LRA and used in Orleans Parish.

Recently, Mayor Ray Nagin revived plans to purchase the Chevron Building even though City Council had voted against pursuing such an agreement last summer. The Nagin administration has argued that because only funding sources independent of the city budget would be used - the revolver fund or D-CDBG money - Council has no legal oversight authority. Presumably, that logic would extent to every project the Mayor might pursue using non-budget recovery dollars.

I've now learned that City Councilmembers Jackie Clarkson, Arnie Fielkow, Stacy Head, and Shelley Midura have cosponsored an ordinance that would require the Mayor to disclose plans to use money from the capital project fund or D-CDBG funds and to obtain Council approval for those plans.

Read the ordinance here.

The ordinance only applies to "City Hall Project Worksheet 7746," which represents the proposed purchase of the Chevron Building.

It does not tackle the larger questions about the mayor's power to use D-CDBG and revolver fund money in a discretionary fashion and would not preclude the mayor from applying recovery dollars to other projects such as the proposed LSU/VA hospital or the proposed renovation of Municipal Auditorium with little disclosure or oversight.

The measure will be up for a vote at City Council on Thursday, January 21st.

Rumors I wish were true: Stormy Daniels and Trashanova

2010-01-13T10:49:00.006-06:00

I was so excited when I heard the rumor that garbage contractor Sidney Torres, the Trashanova, had fallen for your next Senator from the Great State, pornography entrepreneur Stormy Daniels.

Unfortunately the rumor is false. That is too bad because it sounds like a lot of fun.

Can't you picture the type of hilarity that would ensue if Stormy, SDT, Kid Rock, and Lenny Kravitz jumped on a campaign bus tour through the North Louisiana Bible Belt as the Sinator's opening act?

A guy can dream.

I was able to speak to a source close to Daniels' campaign for Senate against David Vitter.

"I have heard from students at UNO that Sidney Torres was dating a UNO student named Stormy since at least the spring of 2009. I do not know the current status or validity of that relationship. I have been told that this alleged girlfriend of Mr. Torres's has blond hair and similar upper body attributes to Stormy Daniels. But they are two different people."

Too bad!

HUD Monitoring Disaster CDBG Funding More Closely?

2010-01-12T10:54:00.006-06:00

For more than a few weeks, American Zombie and I have been wondering aloud Mayor Ray Nagin administration's interpretation of laws governing money outside the parameters of the regular city budget, as well as City Council's oversight of that money.

Of particular concern is the "revolver fund" that the Louisiana Recovery Authority established to advance cash to parishes to pay for projects that will eventually get FEMA reimbursement. Nagin wants to use some of that money to buy the Chevron Building and convert it into a new city hall - even though the council has already rejected such a move.

A statement from Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett makes it clear the administration believes it has discretionary power over funding streams like the revolver fund and that the council has no legal oversight.

"The matter before the City Council was the appropriation of funding from one capitol [sic] account to another ..not an approval of the acquisition. Funding appropriation –Legislative Branch authority per the charter, Purchases –Executive Branch authority per the charter."

To clarify, Quiett is saying that the proposal to buy the Chevron building that was shot down by City Council over the summer involved the city budget. Because the most recent proposal only uses money from state and federal sources, such as the revolver fund, there is no formal oversight process through which the administration must seek City Planning Commission or City Council approval. Whether that is accurate is debatable, but it is the administration's position nonetheless.

Presumably, that position extends to the city's use of the Disaster Community Development Block Grant money, for which the LRA is the local administrator of federal funds from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department. The City Council had obligations when it comes to this money in that the LRA required a recovery plan with community buy-in, including Council approval, before the agency would release the HUD funds.

However, when it comes time to allocate real capital to a specific project, the modification of the original plans accepted by the LRA, or the reallocation of surplus money from a specific project, it would appear that the Mayor has vast powers.

Once the Council approves a framework for yearly DCDBG expenditures, only the LRA or HUD would be in position to block funding for a specific project submitted by Nagin on the grounds that it deviates from the original recovery plan, anticipated expenditures were vaguely documented or if HUD regulations are otherwise violated.

Since the Obama administration took office and Shaun Donovan was sworn in as the new secretary, HUD has been more proactive about cracking down on dysfunctional projects. HUD's receivership of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, for instance, has been totally reshuffled amid widespread allegations of graft and waste.

There is also evidence that HUD is taking a fresh look at its role in the hurricane recovery process both in New Orleans and elsewhere.

In November, AP reported that a HUD review had discovered over 11 million in unaccounted disaster money at the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) that had fallen victim to poor record keeping or a failure to follow HUD regulations.

That same week AP also reported that HUD had rejected Texas' recovery plan for rebuilding areas badly battered by Hurricane Ike in 2008. The notification letter from HUD, which you can read here, suggests that Texas' plan was denied for failures to comply with federal citizen participation requirements.

Are these recent actions highlighting regulatory compliance issues in New Orleans and Texas indicative of a much more widespread concern on the part of HUD administrators that processes governing the efficient use of recovery money were poorly constructed, inattentively followed or even explicitly violated?

What effect will increased federal scrutiny have on controversial local projects, such as the Municipal Auditorium renovation and the purchase of the Chevron Building, for which the Nagin administration claims the City Council has no stipulated oversight authority?

To what extent does the council concede or dispute the administration's interpretation of their oversight authority over irregular DCDBG and revolver funds? How does that effect their ability to halt the mayor from spending money on major developments should they wish to do so?

While the upcoming elections have clearly taken center stage, the dispute between the outgoing administration and the City Council over the discretionary use of federal and state recovery dollars is the most important subplot for engaged citizens to closely monitor. It is this fundamental interpretation of City Charter and of HUD rules and regulations that looms over the individual development controversies that grab headlines - from Municipal Auditorium to Lower Mid-City and the proposed medical complex.

When news broke that the Chevron Building purchase was revived, City Council members expressed surprise and confusion. Yet since the New Year, there appears to have been no follow-up. It should be very interesting to watch what happens as specific projects begin to initiate expenditures.

Warren Riley! Stacy Head! In 3-D! On Ice!

2010-01-11T10:01:00.008-06:00

Update: WDSU just caught up with Superindendent Riley and he appears to be meekly backing off. It makes his comments on the radio last week all the more slanderous.

Off-camera, Riley told WDSU that he doesn't believe the e-mail is a big deal, that he's never seen the message and he doesn't have proof that Head actually sent it.

Update II: Seriously, I cannot believe how pathetic this walk back is by Riley. Unbelievable. He should apologize to WBOK's listeners and to Councilwoman Head.

--

Warren Riley leveled some pretty serious and racially charged allegations in an interview with WBOK last week. I really wish WBOK archived its broadcasts. Thankfully, the T-P's Brendan McCarthy was tuned in.

The allegations about Head's e-mail came up when a radio station caller, who went by the name Malcolm, mentioned the alleged message.

The caller said: "I hear some of our council members are sending e-mails out -- one in particular, Ms. Head, sent an e-mail saying she hopes you fail and let's not approve your budget. But anyway, she's the failure in all of this anyway.

Riley responded: "You forgot the N-word that was in that e-mail, from what I understand."

"Well, yeah, you heard about it," the caller responded. "She said 'Let's make this Negro, not Negro, but she used that other one."

The caller then lambasted the media for ignoring the message. "The news (media) did not, nobody else put that out, nobody else interviewed, nobody made a big story about that. And if it was somebody of color that sat on the City Council who had that kind of behavior, would have been asked to step down."

Those who know Stacy Head personally have been quick to insist that this allegation is baseless and that such behavior would be unimaginable. But considering Stacy Head's history of off-color and, in a general sense, prejudiced language, Riley's allegation must at least be considered plausible.

Saying something that reflects ignorance, prejudice, or bias is different from saying something indisputably racist with malicious intent. Riley's accusations, if true, would be far more condemning of Head's character than her casually offensive observations in the Walmart checkout aisle.

If Head indeed used that epithet toward anyone, she would have to resign. She should not and cannot represent a population for which she has such an expressed, visceral hatred. The public pressure would be intense and well-deserved.

Luckily, we don't have to live in a world of 'what ifs.' Warren Riley claims Councilwoman Head used that particular slur in an e-mail. He should immediately produce the email. Regardless, news organizations should submit a public-records request to Head to obtain it.

Head's colleagues should hold immediate hearings to demand Riley produce the email, to censure Head if he can come through, or to call for Riley's ouster if he cannot.

If this email does not exist, Riley would be guilty of an extraordinarily insidious, divisive and manipulative slander. He knew that the forum he chose to air this allegation, WBOK, would not challenge him. He knew he was speaking to an audience predisposed - because of Head's past intransigence and WBOK's listener base - to believe a plausible, even if baseless, allegation of racism about the councilwoman.

And maybe he thought Head would prefer to ignore the story and minimize its media echo amid a tough reelection fight instead of throwing down the gauntlet to make him prove his charge.

Stacy Head should not and cannot simply ignore this story. Merely asserting that the allegations are totally baseless and false, as she did to the Times-Picayune, is not enough. Because of her salty language in the past, there is a special burden on her to substantively prove her innocence to the extent that she is able. When the e-mail controversy first began, Head took it upon herself to release a large set of emails to the public by publishing them for download on her website. Those emails have since been taken down. She owes it to herself and her supporters to more substantively address her views on race, language, and the allegations being leveled by Warren Riley, perhaps first by reopening her email outbox to additional public scrutiny.

As someone who has interacted with Stacy Head and parsed all of her emails released to date, I personally, have an extraordinarily hard time believing Riley's accusations.

This is different than a blind caller on talk radio throwing out an accusation. This is the Police Superintendent, one of the most important and powerful people in the city.

For someone of that stature to level this kind of accusation without prepared evidence is irresponsible, dangerous, and wrong.

It's not just manipulative.

Mr. Riley seems... a bit... delusional, and here's what I mean:

Riley said the recent release of a poll - showing that only 33 percent of citizens are satisfied with the NOPD - was timed to dissuade him from entering politics. The poll was unveiled by business leaders shortly before the political qualifying period. Riley also alleged The Times-Picayune chose that week to release several negative stories about him.

"There's a revolution going on, and we are missing it," he said.

Riley also criticized the slate of mayoral candidates and promoted his tenure as police chief.

"You know, I listen to the mayoral candidates," he said. "I run a bigger organization, and have had bigger budgets than any of these individuals. And I'm not knocking any of them. I'm just saying, I have had the ultimate challenge. The only person ... there are two people who have bigger challenges than I. And that's Mayor Nagin and President Obama."

Riley appears to be saying that he was all set to enter the mayor's race until that poll, which showed faith in the police force at an all-time low, was released.

Riley apparently put out feelers for a mayor's race over the summer before explicitly announcing in August that he would not seek that office, saying that he had "absolutely no interest."

So Riley is essentially saying that just weeks before the qualifying deadline, with no money raised, and with no campaign team assembled, he was considering swooping into the mayor's race. That is, until, a poll was strategically released to demonstrate his department's almost cartoonishly low approval ratings. Riley is intoning that he had a really great shot at raising money and gaining popular traction had it not been for that poll.

Think about how crazy that is.

Objectively speaking, Riley has presided over one of the most dysfunctional police forces in the country, to say nothing of his own conduct during his career on the force. The feds are looming over the NOPD for its unjustifiable pattern of police brutality, missing evidence, and who knows what else. Hasn't Riley been one of the most unpopular figures in local politics for over two years? Would people argue that the poll released in early December said something they didn't already really know?

If Riley had assembled his record of sloppy, ineffective catch-and-release, fire-when-ready police work during a Presidential administration that put any effort into exercising the powers of the Clinton administration's COPS bill, the NOPD might currently be in the control of a federal receiver right now because systemically discriminatory pattern and practice.

He's not just delusional and silly. He's not just calculating and manipulative.

He's desperate.

Riley's plans, given that this conspiracy of unpopularity dissuaded him from seeking the Mayor's office?

"I'm looking at a public venture ... with a couple people here in the city that I think would be profound and lucrative," he said. "I also am looking at another position that I will absolutely not talk about. Regardless, I am going to do well no matter what. As I stated, my future is bright. If I don't work another day in my life I'll be OK. I'm not just a police chief."

Rabid John Georges demonstrates comedic value to Dems

2010-01-08T23:37:00.007-06:00

Update: Now with video below

This was recorded at tonight's meeting of your Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee.

John Georges goes rabid at OPDEC endoresement forum from Eli Ackerman on Vimeo.

Apparently, Georges flew off the handle.

There should be even crazier audio or video floating out there. I will see if I can get it.

And by the way, OPDEC has officially endorsed:

Troy Henry for Mayor
Arnie Fielkow and Cynthia Willard-Lewis for Council at-large
Susan Guidry for Council District A
Corey Watson for Council District B
Kristin Giselson Palmer for Council District C
Cynthia Hedge-Morrell for Council District D
Austin Badon for Council District E
Dwight McKenna for Coroner
and Karen Carter Peterson for State Senate District 5.

Now, here is some video of John Georges exhibiting no shame whatsoever. It is amazing.

John Georges untethered from Eli Ackerman on Vimeo.

Punchline: Omg omg, a press meme

2010-01-07T10:47:00.011-06:00

First, let's talk briefly about how and why Ed Murray left the race and what it means electorally and symbolically.

Clancy D's narrative of events is similar to what I have heard. Apparently, Murray disappeared for a few days after seeing some pretty dismal poll numbers and returned with the decision not to continue his run for office. He then announced the decision to the press without consulting his political bffs or his campaign staff.

The rest of Clancy's story - that advisers told him he'd have to find a half million bucks, make the election about race, and that Murray refused to go there after some soul-searching - leaves some stones unturned.

Chris Tidmore then went live with a story about a possible buyout from the Georges campaign.

Oyster gives us a cathartic profile of the reactions of some lovely conservative blogs who, of course, immediately reached the conclusion that everything is the White House's fault.

Clancy also accidentally (in the comments of this post) sort of confirmed that Georges' people have been pushing photographs and/or video that might be embarrassing to Mr. Murray. Since nobody else will, I will add a little bit of detail. There may be some embarrassing material circulating about Mr. Murray's fondness for wine. But considering that we generally accept politicians who drink, and even make drinking a standard benchmark of the campaign trail - see Batt, Jay or Clinton, Hillary - nothing that has been described to me would end Senator Murray's career. Even the worst rumor I've heard would just be really embarrassing and politically harmful if it were released at the right time, but not something that would make me think Senator Murray is a dishonorable human being.

So my sense of Murray's decision was that, despite the general sense from a couple of leaked internal poll numbers that he was running in second place, he didn't think he could win the election.

Let me say that again: HE didn't think he could win the election.

Clancy DuBos insists that Murray came to some sort of moral realization.

Murray’s top supporters and close friends are hurt, and most don’t understand his logic. But anyone who looks at Murray’s decision as a moral choice — particularly anyone who knows Murray — should have no difficulty understanding his decision. I spoke with Murray on Sunday afternoon and, while the conversation was “off the record,” I got the clear impression that he wanted to follow his inner moral compass, not his steering committee’s political advice, on this one.

For whatever reason, the explanation that it would take some nasty racial divisiveness on Murray's part for him to win is assumed to be reasonable. Yet, the fact that his advisers were telling him he was going to have to raise another $500,000 - $700,000 is just passed over as though it is easy or even possible to raise and spend a half million dollars over the next thirty days. Nor does anyone seem to point out that Murray was the most recognizable African American candidate going into campaign season, had already spent more money on advertisements than any African American candidate, and yet apparently still couldn't crack 20% in the internal polls that have been reported.

Here's the real dirty little secret about Ed Murray - he's a horrible candidate.

State Senator Ed Murray is a horrendous public speaker. HORRENDOUS. He's quiet, he mumbles. He trails off at the end of sentenc...

Again, he was the highest profile black candidate in the race BEFORE he unloaded his campaign war chest on an expensive two minute television commercial. I didn't see every single debate, but in the ones that I did, Murray was getting destroyed. He wasn't being attacked, he was being ignored - he was barely part of the conversation. John Georges, for all the sleaze, is out there talking about getting Charity and Methodist hospitals open. What the hell was Ed Murray's rallying cry?

And even in the internal polls that showed Murray to be the front-runner among African American candidates, his lead over Henry for that distinction wasn't even outside the margin of error.

So when you consider that Murray was going nowhere fast in his own polls even though he'd spent the most and had the best name recognition, it doesn't seem like his decision to drop out of the election was against the grain.

Mitch Landrieu is certainly the front-runner in this election and could indeed obtain the votes needed to avoid a runoff but I have a hard time believing that Mitch Landrieu is substantially better off today than he was before Ed Murray made his announcement.

One could argue that Landrieu is going to earn a lot of Murray's voters but one could just as easily argue that Murray's departure heals a fracture in the African American electorate and will lead to a more unified effort to mobilize voters on behalf of Mr. Henry, Judge Ramsey, or Mr. Perry.

The reason that I think the media and others have fixated on Murray's departure is that Murray was the only African American candidate from the African American political lineage that fought so hard for a fair share of municipal power over the last five decades. That is a major development within the African American political community, which is, to throw out a major generalization, the place where white people go to try to figure out what all African American people must be thinking. When, for instance, ~~the Louisiana Weekly~~ the New Orleans Tribune writes that Ed Murray's exit represents a "betrayal of the African American community..."

...what the Tribune is saying is that Murray is betraying the particular political lineage that helped him get to the State Senate in the first place, a political lineage that since Katrina, has lost a lot of real political power.

But after reading that, one might come to the conclusion that Senator Murray must have been the consensus black candidate to hold the Mayor's office.

That view isn't supported by evidence.

Murray was going no where fast.

With the election a month away, the best known black political candidate, the candidate who spent the most money on signs and advertising, was only polling in the teens in a city that is two-thirds African American.

Yesterday, Troy Henry pulled a classic stunt to ensure attendance at yesterday's press conference so he could then lambaste local media. He is upset because he believes the media is pushing a meme that the mayoral election is over and that Mitch Landrieu is going to be the next Mayor of New Orleans.

He doesn't think that meme is fair. He thinks that if the media spreads the idea that Mitch Landrieu is probably going to win, voters will be unduly influenced to tune out the campaign.

"What we don't want to do is begin to put in the minds of all voters that this is a fait accompli, that this is not a real race, that this is an anointment. That's not fair to any of the candidates. And the fact that some of the reports have categorized this in terms of race, it's disingenuous to all of the African-American candidates. It's not fair."

Read the whole article or watch the press conference to get a sense of what he said overall.

There are a couple of points I think he was trying to make.

1. The press is spending too much time analyzing electoral prospects and not enough time reporting the positions of the candidates, and that's not fair to African American candidates or to the African American community.

2. The analysis of the press - that it is going to be nearly impossible for anyone to beat Mitch Landrieu - is wrong.

I agree that the media tends to fixate on the theatrics of the election - the horse race itself - and not on positions and values of candidates relative to the problems the city faces. I agree that this hurts African American candidates and the African American population, but it also hurts everyone in this city. The public should know who their choices are and what differentiates them from one another. Mitch Landrieu should be forced to really prove he knows "what to do and how to do it" by being asked to provide some basic detail about what it is he's going to do and how it is he plans to do it.

But in the end, it's kind of hard not to say 'tough sh-t.' That is how the media works.

And on point two, I think it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for anybody to defeat Mitch Landrieu on Election Day. That was true before Ed Murray dropped out of the race and it is true now. It would take a sizable financial investment and an lightening fast organizing effort to mobilize enough voters - white and/or black - to overcome Landrieu. You need more than a month to build a political machine from scratch. Troy Henry maybe has the money to get his name out there but probably can't scramble the necessary field outreach. James Perry has performed very well at the debates and maybe can get some television more television exposure but the guy doesn't even have a sign on the front door of his campaign headquarters, let alone in the lawns of supporters. I'm not sure most voters have even heard of Nadine Ramsey.

We are not at the beginning of the campaign anymore, we're already approaching the end. There is one month to go. They say that's an eternity in politics but it really isn't. A month is a month. With Landrieu reportedly 20 points or more ahead of everyone else and earning significant shares of the African American vote himself, we might soon approach official dead girl or live boy territory...

With regard to Henry's assertion that writers wrongly "categorized" the electoral dynamics in terms of race, it is kind of hard to ignore the entire last half century of elections in this city.

Since the VRA, municipal elections in New Orleans have been about the realization African American political power and the mobilization of African American voters to win basic political representation for the first time. In this election, African American community leaders are struggling to unite behind a consensus candidate, to mobilize demonstrable support for any African American Mayoral candidate - but that was true before Ed Murray got out of the race.

If Henry is upset with this analysis insofar as it has resulted only since Mr. Murray ended his candidacy, well then he has a real point.

The press could have written an article about the African American leadership crisis well before Ed Murray ended his campaign.

It's a sad thing.

Mitch Landrieu is a polished, recognizable politician but it ain't like he's the second coming.

The Line

6. Rob Couhig

5. Nadine Ramsey

4. James Perry

3b. John Georges

3a. Troy Henry

1. Mitch Landrieu

Stuff Real Mayors Do

2010-01-02T14:50:00.005-06:00

Mayor of Philadelphia spends New Years' Day speaking to inmates.

On New Year's Day, while many Philadelphians were enjoying bowl games and parades, Mayor Nutter was up early and delivering a message of hope - with a little tough love mixed in - to the inmates of seven of the city's correctional facilities.

He was joined by about 40 clergy members, from a number of denominations, for the annual Ecumenical Services and Civic Engagement Visit to the Philadelphia prison system.

Part of Nutter's message to the clergy, which started at a breakfast meeting, was a practical accounting of money and choices.

He said that of the city's nearly $4 billion operating budget, 24 percent is spent on all the components of the criminal-justice system.

"We don't need more incarceration, we need more education," he said. "Some of these people don't need to be locked up, they need a job."

The message to the 200 inmates at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility - his first stop - was just as pragmatic.

"We spend a lot of money to keep track of you up here," Nutter said. He told them it cost $30,000 a year for each prisoner, compared with $10,000 for a community-college student.

"Where do you think I'd rather spend our money?" Nutter said.
--
Before he left Curran-Fromhold, two inmates, Lynwood Ray and Alex Naranjo, presented Nutter with a portrait of him they had painted. He told them he would hang it in City Hall.

Later, Nutter said that it was "painful and personal" to see talent wasted in prison and that the city could be doing more to help inmates.

"It just shows you, when properly motivated and directed, every one of these men and women can be doing something totally different and don't have to be in prison," he said.

When the entourage arrived at the Riverside Correctional Center for women, Nutter received a foot-stomping, hand-clapping, rock-star welcome.

His message was the same. Have a reentry plan. Play by the rules. Stay away from bad influences. And don't return.

"Never, never, never come back to this place," Nutter said to the about 125 women in attendance.

That's all for today's installment of Stuff Real Mayors Do.

Process Matters: The Revolver Fund and the Chevron Deal

2009-12-31T00:22:00.008-06:00

I think WDSU was the first to report on it but the Times-Picayune has a story as well.

I also learned earlier today that the city was again pursuing the acquisition of the Chevron Building and the abandonment of City Hall. The section 106 (historic review process) notice is here and supporting material is here.

Both of those articles remind us why this is news. Over the summer, the administration negotiated with Chevron Corporation to potentially purchase the Chevron Building from the oil giant for the price of $8 million, pending the process stipulated by City Charter.

There was a process. The City Planning Commission held a hearing and a vote. The City Council held a hearing and a vote.

City Council voted against the project.

So some members were apparently surprised today to learn that the administration was going to go ahead with the purchase and relocation anyway. Travers Mackel reeled in Shelley Midura:

"This is news to me," she said. "(The information) is not factual. The city determined in July that it would not buy the Chevron Building and would not move any city offices into that building."

Frank Donze also caught up with the Councilmember from District A:

She said she has "serious concerns about what is going on here" and described any effort to acquire the Chevron complex with state and federal money as "an undisguised attempt to avoid the council's involvement, and, unfortunately, part of a disturbing pattern of this administration."

Later, I emailed Councilman Arnie Fielkow for his thoughts:

We only learned of this today and are trying to get many of the same questions answered. I, and many other cms, do not support this! The entire project needs to be better thought out, master planned and left to the next administration and council!

And Councilwoman Stacy Head for hers:

I have no idea how he plans to do this without council approval. I am calling around to find out.

I also emailed Ceeon Quiett at the Mayor's Office of Communications. Here is what she wrote back:

The matter before the City Council was the appropriation of funding from one capitol account to another ..not an approval of the acquisition. Funding appropriation –Legislative Branch authority per the charter, Purchases –Executive Branch authority per the charter. The Mayor and the City Council both believe in the relocation of City Hall and the viability of the Chevron building. To this day, as the media has reported, leaking roofs, lack of hot water, broken elevators remain. As you remember FEMA has recognized the depth of damages to 1300 Perdido St. City Hall. Over $5million has been approved by FEMA for City Hall.

--

I think the administration is arguing that City Council and the City Planning Commission had oversight power over the original proposal to acquire the Chevron Building and mothball 1300 Perdido St. from this past spring and summer because at that time, they were being asked to fund the purchase using the city's capital budget.

Indeed, the city's original deal was to purchase the Chevron building for $8 million by using the $5 million FEMA has pledged for damage to our current City Hall and cobbling together the other $3 million through bond sales and the capital improvement budget.

This time is different, from the Mayor's perspective, because the executive is simply moving forward with the execution of a purchase and is not pursuing funds from the budget, which would reengage the a cycle of public hearings and votes by Council and the City Planning Commission.

The administration's position is that it did not need approval for the project itself, just the funds to move forward with the purchase. Ms. Quiett reminds us that FEMA has already allocated $5 million. That still leaves the same $3 million shortage for the price of purchase alone, ignoring the cost of renovation as a factor. I suppose that means that this time, administration is going to fill in the rest using funds that they have the authority to move around in a discretionary fashion without triggering a cycle of hearings.

--

I closely followed Dambala's recent piece about the potential pitfalls involved with discretionary use of Disaster Community Development Block Grant (DCDBG) funds, which come from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and are administered by the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA).*

Today, he has a post about today's new controversy about the Cheveron Building in which he indicates the administration is planning to use what is called "the revolver fund" to avoid initiating the CPC and Council oversight process.

The revolver fund was set up by the LRA to help hurricane-damaged parishes scrounge up the cash to initiate recovery projects. For instance, when FEMA agrees to reimburse the City of New Orleans a certain amount of money for damage to a public building, they don't just cut the check so the city can go and hire a construction firm. Instead, FEMA reimburses the city once the work has begun. This protects taxpayers by ensuring that these recovery dollars are applied to restore the infrastructure that was damaged and not to other purposes but it also hurts the liquidity of parish level and municipal governments by requiring them to front the cash for all of these projects. To fix the problem, the LRA created revolver funds to help parish and municipal governments get cash up front. New Orleans can now tap revolver money to pay for projects and then repay the revolver fund when FEMA reimbursement checks cleared.

Dambala says today that:

The problem with that equation is that any money spent under the Revolver system must meet FEMA requirements for spending. If you recall in my previous post, the FEMA requirements state the the money can't be used for new development....they can only be used for repairs of exising infrastructure.

But FEMA requirements aren't that inflexible. FEMA money can be applied to a new development, if it is classified as an "improved project." That is what the city requested in its letter (see the WDSU story or the attachments linked at the top of this post) to FEMA.

I am trying to understand, from a procedural standpoint, how the administration can use revolver money for discretionary purposes. The idea is that the fund fronts the city cash for a specific, reimbursement approved project and then the city reimburses the revolver once the FEMA money comes through. Seems like a simple, clean transaction. But it's more complicated than that.

For instance, under the School Facilities Master Plan, the Recovery School District is not rebuilding every single school for which it is receiving FEMA reimbursement money. Or, under the plan guiding construction for the New Orleans Public Library, the city is not rebuilding every single branch for which it is receiving money from FEMA for flood damage.

One would assume that the city would apply every dollar from FEMA toward reimbursement for damaged libraries (just as an example) to building new libraries, even if the plan is to build fewer libraries in a more consolidated system. But maybe that's not the case. Conceivably, if the city spends less out of the revolver fund than they take in reimbursement money from FEMA, there would be a stash of surplus cash sitting in the revolver fund.

FEMA is not, I don't think, supposed to reimburse for construction that is not performed. If the city uses $10 million in revolver money, they're only supposed to get a $10 million check from FEMA to repay the revolver even if FEMA had budgeted $20 million for their assessment of damage. But I don't really know how it works in practice. It might be that the City allocates money from the revolver and gets an expedited reimbursement based on the allocation instead of the actual expenditure.

Some reader insight on this would be great.

Dambala says it is understood that the money leftover in the revolver when it is no longer needed to front anticipated reimbursements would go into the city's pot of remaining DCDBG funds and could be reapplied to other purposes. Is that what is understood and is that what is happening now?

I also want to know more about how oversight and administration of the revolver fund works. My sense is that it is something the LRA created for the Mayor's office to help with cashflow, is not something that is considered a part of the city's revenue or spending streams, and is therefore hidden from the regular budget process. Does that mean that a hypothetical surplus in the revolver fund is purely a discretionary tool for the executive branch? If Council doesn't have oversight over that money, does the LRA?

If there's anybody out there who can add some detail, answer some questions, or correct my mistakes, please leave a comment or email me.

*I have additional analysis and questions on this matter as well that I'll have to tease out in another post. I have been very curious about unaccounted discretionary spending, the 2010 budget, and the use of DCDBG funds as it relates to the demolition of Lower Mid-City and the proposed LSU/VA. If you've been itching for more information about what Dambala might be talking about, check out this story and video. It'll get your brain churning a little bit but it might give you more new questions than new answers.

Perry outclasses those that bothered to show in CJ reform debate

2009-12-18T13:30:00.005-06:00

What an outrage! I cannot believe some campaign produced a largely unoffensive YouTube video! I give the story that an anti-Mitch video was online for all of an hour a big fat who cares. The Gamblog called it "virtual mud," but I call it unnoticeable dandruff. The only thing I don't understand is why a campaign wouldn't just stand behind the video. It's not a swift-boating, it's a PG-rated parody.

I could be wrong though, I noticed Landrieu skipped out on last night's Mayoral forum. Maybe poor Mitch was still crying about that meanie meanster video.

In other news, there was indeed a forum for the Mayoral candidates yesterday on the issue voters and every candidates agree is the most important issue facing the city, criminal justice.

Only James Perry, Troy Henry, Nadine Ramsey, and Ed Murray made it. Seems a bit odd that there would be any no-shows for a forum on the hottest issue in town, let alone three. The Landrieu and Georges campaigns sent representatives with statements. The Couhig campaign avoided it entirely. I guess they felt it was too risky to send someone across State Street after dark.

To dispense with the sarcasm, last night's forum was very interesting. I wish it had been televised. The candidates were asked to sign onto a ten point platform prepared by the host organizations, which included Safe Streets/Strong Communities and the Juvenile Justice Project. The platform is far from radical, it reflects a lot of the principles that a comprehensive community policing strategy ought to entail. Since most candidates profess to support something called "community policing," it was helpful to have a forum in which some of the ideas that actually make "community policing" different from what we have now were spelled out in at least a little bit of detail.

I will paraphrase the platform that candidates were asked to endorse.

1. National search for a reform-oriented police chief
2. End incarcerations for traffic violations and/or municipal offensives; end incarcerations for people charged with "marijuana 1st offense."
3. End practice of charging suspects of simple solicitation with felony crime against nature
4. Prioritize youth/recreation programs, access to drug treatment and mental health services as part of crime prevention strategy.
5. Create incentives in city contracting process to encourage employers to hire formerly incarcerated individuals
6. Establish certificates of good conduct to help those with criminal records find jobs
7. Establish Office of Formerly Incarcerated Affairs in Mayor's Office
8. Convert vacant properties into housing opportunities for formerly incarcerated and low income families
9. Create a public-works style program to improve public transportation
10. Increase youth opportunities by investing in alternatives to incarceration including employment programs, recreation programs; building positive behavior supports in public schools, and rebuilding the Youth Study Center in way that respects human dignity of inmates.

All pretty benign and unobjectionable, don't you think? Certainly, some planks, like the suggestion of a public works style program for public transportation, are entirely vague, but why would a candidate have a problem endorsing a reform platform like this? Wouldn't this platform seem to generally outline what a real community policing strategy would look like?

Strangely, in addition to those candidates that weren't even there, Ed Murray and Nadine Ramsey refused to endorse the suggestions, saying they don't make campaign pledges as a matter of principle (amazing). Only James Perry and Troy Henry did.

James Perry put on a clinic at this debate. He is well-versed in criminal justice reform issues and spoke very decisively, drawing applause on several occasions.

Henry was also a confident speaker but his constant reiteration of his executive experience and desire to bring a CEO's mentality to the Mayor's office did not play particularly well with an audience more geared up to hear about criminal justice reform than economic development. He also left himself open to Perry's implication that certain candidates (Henry) were "empty suits" and "Nagin third-termers."

I don't know Perry's campaign is really up to the challenge of actually winning an election but he certainly won last night's debate and won it pretty damn emphatically.

Murray was totally uninspiring. He is not a good public speaker at all. His mumbling cadance is one thing, but his closing statement, in which he talked about realistic political expectations, was so bad it was almost funny. Even allowing that Murray was providing an genuine reality check, nobody has ever won an election with a message of 'lower your expectations.'

I was surprised that no-show candidates didn't juggle their schedules to attend and astonished that some candidates refused to sign onto the reform platform given the shamefully low approval ratings for the NOPD and the current direction of our much-maligned CJ system.

One would think that candidates would fall all over each other to carry the criminal justice reform mantle. However, Perry didn't really have a whole lot of competition last night.

And then there were... fewer than before

2009-12-16T19:20:00.002-06:00

Leslie Jacobs has abandoned her campaign for Mayor.

"I'll be going on a mini-vacation," she said. "I want to read a book of no intellectual value and watch the waves for a few days."

This was not unexpected. It had been widely rumored that Mitch Landrieu's last minute entry in the race would ultimately force Jacobs to yield.

In an interview, Jacobs said she made her decision after reviewing results from a poll she commissioned last week.

"Those numbers confirmed what I thought: Once Mitch entered the race, I could not win," she said. "I am a Democrat, he's a Democrat. And I think it's safe to say our bases overlap -- very much so."

Jacobs, a wealthy businesswoman who had been waging an aggressive television campaign, confirmed earlier reports that she consulted with Landrieu before announcing her candidacy on Nov. 18, about three weeks before qualifying opened.

At the time of their meeting, Jacobs said Landrieu told her "there was a possibility, not a probability" that he would run after announcing in July that he would not.

"He said the odds were low," Jacobs said, "but that he would leave that door open. So I took a calculated risk on my part. Mitch had the luxury of name recognition so he could decide at the last minute. I didn't have that luxury."

What does this mean for other candidates?

On the face of it, it would appear that Mitch Landrieu is the most direct beneficiary of Jacobs' decision to sit out. The two were essentially competing for the same pool of voters. I'm sure Jacobs' poll showed Landrieu way out ahead of the field. That he no longer has a well-heeled challenger biting at his heels, he has less work to do.

John Georges is also probably pretty happy that he has one less WMA (White Mitch Alternative) with whom he'll have to compete. Jacobs was going to be the only candidate capable of buying TV commercial time to the extent Georges can. He'll be able to dominate the airwaves.

James Perry might also squeeze a few votes out of the situation. Jacobs was definitely hoping to win over some of the post-Katrina young transplants that Perry has courted aggressively.

Analysis: Meh

2009-12-15T20:33:00.004-06:00

This forum did not lend itself to serious candidates truly distinguishing themselves. As much as people are frustrated by talking points, it is kind of hard to do anything but stick to sound bites when you only have fifteen seconds to outline how you're going to reduce crime. That said, before I watch the rebroadcast this debate to see how it came across on television, I want to share my thoughts on how the candidates fared.

First of all, considering what he had to do, I thought Norman Robinson pulled off one of the slickest, smoothest debates I've ever seen. He was charming and he kept it moving. Big props.

Manny Bruno was hilarious. He should do this every year until he is dead or finally elected Mayor. Jonah Bascle did a great job with his opening statement. I think he should file a lawsuit if they don't do the obvious and switch a few of the red, handicap-accessible streetcars onto the St. Charles line.

Marijuana was also a big winner tonight. Very nice to have two people bring it up, even if it wasn't any of the "real" candidates. I was surprised that no candidate spun off of the laugh lines to make a serious point about how decriminalization of marijuana possession is a big part of real community policing policy, how simple pot arrests suck resources out of our criminal justice system, or to commend DA Cannizzaro for his progressive views on this issue. That would have been a big move for someone with direct knowledge about this like Judge Nadine Ramsey. She whiffed though. I don't know why candidates are still too scared to talk about this like grownups.

The Good:

As for the major contenders, I think that if there was a winner, it was Troy Henry.

His delivery was strong and direct and he didn't repeat himself as much as other candidates. In a forum like this, I think that you have to be unafraid to say I and me. You have to be loud and in charge. Henry did this well. I think he raised a lot of eyebrows.

James Perry also did a pretty good job. Similarly, he was not afraid to be loud and direct. He spoke firmly. He needs do more to emphasize his work as a civil rights attorney fighting housing discrimination and less to emphasize that one time he was a lifeguard for NORD.

The Bad:

Ed Murray needs to get his money back from whoever has been coaching him. You might be able to get away with mumbling one-on-one to a constituent but you can't mumble during a debate. During one answer, he started to say something about the Beacon of Hope but then just trailed off. It was weird.

On more than one occasion, Mitch Landrieu repeated lines verbatim from the youtube announcement of his candidacy released last week. I would have expected something a little better from someone with actual charisma. It came off as phony.

John Georges also had a mumbling problem and had trouble thoroughly answering questions without straying onto other topics or talking points.

The Boring:

Leslie Jacobs, Nadine Ramsey, and Rob Couhig were largely forgettable.

If I were Ramsey, I'd have rather been bad than forgettable.

Leslie Jacobs was really timid and uninspiring. Since Mitch Landrieu jumped in the race, she has had to work hard just to convince people she is still interested in the office. She should have used this opportunity to show that to people. She needed to be louder, more confident, even fiery. She seemed nervous and reticent.

Rob Couhig is just not someone I'm interested in. People told me he was going to make fireworks or something but he was stiff and I didn't pay attention to him.

Stay tuned. I will update this post with additional thoughts once I've watched video.

UPDATE: After watching pieces of the debate on television, I don't think I have much to add. Nadine Ramsey looked even more uncomfortable than she sounded.

The Great Boilerplate Debate

2009-12-15T19:35:00.006-06:00

Just got home from debate number 1. I do have some summary thoughts but first I thought I would publish, unedited, my shorthand version of tonight's debate.

I typed while they talked. I had intended to just write a couple of things down but found it enjoyable to just try and type everything I heard. The fluffy words of the candidates came into my ears but my fingers were only able to type the distilled essence of the product. So if you don't have time to actually watch the debate because candidates spend too much time thanking the moderator, you can just read this summary of the most popular and repetitive catch phrases and buzzwords.

I didn't catch everything and my notation may be a little confusing. I apologize.

I tended to transcribe rote boilerplate when candidates delivered their statements clearly and forcefully and tended to stop typing when candidates began to drone.

Italics reflect cheap thoughts of mine, regular font reflects the candidates' intonations.

Again, these are my actual, almost entirely unedited notes from tonight's candidate forum:

6:01 Norman in.

6:04 Introductions over. Apparently everybody’s poll numbers say crime is the biggest issue. Good for Troy Henry and the intentional comedians to think of something creative.

6:05 Leslie Jacobs gets her first crack at it. Crime on. We need leadership, accountability, collaboration, trust. “Community policing experience.” It’s not just police… I want all NORD centers reopened.

6:06 Ed Murray wants national search. “Community Policing,” knowing people in neighborhoods. Long term it is about education. I’m going to create an office of education in the Mayor’s office. NORD.

6:07: Jerry Jacobs – Look at reasons for crime, not the manifestation of the crime. The law is incorrect. The law of prohibition of marijuana is the worst thing ever. Legalize marijuana! Repeal marijuana laws. Glad Georges and Copelin got this guy in.

6:08 Nadine Ramsey – My solution is “neighborhood policing.” It’s a long-term commitment. We must listen to our neighborhoods. Get the faith-based community engaged, after-school programs, old people.

6:09 Troy Henry – I’m talking about reengineering city government. A comprehensive approach that’s a five legged stool. We need transparency, more jobs, housing/blight. I missed some of his legs, sorry.

6:10 Jonah Bascle – Equal access. New Orleans is dysfunctional for everyone. St. Charles street cars need to be handicap accessible now. You can just switch 5 streetcars from Canal line to St. Charles line. Honest and transparent government. I had to run for Mayor because I’ve been trying to get this done for months and this is my last resort. This kid is just got himself some streetcars moved.

6:11 James Perry – I’m the only candidate that has made a real commitment. I won’t run if I can’t bring the murder rate down 40%. That same day I kicked ass in a debate when people didn’t know a jail from an after-school program. I am going to invest in NORD.

6:12 Manny Chevrolet – I want to go on the record right now by saying I’m against crime. How can we fight crime when police themselves are criminals? Nice. Also let’s grow lots of pot and tax the hell out of it. Two people! Yes!!! Soon they'll stop laughing...

6:13 John Georges wants leadership. Our leaders are in the private sector. With strong leadership we can do anything!

6:14 Some guy named Lambert says we need lots of transparency.

6:15 Mitch Landrieu loves this city with his heart and soul. He’s going to fix it with the children. This is regurgitated word for word from his internet message. We need a national search and hold the next chief accountable. I’m going to stop kids from getting into crime in the first place. I want a public-private partnership for NORD.

6:16 Rob Couhig – I love you Dr. Francis! Police chief needs integrity. Integrity again. New chief. New chief.

6:17 for Leslie Jacobs – re: what is the criteria for a new police chief – national search, for someone with experience leading major change. Someone who will drive accountability up and down. Three I want someone who embraces technology. One time I had a hard time getting an accident report filed. It sucked. It was like the 1950s. We need hiring standards. When the head of PANO that the police can no longer police themselves, it’s time for a new commission..

6:18 for Murray re what the mayor can do - I am going to open up an office of education that is going to coordinate all of the issues between and amongst the different school systems. Times-Pic wrote article (Sarah Carr series, go read G-Bitch) about how difficult it is for parents… We need to coordinate funding for public education. I think that I can get more money for education from BR and DC

6:19 for Mr. Jacobs – what about the racial divide? – Finances really matter. Crime matters. If we had more money, we would be able to do whatever we want. What I want to do, legalize pot, and raise money, we can reduce crime and give everyone money to get whatever resources they need.

6:20 Norman. If we have weed legalized, everyone can just chill…

6:21 for Ramsey- what about more revenue? We need a comprehensive review of our budget. There is a distinction between what we want and what we can afford. We need to see if there are any millages out there.
Norman – what about raising taxes?
Ramsey – No.

6:22 – What is your strategy for blight reduction?

Henry – I have a 2fold approach. Let’s use enforcement tools we have – liens, sheriffs sales, etc. Two is to do what we did in Ponch Park. Use incentives to help residents buy homes.

Perry – Murray made it harder for NORA to buy blighted property, so bad that he had to rewrite his law. We need properties put back into commerce. I have leadership skills.

Bruno – I am also against blight. One way to redevelop blighted neighborhoods is to bring Amish down here. They can build barns in a day. Imagine what they could do with a city block.

Georges – We should do what Jeff Parish does. We need coordination between code enforcement and other departments. I want citizens to be able to go around NORA to buy these homes. We need to add more people to code enforcement but we need to add this step before NORA so that people can buy these things. NORA adds cost to the process.

Lambert – I cannot solve any of these problems. It’s a we thing. There is no I in team. I’m going to use code enforcement. We thing. No I.

Landrieu – This is an experience issue. City Hall is dysfunctional. Blight is strangling us. We have to stop demolishing homes by accident.

Couhig – The Mayor made life hard for me at NORA. We need a Mayor who is disciplined and hard working. We need someone who wants to be Mayor. Livability is a big issue. Blight.

Leslie Jacobs – Let’s get code enforcement going. Let’s invest in NORA. We need to change the constitution to make it easier to expropriate abandoned property. Beacon of Hope is a great example of awesomeness in Lakeview. We also have commercial blight. We need a master plan.

Murray – This constitutional amendment is not a problem. NORA needs proper funding. They have statutory resources but not money. We need neighborhood associations engaged. Beacon of Hope… mumbling… something about passing savings onto NORA.

Jerry Jacobs – The definition of blight can also be poverty. The city needs money. The only way is to legalize marijuana. It will reduce workload of NOPD.

Nadine Ramsey – We need to enforce existing laws. Adequate funding for NORA is one step. 58-60k blighted properties is not a small number.

Troy Henry – We need to rehabilitate juvenile criminals. Let’s reengineer YSC.

On the IG

Bascle – Let’s not just award political pals.

NORD

Perry – I think the core issue is funding. Story about being lifeguard with NORD. Less funding now than when I was a kid. The key issue is leadership for that Dept. and true investment.

Making City Hall customer friendly

Bruno – My face will be everywhere so everyone knows who is in charge. I will hire the right people. Hostesses. Friendly customer service.

Top 3 industries for new business?

Georges – we have to change our image from partying to historic. We need to enhance the tourism industry, attract airlines, we need the immediate reopening of Charity Hospital so we can redevelop downtown, etc. Healthcare jobs. Save Charity, he says.

Re: Charity

Lambert – I’d like to talk about crime instead.

Re: Public Private Partnership

Landrieu – Biomedical, Nagin blew it.

Re: Young people

Couhig – my whole campaign is young people! We will have great customer service and transparency.

Norman – what is the city’s bond indebtedness?

Lambert – Don’t know

Couhig – I don’t know.

Jacobs – Don’t know.

Mr. Jacobs – Can’t see the

Ramsey – Don’t know.

Henry – don’t know

Perry – don’t know

Bruno – A lot

Bascle – A lot

Georges – I know what the Youth Study Center is.

The correct answer is 524-525 million.

Next one: What % does the city receive in sales tax?

Jacobs – after rephrase....

Norman -Does anyone know?

32%, 31%?

Norman is sorry he went there.

Closing statements:

Leslie Jacobs – Leadership, results, regional coalition. Quality of life stuff. I lead a movement to retain youth. I took on our schools. Today our schools have a lower performance gap. We have a powerful charter school movement and it is getting better. We need our next Mayor to get results. More economic development

Murray – I am unique because of my experience in the legislator. I have been floor leader for lots of stuff and I get results. There isn’t a single business here that has asked me for help and hasn’t gotten it. (Maybe the fail of the night if I got this quote right) The Mayor and Council needs to be civil and get together. The Mayor needs to spread the word on economic inclusion. All of those things need to happen, I ask for your vote.

Jerry Jacobs – I’m a Tulane grad and did life insurance. I took a ton of courses until I retired. I learned how to look into peoples’ minds. The city is riddled with crime, economic disaster. We don’t have enough money. I have the ability to look into that. I know how to increase revenue and reduce waste. And it won’t be popular.

Ramsey – Politicians always say what they have done. But why is our city in the condition that it is in. I want a crime plan for each neighborhood, not just one for the city. It will get input. It will hold politicians accountable. We have been failed by big promises and big plans. Politicians need to trust citizens instead of the other way around.

Henry – I’m most qualified and experienced. I have managed big budgets and big numbers of people. I know the recovery needs of all departments and neighborhoods. I’m the only one who has developed an energy efficiency program. If you want experience it is me, if you want on the job training it is everyone else.

Bascle – Let’s stop ignoring handicap accessibility. If we can’t do something that takes no money and no time like streetcar accessibility, how do we fix anything else? I hate how much money there is in these things. Take campaign funds and plug the budget with them. I personally experience failing services every day, nobody deserves it.

Perry – Our best days are ahead but only if we get safer and more prosperous. Our opportunity is in less than two months. They can choose dramatic change. It is the difference between past and future… Remember Barack Obama? Hope. My name is James Perry.

Manny Bruno – Gandhi, King, me. This city is so divided. It can’t be a black thing or a white thing it has to be a right thing. We have problems. It is insanity here. We need a radical, revolutionary thing.

Georges – This is about leadership. I am optimistic. Small family business and now I’m rich! I employ locals. I will fix everything. I will make you feel proud. My name is John Georges.

Lambert – My name is Lambert. I am a working class stiff. My platform is….

Landrieu – I am running for Mayor because I love New Orleans with my heart and soul. Wow regurgitating video again…. Schools, jobs. We need to bring everybody together. AAs whites, Vietnamese, Hispanics walking in same direction. I want to lead this effort.

Couhig – I have listened I’m in talk radio. Livability, affordability, opportunity, fairness. Jobs. Hard-working, disciplined.

Norman out.

Bad Coroner: Port of Call New Orleans

2009-12-15T12:29:00.006-06:00

There is a lot to say about this week's gripping series by Frontline, The Times-Picayune, and Pro-Publica, and I wish I had a few hours to go on at length. Unfortunately, I'll have to dart in and out.

If you haven't been keeping up, please get yourself started now.

I don't know exactly what's coming up in this series but I would like to briefly to discuss the race for coroner.

Though it had been assumed for a long time that the longtime incumbent coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard would retire at the end of his term, he has decided to run for reelection. At first, it appeared as though he would be unchallenged but an opponent did surface before the end of qualifying.

Dr. Dwight McKenna has entered the race.

Dr. McKenna was also once an employee of the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office, so he is not an inexperienced candidate. He and his wife, ~~another doctor~~ who was recently involved in a tragic and horrible car accident, are behind the McKenna Museum of African American Art and the New Orleans Tribune.

--

Minyard came under fire after Katrina for the slow pace at which his office was able to identify victims and for apparently refusing aid that would have bolstered his staff.

Minyard has been on my own radar since I began researching material for this unflattering profile of Police Superintendent Warren Riley. Minyard came up when I was reading about the death of Adolph Archie, who was beaten to death while in custody after he was arrested for the murder of a police officer. You can check out this scanned clipping of the AP story reporting Minyard's new story, this account in Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force pg. 33, or this one from a 1995 New York Times column by Bob Hebert.

He also was a major impediment to A.C. Thompson's exposure of violent racist vigilantism in Algiers Point after the levee failure. From an interview with Thompson:

The lawsuit brought by me and the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund also gobbled up many months. We sued Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard for the right to copy every single autopsy report tied to Hurricane Katrina. All we really wanted were the autopsies documenting shooting victims, but Minyard refused to give us those, saying he couldn't sort them out from all the other autopsies. So we wound up demanding everything, as we were allowed under Louisiana law. We won. And the coroner now owes the Investigative Fund some $10,000 in attorney fees, which he hasn't paid.

Dr. Minyard is 80 years old now. At some point or another, someone else is going to be leading the Coroner's office. I have a hard time thinking of another city that elects its coroners. Are their any? What are the advantages of having the coroner subject to the political process?

Update: Does Dr. Frank Minyard still live in New Orleans anymore?

End of Qualifying

2009-12-11T17:35:00.004-06:00

Eddie Sapir is indeed qualified to run at-large. So is Darren Mire, of the BOLD political machine. That's going to be interesting. I'll update this post later with more details and thoughts if I can.

Arnie out, Eddie in

2009-12-10T17:25:00.011-06:00

WDSU says Arnie Fielkow is undecided about seeking reelection as Councilman at-large. I hear he is decided. He is not going to seek reelection. I have also heard that the "family issues" cited cryptically by WDSU involve his wife's career and not something weird.

Meanwhile, 71-year-old former Councilman and Municipal Court Judge, Eddie Sapir is going to be qualifying for an at-large run first thing tomorrow.

Update: To be clear, Sapir is in whether Arnie Fielkow qualifies or not.

Update II: Times-Pic says Fielkow is back in! Wow dude, make a decision.

Update III: That story seems thin. I bet he's still undecided. We'll have a better idea tomorrow.

Between Sapir and Jackie Clarkson, the other candidates might have to agree to keep all debates between 5 and 7PM, after dinner and in time for bed.

Another thing the senior circuit will agree on: it's drafty in here.

--

Might James Perry also seize the opportunity and shift his meager resources from the Mayoral election into an at-large bid? It's hard to find evidence that he's gaining enough traction in the analog world to earn a fighting underdog's share of the vote in the Mayor's race, let alone seriously threaten for a spot in the runoff. He missed his opportunity to knock on doors and organize and he'll never raise enough money to play the traditional TV/radio game in any real way. It's not as hard to envision Perry making an honorable go of it for one of the two at-large openings.

If he is warm to the idea, he should get moving.

--

Though the Jacobs campaign denies it, it's hard to avoid hearing rumors that she is still considering dropping out of the Mayor's race now that Mitch Landrieu is running.

She could jump into the at-large fray herself.

--

Elsewhere:

Austin Badon has qualified for District E and Stacy Head has qualified for District B.

Marlin Gusman has no challenger for Criminal Sheriff.

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell may also run unopposed.

Coroner Frank Minyard has broken his promise not to seek reelection. I hope someone challenges him. Do other cities have elected coroners?

Tomorrow, Virginia Blanque is still expected to join the fray for District A and Corey Watson for District B. I think District A could get even more crowded. Same for District C.

--

Just one more day of qualifying. We'll know for sure who is running for what by the end of the day tomorrow.

--

Late update:

If Arnie qualifies, runs, and wins. He's signed up for four years.

If he's qualifying because he's really still undecided and ultimately decides to drop out because he wants to make more money and he or his wife want to take a job out of state, that's fine.

But if he runs and wins and then resigns, it will cost all of us as taxpayers and set up one of those undemocratic low-turnout special elections.

That would be lame.

He should really think it over.

Jerry!

2009-12-09T13:20:00.006-06:00

I was at the courthouse this morning to check out the open of the candidate qualifying period. It was boring, just a stupid media set piece where candidates are filmed walking up steps and answering questions like "why do you want to run for Mayor."

It is exactly like a beauty pageant except all of the contestants are ugly.

Walking the gray carpet today:

For Mayor:

John Georges
Troy Henry
James Perry
Leslie Jacobs
Nadine Ramsey
Rob Couhig

For Council:

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell (D)
Susan Guidry (A)
Cynthia Willard-Lewis (At-Large)
Kristin Palmer (C)
Tom Arnold (C)
Jay Batt (A)

Also qualifying, though I must have missed them:

Mitch Landrieu (Mayor), Nolan Marshall III (At-Large), Jackie Clarkson (At-Large), Cindi Nguyen (E), Jerrelda Drummer-Sanders (E), Nathaniel Jones (C), William "Poppa" Gant (At-Large)

Georges had sign-wavers in the neutral ground for the entirety of his visit and rolled up with what was by far, the largest entourage.

He also brought his friend, some dude named Jerry Jacobs.

Jerry Jacobs is running for Mayor at the behest of Georges and former State Rep. Sherman Copelin to distract voters intending to vote for Leslie Jacobs. He qualified today. His name will be on the ballot.

Copelin and Georges telegraphed the move at a meeting of the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee last week so it came as no surprise to the Jacobs campaign.

(Update: In fact, the Jacobs campaign press flack, Cheron Brylski included this tidbit in a Krewe of Truth e-blast today.)

Not that it would come as much of a surprise to anybody...

The Race Race

2009-12-08T10:54:00.006-06:00

What was once a primary campaign to determine which white person and which black person will face one another in a runoff is still a primary campaign to determine which white person and which black person will face one another in a runoff.

Mitch Landrieu's candidacy is so intriguing because he, more than any other candidate, has an opportunity to undercut this dynamic to some degree.

I don't know if it is the conventional wisdom that Mitch Landrieu is a shoo-in to be in the runoff, but it shouldn't be.

Leslie Jacobs is apparently furious with Mitch Landrieu for lying to her about his intentions. She reportedly went to him just two weeks ago to secure his promise that he wouldn't be running before she spent all kinds of money on television advertising. Her campaign staff is putting the word out that she is staying in the race and intending to win it. She will be putting in qualifying papers first thing tomorrow so we'll know by mid-morning tomorrow whether or not she has any second thoughts. Apparently, before Georges announced his candidacy, he was similarly deferential to Mitch Landrieu but I see no indication that he has any interest in quitting now.

Though Landrieu has important name-recognition and a star power quality that will give him an immediate short term advantage and the ability to tap into some real buyer's remorse from 2006, Georges and Jacobs should not be viewed as setting suns. Georges and Jacobs are millionaires. They can afford to get their names out there. Mitch Landrieu has his vulnerabilities just like everyone else.

On the surface, the three of them will be vying for different slices of similar electorates. Georges will try to capture Lakeview, old uptown families, and is going to try hard to mobilize some measure of cross-over African American support. Jacobs is going to try to capture young voters, women, and a lot of business council types who pretend to like John Georges but secretly think he's an a-hole. If Georges and Jacobs stay in, as it looks like they will, they'll have enough campaign power to capture large bases of support.

But Landrieu is still a wild card. As the only candidate with legitimate star power, he'll have the luxury of setting the debate. Depending on how he structures his platform and campaign, he could emerge as a shoe-in for the run off or he could be in for a much tougher fight.

Does Landrieu analyze this election as distilling down to a white primary, a black primary, and a runoff? Does he feel he needs to fight off Jacobs and Georges for a large enough share of the white vote to get into the runoff?

Is he just going to be a more charismatic version of Arnie Fielkow?

Or, does he instead aspire to earn widespread African American support?

Georges is definitely attempting to coddle together some votes in the black community but it's hard to imagine his largely appearance-based efforts will yield substantive results. Jacobs may want to put together that kind of coalition but I don't think she even knows where to begin.

Mitch Landrieu has the Civil Rights legacy of his father, Moon.

Will Mitch Landrieu run on that legacy by demonstrating his value as a bridge builder willing to fight for compromises from entrenched power structures?

Or, will he campaign for citywide office like he and his sister have campaigned for statewide office, as the consensus candidates of the Democratic Party and the chamber of commerce?

He can run as super-Arnie and either win or lose a much harder than anticipated white people primary, and then lose in the runoff to Ed Murray, who, for his part, is reaching out to white voters though his district and his allies in the developer class.

Or, Mitch Landrieu can run as Moon Landrieu's son and take a stab at a real consensus coalition.

He might still lose the election doing it that way, but I'd like him and his chances a heckuva lot better.

---

Quick power rankings:

In it to spin it:

8. Rob Couhig
7. Nadine Ramsey

Lurking not looming:

6. Troy Henry
5. James Perry

Looming not lurking:

4. John Georges
3. Leslie Jacobs

Until further notice:

2. Mitch Landrieu
1. Ed Murray

Mitch Again?

2009-12-07T18:38:00.003-06:00

According to sources close to the Landrieu political operation, Mitch Landrieu is expected to announce his candidacy for Mayor of New Orleans.

This totally rearranges the field.

Maybe he liked what he heard out of that poll he was running a few weeks ago.

It's not paradise

2009-12-06T22:00:00.003-06:00

What a difference in just two years.

The homicide rate is down almost 24 percent since 2007. Violent crime receded 10 percent this year.

Single-stream recycling saved $400,000 in landfill fees in September alone.

The number of homeless people is down 26 percent since last year, thanks to a new partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

The city's inspector general, with more resources, is rooting out corruption on an unprecedented scale.

Members of the city's criminal-justice system have reduced the prison population 11 percent in a huge reversal of past yearly increases.

Licenses and Inspections is processing building-permit applications within two days, and customer satisfaction at L&I counter service is soaring.

The city fleet is smaller by 400 vehicles.

Since last year, filled, full-time positions in city government were reduced 705 to a total of 22,625.

We're writing a new zoning code to replace our 46-year-old version.

And the 311 Call Center has handled almost a million calls in less than a year of operation.

It's just Philadelphia under Michael Nutter.

It certainly hasn't been all roses. These are tough economic times in Philly and not everyone is happy about the cuts that he had to make, but an 11% reduction in the prison population in the midst of a 26% drop in homicides is a pretty stunning achievement for a place bit hard by tough-on-crime sloganeers. It's impossible to read Nutter's op-ed in the Inquirer and not hurt over our failure in New Orleans to come together around these kinds of pragmatic reforms. Mayor Nutter broke a cycle of racially divisive municipal campaigns by putting together a working coalition and won election by the largest margin in Philadelphia history. It was a mandate.

And now, for the first time in a long time, Philly has a game plan.

It's an important reminder not just that our issues are not totally unique, but also that solutions are not so impossible to achieve.

Just need a leader with a little vision and big enough guts to put together a coalition for pragmatic progressive reforms similar to those listed in Mayor Nutter's retrospective.

Would anyone be left unsatisfied with a list of accomplishments like this from our Mayor in his or her second state of the city address?

Blast from the past

2009-12-03T13:23:00.002-06:00

Murderous corrupt cop Len Davis is seeking to avoid the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty and I hope this man is instead forced to rot in prison for the rest of his life. I wrote about Len Davis and Warren Riley's role protecting him from a domestic violence investigation last spring. Riley is a cop's cop, they say.

I'm John Georges and I hate running for Mayor (and this prop dog)

2009-12-03T12:55:00.003-06:00

What the hell kind of campaign ad is this? Not only does the guy look like he hates the dog he's sitting with but it also looks like he hates running for Mayor. The ad is, I guess, designed to highlight Georges' aggressive desire for the office of Mayor but this ad kind of makes it seem like he hates running for office, doesn't think he should have to actually campaign, and thinks he deserves an immediate coronation.

The Times-Pic got in touch with the media consultant behind the ad:

"We wanted to show that John was willing to poke fun at himself," she said. "We're trying to re-introduce him and show all sides of him. Then we'll get to the issues."

It doesn't look like Georges is poking fun at himself. He looks authentically uncomfortable.

I'm sure Karen Carvin Sachat has all kinds of focus group info on this but it doesn't seem to me that people are skeptical of John Georges because he's too aggressive or too committed to being mayor. I think it's more like people think John Georges is a spoiled brat on a power trip. To me, this commercial explicitly reinforces that perception and as a result, might be one of the worst commercials I've ever seen.

I'll miss Pam Dashiell

2009-12-03T10:02:00.003-06:00

I was absolutely floored by the news that she is gone. I saw her just two weeks ago at Wally Thurman's 80th birthday party in Lower Mid-City. Though we didn't know each other particularly well, it was easy to tell that she was something of a kindrid spirit. Not many people really find that sweet spot where sarcastic outrage and unending optimism find balance. I asked her about her recent trip to the White House and went on and on (tongue in cheek) about how I had heard through the grapevine that she had been summoned by the President himself and picked up in a military helicopter at her front door at dawn.

Of course it hadn't really gone down that way.

It was, like it is too often for Ninth Ward advocates, a schlep.

She would have deserved that kind of urgency though.

She once spoke to Open Sound about a vision for St. Claude Avenue.

In my dreams, she was District E's City Councilwoman.

Big people article alert

2009-11-24T13:58:00.001-06:00

Last Friday I wrote sumthin for the Lens about James Perry's effing campaign.

Clueless

2009-11-18T14:37:00.003-06:00

Would Leslie Jacobs, Ed Murray, Troy Henry, John Georges or their campaigns like to dispute the accuracy of the Perry campaign's account of the following exchange at today's debate sponsored by the Afterschool Partnership?

Gina Warner, CEO of the Afterschool Partnership, asked:

“What is your position on the Youth Studies Center?”

--

Troy Henry: I am in favor of the Youth Studies Center. I am in favor of using the youth studies center in collaboration with all the revised library systems that are also being built. So we want to be smart and prudent about how we use our current resources today so where it makes sense to consolidate lets do that but where it makes sense to keep them separate and individual, let’s do that. But we need to make sure we have the Youth Studies Center.

(Nervous laughter)

John Georges: I’m for them as well. We have to be about our facilities. Libraries are certainly one group. It’s all about budgeting and available dollars and the idea is to do like the board of regents ... it’s also a budgetary issue.

(Nervous laughter)

Leslie Jacobs: I think it’s critically important for kids, our students to have a place to go outside of school. Schools have a $1.6 billion rebuilding plan, we need to look how to locate each of these youth studies centers inside our of our school buildings. I think they are important but given the budgetary crisis the more we can co locate with a library, school and other civic centers the easier it will be to staff them and the easier it will be to maintain them."

(Nervous laughter)

Edwin Murray: I too am in support of youth study centers i think it would be great if we could somehow figure out a way to put them in schools and figure out how to just keep the schools open a little longer and also use Library systems across the city. Its important also to try to work in in recreational activities some kind of way to make sure that after school Youth Study Centers to be involved as well to encourage kids in extracurricular activities

(Nervous laughter)

James Perry: I want to be clear because I think some folks misunderstood this issue. The Youth Studies Center is a jail. It is a prison. The subject of some very difficult litigation. Children have been imprisoned for long periods of time with no access to quality eduction at all. We need children to have access to education despite incarceration. If you are locked up for 24 hours a day there is no chance we can decrease the rate. It’s how we define When it comes to juveniles in this system making sure they have a real educational opportunity so that the prison they are in does not define the outcomes of the rest of their lives.

(Raucous Applause)

This is sad. You don't need to be an expert on criminal justice policy generally nor or own local criminal justice system to understand the ongoing plight of children flushed into the hellhole that is the Youth Study Center, you just need to read the news. This is a criminal facility, not a facility appropriate for the detention of accused juvenile criminals. One of the best nonprofits in the city, the Juvenile Justice Project, has a dead serious lawsuit responsible for forcing the concessions made in the treatment of young people held there. Some of those changes include things like prohibiting the denial of medical care, halting 21-hour lock downs, and keeping the place free of rats and mold.

This is not a place to "support" without explanation. If you wanted to give an unsubstantial answer answer to this because you don't really know what you're talking about, the only acceptable statement would be "SHUT IT DOWN."

Now, the account above comes from a Perry campaign press release. Other candidates should feel free to offer an explanation for their ignorance.

Soon Only Shiela Stroup Will Be Left Standing

2009-11-13T11:48:00.003-06:00

Rumor is that this Wednesday's column by James Gill will be his last at the Times-Picayune.

It is hard to believe the T-P couldn't figure out something to at least keep one of their top political columnists through the elections next Spring.

Their capacity to cover important issues in this city is shrinking far too quickly.

Me no like.

I'M A TOTAL SELL OUT

2009-11-13T11:04:00.002-06:00

I have a new post on the politics of affordable housing in New Orleans right.... over.... HERE!

Don't Be Surprised...

2009-11-13T10:55:00.004-06:00

...When YOUR Tulane Green Wave Men's Basketball Team runs surprisingly close to the 20th ranked Georgetown Hoyas in their regular season debut tonight at Fogleman Arena. Tulane Basketball: We Want It More!

Rumors, Murmurs

2009-11-11T00:16:00.001-06:00

1. Might Congressman Cao be switching parties?

There is confirmed chatter amongst local Democrats that this may be in the works. It would certainly make things interesting and might help Cao emerge out of a primary if other contenders end up beating up each other instead of the incumbent. Really, though, I'm not sure there's much of anything Cao can do in one direction or another to retain his seat. It certainly helps to vote in the interests of the district, as he did when he finally voted for healthcare reform the other day. If Cao departs from the GOP, it would certainly feed into the GOP purge narrative that Democrats are keen on playing up.

2. What is Karen Carter Peterson up to?

She's definitely running for Congress but won't announce until after the Mayor's race or even later. The Chairman of the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee, James Gray, has already seemingly endorsed Cedric Richmond. This is of particular interest because Gray is the father of State Senator Cheryl Gray Evans, who is Karen Carter Peterson's BFF. That could make things weird. And what does this say about Cheryl Gray Evans ambition, or lack their of, for higher office? The KCP development may contribute to the reasons why we're not seeing the local Democratic establishment follow the lead of national progressive organizations and the Obama administration in praising Congressman Cao's vote for healthcare reform.

3. Is State Sen. Ed Murray really a front-runner for Mayor?

Yes, just take a look at his fundraising totals for the quarter. For the lazy, that's nearly six hundred grand. We'll get a better sense of what's going on after the official deadline for campaign finance reports later this week.

4. Might we find someone other than Charlie Melancon to run for Senate?

A trustworthy reader wrote the old gmail account about State Senator Eric LaFleur:

E:

He'd be the best candidate of the bunch. But his wife is pregnant with their second child, and she's due either this month or next. I don't think he'll be throwing his hat in the ring. It totally sucks, but I'd love to see Charlie get cold feet, which may be the only thing to make him reconsider. I think he's the Louisiana version of Obama ... young State Senator that gets young folks totally invested in government/politics again.

Not sure there will ever be such a thing as the Louisiana version of Obama but I'd love to hear more about Senator LaFleur.

Who else we got?

2009-11-10T10:12:00.003-06:00

I have pretty much lost all confidence in Rep. Charlie Melancon as a legislator and candidate for Senate. His electoral strategy against seems to be do everything the same as David Vitter but don't get caught sleeping with prostitutes. That is more than a cowardly political strategy, it's also one that has resulted in votes counter to the interests of average Louisianians.

So who else do we have?

Does anyone out there have the cojones to fight David Vitter instead of emulate him?

Here are the names of some Louisiana politicians, some of whom I don't know very much about. I'm just throwing darts here. I'll need you to fill in the blanks in the comment section below.

State Senator Eric Lafleur
Former Congressman Don Cazayoux
Speaker Pro Tem Karen Carter Peterson
Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden
Former Governor Kathleen Blanco
Republican Congressman Joseph Cao

I'd love for any of these characters to enter the race as a Democrat or Independent.

I want real choices.

Btw, here is the wikipedia entry on Eric LaFleur. I don't know enough about his political positions to really have an opinion on whether or not he'd be the best choice but he voted Yes on HB 780 when it was before the Senate Education Committee this last session and really seemed to 'get it.' Anyway, he sounds like a badass:

LaFleur speaks French, plays saxophone in the band Déjà Vu, and is currently training for his private pilot license.

Plus he has a son named Atticus.

Rep. Cao steps up

2009-11-07T23:16:00.005-06:00

Joseph Cao voted yea on healthcare reform!

This couldn't have been easy. He was the only Republican to break ranks. I'm glad he did.

Though I am pro-choice and proud, the Congressman is clearly passionate about his side of that endless debate and at the very least, I respect the consistency with which he couched his reservations about healthcare reform in terms of the language around abortion.

On the other hand, Congressman Charlie Melancon voted no. It's getting harder to figure out how he'd be an improvement over David Vitter.

How about Joseph Cao for Senate instead?

Here is his full statement:

Tonight, Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao (LA-2) voted in favor of the comprehensive health reform bill, H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Of his vote, Cao said: “Tonight, I voted to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion and to deliver access to affordable health care to the people of Louisiana.

Cao said: “I read the versions of the House [health reform] bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding – if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children.

The bill passed the House at a 220-215 vote.

Cao said: “Today, I obtained a commitment from President Obama that he and I will work together to address the critical health care issues of Louisiana including the FMAP crisis and community disaster loan forgiveness, as well as issues related to Charity and Methodist Hospitals. And, I call on my constituents to support me as I work with him on these issues.

Cao said: “I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people. My vote tonight was based on my priority of doing what is best for my constituents.

H.R. 3962 included the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which will keep in place current federal law on abortion funding and conscience protections for health care providers.

Cao said: “Before the Stupak-Pitts amendment was adopted as part of this health reform bill, the bill failed to explicitly include the longstanding policy prohibiting federal funding of elective abortion and plans which include elective abortion.”

According to a letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops dated November 7, 2009, “The [Stupak-Pitts] Amendment will not affect coverage of abortion in nonsubsidized health plans, and will not bar anyone from purchasing a supplemental abortion policy with their own funds.”

Cao said: “Thank to the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, taxpayer dollars will not go to supporting elective abortions, and for thousands of my constituents, this was a top priority. By incorporating this amendment into the health reform bill, my colleagues and I made this bill better, and that is an achievement of which I will always be proud.”

Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond, the archbishop of New Orleans, said: “I am grateful to Congressman Cao for his courage and determination to defend life. I appreciate his work to prevent abortion from being included in health care reform and for protecting conscience rights of health care professionals. I – and, I am sure, many in New Orleans would join me – [I] appreciate Congressman Cao's commitment to the people of New Orleans."

Update: Meffert indictment is here

2009-11-06T14:25:00.001-06:00

Gotta love that big bold "FELONY" dominating the page.

Meffert Indictment

Urgent! Tell Congressman Cao to vote yes on healthcare reform

2009-11-06T13:20:00.004-06:00

The House of Representatives is going to vote on healthcare reform tomorrow. That's right, tomorrow.

At yesterday's Bachmann-inspired rally staged at the Capital, the House GOP leaders promised that not one Republican would vote for the bill.

The Republican leadership is going to be leveraging incredible pressure on their members, including Congressman Cao.

I just called Congressman Cao's offices in D.C. (202-225-6630) and New Orleans (504-483-2325) and asked whether or not the Congressman had planned to vote yes or no.

He apparently remains undecided.

I urged his staff to pass along my hopes that the Congressman will choose to vote yes.

Should Congressman summon the courage to vote in the interest of the public health of this district instead of the in the interest of a symbolic partisan rebuke, he will have my support against whatever sanction he may receive from GOP leadership.

This is our last chance to convince Congressman Cao to do what is right and to do what is wise.

Please let the Congressman know how important it is to you, this district, and the country that we increase access to care and lower costs.

It is time to be resolved.

Make sure the Congressman's staff gets your name. Make sure they know you are registered to vote in the 2nd district.

Tell them why you expect a yes vote out of your Congressman.

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

Federal Charges, Brah

2009-11-06T10:45:00.003-06:00

Mef lab goes down. US Attorney Jim Letten will be holding a press conference at 12:30.

It is starting earlier than one might expect because it will take so much time to read off the counts. Don't they normally do these things starting at 1:30 or 2?

The Times-Pic is reporting that it isn't just Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre who will face a rap sheet. His wife Linda Meffert will also be indicted for accounting work that she did for the St. Pierre syndicate.

David Hammer describes the charges for Linda as "a surprise," which I think is accurate.

It tells you something that Letten is going after Mrs. Muppet.

--

This bit is unadulterated speculation but nonetheless, the charges against Lady Mef indicate to me that Greg Meffert has refused to cooperate or turned down generous plea agreements. I imagine that Letten and his people used the threat of charges against his wife to get him to talk and now they're making good on the threat.

Greg Meffert, as AZ, as pointed out earlier in the week, has seemed in denial about what was coming down the tracks.

I hope for the sake of their young kids that Greg and/or Linda Meffert capitulate to inquiry from prosecutors.

What combination of fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy counts are we going to see on the rap sheet?

--

Because this has been anticipated for so long, it is perhaps easy to lose track of just how disgusting this is.

Greg Meffert wasn't just in charge of the Office of Technology. This guy was Deputy Mayor. He was almost Recovery Director. He was the Mayor's right hand man. It's not just the millions of dollars lost to the Russian nesting doll contract schemes these people were facilitating, it's also the unquantifiable corruption of the city decision-making engine and the cynical truth that our city's recovery effort rested in hands that dropped us to satiate the impulsive desires of their own sticky fingers.

Clown Car: Some quick notes on the Mayor's race

2009-10-29T11:41:00.003-05:00

School Board killer and yurp magnet Leslie Jacobs is almost guaranteed to announce her candidacy for Mayor, from what I've been hearing. She can self-finance, perhaps almost to the level that local monopoly man parody John Georges can.

Jacobs' likely entry into the race means that rumors of a possible reentry by Mitch Landrieu are untrue. Jacobs would not be doing focus groups and polls and taking possible campaign organizers out to lunch if she hadn't been personally assured by the Lieutenant Governor that he was not going to be running. Jacobs and Landrieu are deferentially close.

I generally agree with AZ's analysis that Jacobs might be wiser to take on Jay Batt in District A and also with the general point about how important catering ability is for a potential Mayor.

I have not heard any inkling, however, that Jacobs is considering anything less than a full-out run for Mayor. She was also recently seen at a GOP heavyweights for Jay Batt fundraiser.

Aaaand, I've just thrown up in my mouth a little bit.

I don't understand why Jacobs (or those that are personally close to her) think it is in her or her family's best interest to run for Mayor right now. Not only do I think she has little chance of winning but I also think she could potentially undermine her efforts outside and adjacent to government.

I'm told that her focus groups indicate that African American women are open-minded to her candidacy. I don't want to by cynical but I have never in my readings about the politics ever heard of gender trumping race in a municipal election, especially a municipality with the poor civil rights record that this one has.

--

Former Judge Nadine Ramsey is actually running she says. I have seen two Nadine Ramsey bumper stickers so it must be true. Her climb is so steep - I have no idea why she's running or how she plans to compete financially.

--

Troy Henry is also running kind of sort of I think. Troy Henry was President of United Water when United Water was gunning to get New Orleans to privatize the water board. Henry was in charge in Atlanta when that city actually did. That experiment failed in spectacular fashion amidst staff problems, financial issues, and multiple instances of water contamination. There were boil orders. Lots of them. Thankfully, New Orleans learned from Atlanta's mistake.

I'd like to know if Henry has had a change of heart about whether privatizing basic and critical municipal services is smart policy.

--

Rep. Austin Badon has announced his exit from the Mayor's race and entrance into the race for District E. The pay raise likely made this office more palatable. I see no reason he won't take it easily though I am excited to see what seems at first glance to be a progressive challenge out of the Vietnamese community.

James Perry has announced a leave of absence from the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center so that he can concentrate on running for Mayor. Though he claimed a fund-raising victory for the last filing deadline, his new campaign staff is seems to be sucking up a huge share of whatever was taken in. I doubt they'll have enough money to invest in advertising. Will they have enough for yard signs or mailers?

I've seen some calls for volunteers but I'm not sure the extent to which those calls have been met. Is the Perry campaign planning on doing any organizing work? Have they been knocking on doors?

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see much evidence that the campaign has done anything to penetrate the electorate. An underdog won't win using traditional campaign tactics.

--

Giant Ed Murray signs are proliferating like crazy. He's the front-runner until further notice.

Breaking: Impossible looking increasingly possible

2009-10-26T16:03:00.005-05:00

The Senate healthcare reform bill will create a national public option with an opt-out provision to allow states to choose not to participate.

Remember four weeks ago when the public option was declared dead?

A few thoughts:

1. The progressive grassroots organizations that took all that heat for running tough ads against wayward Democrats deserve some credit. They refused to cave.

2. Harry Reid deserves some credit. Though grassroots pressure made success on the public option absolutely critical to the Senate leader's reelection next year, Reid had to do the heavy lifting to get Baucus and other moderates on board with a public option. He is forging ahead with the preferable opt-out compromise even though the trigger policy seems to have had more votes. That shows backbone.

3. The White House deserves slightly less credit. Though I wish we'd used single-payer as a starting point and think we'd be much further along if we had, you have to give the White House some applause for preaching patience and for allowing space for the Senate to negotiate.

4. We have a bit of a ways to go and a lot more work to do. Call Mary Landrieu and urge her to support the opt-out compromise. Reach her in New Orleans at (504) 589-2427. Reach her in D.C. at (202)224-5824.

We are so close to passing a pretty damn good healthcare reform bill.

Simple solutions to simple problems

2009-10-26T12:19:00.004-05:00

Louisiana University chieftans have been talking recently about having too many students.

Due to a handshake agreement, I can't name names but recently I heard a brief talk by the head of a local public university who was proudly describing the course of action he took when faced with a surplus of aspirant students.

"We doubled the price."

For him, it was a no-brainer. That is what you do when demand outstrips supply, right? That this policy clearly discriminates against poorer applicants is a consequence of the marketplace.

I wonder if it occurred to him that an alternative choice for an institution of higher learning looking to deal with over-enrollment would be to raise the academic standards for admittance.

I can tell you that this University head honcho was not Chancellor John Lombardi of LSU, though he shares Mr. Lombardi's strategy.

The Chancellor of LSU is already on the record favoring higher tuition for his students instead of the consolidation of university boards populated by people who make enormous six-figure salaries from the money students and their parents often go into debt to pay into the system.

To Chancellor Lombardi and his compatriot from another public institution of higher learning in Louisiana, consolidating university patronage positions and raising academic standards is the bad choice here.

I think they're confused about what their mission is.

GO PHILLIES!

2009-10-22T09:42:00.002-05:00

The best team to ever come out of my home town is going back to the Series for seconds!

CBS: Nation will be pulling for non-phony, non-corporate Phillies

David Duke Vitter

2009-10-21T12:37:00.004-05:00

This is worst kind of politics. A sad legacy is revived as David Vitter's reelection strategy.

It takes one second to issue a press release condemning Keith Bardwell. We're still waiting on Senator Vitter.

Update: Vitter still unable to bring himself to call for the judge's resignation or to condemn his actions as racism.

Public option gaining steam? (updated)

2009-10-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

Polls are showing support for the public option holding steady or growing. I am starting to believe that the pressure exerted from the grassroots on this aspect of healthcare reform could ultimately prove to have worked. Progressive dissatisfaction with Democrats for waffling on the issue is being noticed in incumbent campaign bank accounts to the point that I think Harry Reid's only chance at reelection is to be perceived as a fighter for the public option.

Today, Organizing for America and others have called on supporters of healthcare reform to inundate members of Congress with over 100,000 phone calls.

Here is how you can team up with OFA to do that.

Senator Landrieu and Congressmen Melancon and Cao are right in the middle of this and their votes carry considerable real or symbolic influence.

They must hear from their constituents. Please take five minutes to be a part of this effort.

Update:

I made my calls to the D.C. office today.

Have you done yours yet?

Congressman Cao's staffer was very friendly and she willing to discuss the Congressman's position for good amount of time. We bonded. Senator Vitter's office noted my call. Senator Landrieu's office didn't pick up the phone after 10 rings.

Organizing for America shattered their goal of 100,000 calls to Congress. They've more than doubled it, as a matter of fact.

Update II:

Senator Mary Landrieu says she doesn't like the public option because she suddenly doesn't like medicare and medicaid. I didn't know she had such distaste for those programs. That's the first time I've ever heard her say anything like this before and I find her logic to be quite misleading and discouraging.

I don't think she'll join a GOP fillibuster but given the momentum for healthcare reform right now, her recalcitrance is deeply troubling considering the promises she's made to working families in Louisiana over the course of her career.

It's Obama's fault!

2009-10-19T11:17:00.003-05:00

Here's a hypothetical scenario that I'd really like to collect reader thoughts on.

If the President or local Congressperson were to propose a $20 billion program to fund a variety of Gulf Coast infrastructure projects and social programs, would it pass? What if it were $10 billion? Or $5 billion? What do you think the tally in the House and Senate would be?

My initial assumption is that there would not be sufficient votes in either chamber but I haven't given it a whole lot of thought.

President Obama's visit to New Orleans

2009-10-16T15:10:00.003-05:00

I have a whole bunch of really fuzzy pictures from my increasingly useless digital camera right here on the flickr. I took pictures of political people I recognized. From the New Orleans City Council, I spotted Shelley Midura, Cynthia Hedge Morrell, Arnie Fielkow, and Jackie Clarkson. From our Baton Rouge delegation, I noticed Jim Tucker, Walk Leger, Ed Murray, and Karen Carter Peterson. Of course I also spotted Mayor Nagin, Governor Jindal, State AG Buddy Caldwell, as well as Representatives Cao, Scalise, and Melancon. As far as aspirant candidates are concerned, I saw Murray and John Georges but wasn't able to pick Badon or Perry out of the crowd. They may have been there; this is certainly not an exhaustive list.

I had a great time and came away satisfied with the experience. Seeing a Presidential speech in person is not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon. Being close enough to shake Mr. Obama's hand was also very exciting, as I've obviously been an admirer of his for some time.

More substantively, I found his comments to be largely uncontroversial, and therefore, somewhat unsatisfying. Some have criticized the President for what he did and did not say during his junket here. I don't necessarily disagree with many of the critiques I've read, but I'm going to take a different approach and discuss what I think are some significant signs of progress specific to our region during the administration's first nine months.

1.Housing

To me, this is the area in which the administration has been most proactive. Before HUD's Shaun Donnovan can even begin to evaluate housing policy here, he has to at least have people on the ground with the credibility to tell him what's happening. I'm encouraged by Donnovan's decision to send in an entire team to gut and rebuild HANO after Alphonso Jackson's pathetic receivership of the agency. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard of such an intervention before.

2. Coastal Restoration

The Obama administration has created the Gulf Coast Interagency Working Group to deal with environmental issues and coastal restoration. In part, this move seems to be designed to force the Army Corps out of isolation and into a collaboration with local agencies in Louisiana and Mississippi.

3. Criminal Justice

The Department of Justice and FBI have opened up a series of investigations into the NOPD's conduct during and after Hurricane Katrina. I've speculated that this could result in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division possibly pursuing a consent decree with the city of New Orleans.

4. FEMA/DHS

President Obama has cleaned out the local FEMA office, appointed a new director who everyone seems fired up about, and established an arbitration system that will resolve ongoing reimbursement pursuits in less time than the traditional appeals process that local agencies had previously been muddling through.

5. Schools, healthcare, infrastructure

The stimulus bill has allowed Louisiana to compete for lots and lots of money - to accelerate school construction, to fix roads and build new train lines, and to keep clinics open. It is unfortunate that our Governor has decided we shouldn't try for some of this money but that's not the administration's fault. It's also unfortunate that our Congressional delegation - especially since Congressman Cao was not prepared to be effective when he was first sworn in - wasn't able to do more to push important Louisiana-specific infrastructure projects in the stimulus bill.

--

To me, that's an okay first nine months considering everything the country faces right now while also keeping in mind that President Obama is not the Mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of Louisiana. It's not fantastic, but it ain't bad.

The biggest problem is that our local officials are really poor advocates for the needs of the city.

The most common critiques I've seen from others and the biggest complaints that I have myself, revolve around the perception that the federal government isn't really serious about coastal restoration or levee protection, the sense the the administration doesn't care about punishing those who abused their power during Hurricane Katrina, and the idea that the administration isn't resolved to invest in infrastructure and opportunity here on the Gulf Coast.

Are our Congressional Delegation and our Governor all on the same page when it comes to proposing and advocating for the grander initiatives we need to move forward?

Is anyone from our local delegation calling for investigations into post-Katrina racism? John Conyers is, but he's from Michigan.

Is our local delegation united on an independent commission to look into the army corps and the federal levee failures? As far as I can tell, there isn't a significant lobbying effort by our Congressional delegation or our Governor for such a commission.

Are our local elected officials making a case for expanded federal funding of our infrastructure needs? Absolutely they are not. In fact, Governor Jindal seems to be consciously working against federal funding of infrastructure projects. When the stimulus was being negotiated, was the really city prepared ahead of time with a list of projects that need additional federal support? Were state agencies on the same page with the Congressional delegation about the needs of the region?

--

I don't mean to absolve the President of any criticism. It does seem like the President isn't interested in a transformational platform to make Southern Louisiana sustainable or to extend opportunity to its residents. It does seem like he's only taking President Bush's programs and making them work a little bit better.

That's not enough.

Nonetheless, it is the job of our local officials to work toward a consensus vision for rebuilding this region, not the President's. Until our local leadership can articulate that vision and mobilize New Orleanians to support it, this President and future Presidents are not going to risk political capital on big ideas for Southeast Louisiana or New Orleans.

We touched

2009-10-15T18:18:00.003-05:00

It was a privilege to have been able to see the President speak today. I took pictures. They'll be up after the Phillies game.

In other news, I won't be washing my right hand any time soon, my seasonal allergies are gone, and I don't need my glasses anymore.

Strange.

Interference

2009-10-15T18:10:00.003-05:00

According to LJI, the State Fire Marshall made a surprise visit to MLK Charter in order to nitpick enough to order it closed in advance of President Obama's visit.

For Immediate Release
October 15, 2009

On Tuesday afternoon, October 13th, the Louisiana Fire Marshal made an unexpected, surprise visit to, and inspection of Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Science and Technology, ordering the closure of the high school campus for 30 days citing alleged fire code violations.

This news is significant because the school was the site today of President Barak Obama's first stop on his visit to New Orleans, and because of the nature of the purported violations.
King Charter School Principal Doris Hicks said couldn't she believe such a thing could happen on the eve of a visit to the school by the President of the United States.

"We expanded our campus two years ago and have been safely operating the high school in trailers since then without any problems. Suddenly (they say) we're endangering our children?" Dr. Hicks said. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our students. "

The Louisiana Fire Marshal reports directly to Louisiana's republican Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The alleged code violations included having enough fire extinguishers, but purportedly the wrong size, and failing to have sufficient ingress/egress to an empty building.

Dr. Austin Allen, a pro bono architect for the school and professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, indicated the cited problems were in no way life threatening. "We were able to resolve most of the issues within 24 hours; I can't understand why the fire marshal set this 30 day penalty," Dr. Allen said.

King Charter School can only hope this incident actually exposes the extreme school facility crisis being experienced in districts throughout Louisiana.

Louisiana Justice Institute Managing Director and King School attorney Tracie Washington expressed frustration with the situation.

"I can only hope Louisiana's Fire Marshal and Governor Jindal will care about all the children in Louisiana, not just those being visited by President Obama. Interestingly, neither offered assistance to King School in mitigating any safety issues for our students, which certainly raises questions their motives, “ Ms. Washington said.

The Presidential visit to King Charter School was a complete success, despite this Fire Marshal interruption.

Really? A closure for wrong-sized fire extinguishers just a day or two before the President's visit?

That's just bad form.

Dear Mr. President

2009-10-14T22:06:00.002-05:00

I've got this blighted property on my block. I call code enforcement. They tell me to call 311. 311 doesn't work. The street lights are still going out all the time and I blew out my tire on a pothole just the other day. I couldn't get my road home check and then the contractors suckered me out of it. I got a bench warrant for some measly traffic violation, my brother's getting kicked out of NOAH. I've got this nasty cough, stage 8 diabetes, and my shoes are untied. How 'bout them Saints?

Jumping in

2009-10-14T20:19:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking through some things the last few days related to this discussion and the pursuit of justice for victims of unrepentant vigilantism during Hurricane Katrina.

After I suggested that some instances of abuse of power might be more easily prosecutable than others and wondered aloud whether or not some sort of truth commission deal might be appropriate for some of the cases, an anonymous commenter points out:

So the family of Emmett Everett, the black man killed by Doctors at Memorial hospital, only deserves an apology while the white cop who torched a black man deserves prison? The family of the black woman who died at the convention center because homeland security blocked ambulances deserves an apology while the police at Danzinger deserve jail?

This is moral relativism at its worse. If you killed someone under the color of law or in an official capacity as a medical care provider, you should pay the price.

We developed the Nurenberg acccords and International Court precisely to prevent people from using "special circumstances" as an excuse for murderous behavior.
Every human has an individual conscience and the history of human progress our of the ranks of primitive primates has been to get them to use it when mob mentality takes hold.

All true.

But earlier in the thread, the same (I think) Anonymous commenter points out:

Trust me, if these ever go to jury no white juror is going to hold the white defendants accountable. In their minds, blacks went wild and they share a collective guilt for the actions of a few, so the innocent ones deserve no sympathy.

So I guess I'm still not sure exactly what it is you do here.

If we have a moral standard for what justice should be in this case - i.e. appropriate criminal penalties for those that committed crimes during Katrina - but no practical means of enforcing the standard, how do you move forward?

Anon is right both about the plank you walk off when discussing moral relativism and about the low likelihood that a local jury would ever convict a DHS bureaucrat that blocked ambulances from the Convention Center or the Doctors at Memorial.

That's why I'm having a hard time resolving this.

Let's take the Memorial case.

I would applaud a criminal case being brought against Anna Pou. I think it is pretty damn clear that she killed Mr. Everett when he could have very easily made it through the evacuation.

But I highly doubt she'd be convicted. The trial would be highly polarizing, perhaps more so than the other cases, since I think people are naturally inclined to be sympathetic toward a medical professional and because of Ms. Pou's public exoneration tour.

So what kind of justice would be handed down from that kind of circus?

I'm curious to engage in a frank discussion about this. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of my readers are in agreement that these cases should be pursued. But I wonder to what extent impediments to justice exist and whether those impediments limit the ability of our traditional system to actually deliver. Are there practicalities to consider?

--

Moving sideways...

I'm at least comforted by the knowledge the Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States. The administration is serious about empowering the Civil Rights Division to do what it is supposed to do. It's not a coincidence that the feds are now actively investigating some of these post Katrina horror stories to see what they might be able to successfully prosecute.

I am hoping Holder will utilize the powers established under the Clinton administration for the Civil Rights Division to take over police departments characterized by rampant civil rights violations. Forces with a "pattern or practice" of civil rights abuse can be effectively taken over using consent decrees. Cities are threatened with civil rights lawsuits unless they agree to a federal police monitor to implement sweeping reforms. Holder came to oversee the Civil Rights Division as Deputy Attorney General just as it began pursuing consent decrees against police departments in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.

New Orleans was once a candidate for a consent decree from the Department of Justice. This outside pressure played a role in Marc Morial's decision to hire Richard Pennington, who presided over a pretty damn successful reform of the NOPD. Some background here.

This is something that people should pressure our Mayoral candidates about. Would they sign a consent decree to bring in federal oversight of the NOPD or not and why?

Don’t like to hear where I can’t go - updated

2009-10-11T15:39:00.008-05:00

Is it true that President Obama's scheduled trip to New Orleans coincides with Mayor Nagin's scheduled trip to Cuba?

How convenient!

I wonder if President Obama - juggling two wars, a limping economy, a critical healthcare reform initiative, and the coming climate change catastrophe - was asked to reschedule to accommodate Mayor Nagin?

My own views on Cuba are similar to those of Jackson Browne:

Maybe I’ll go through Mexico
Old Jesse Helms don’t have to know
Anyway all the allies of the USA
Travel to Cuba everyday

--

Update: Mayor Nagin has, I'm told, rescheduled his trip to Cuba. I suppose this does confirm that Obama's trip to New Orleans coincided with Nagin's junket - which is interesting. I didn't mean to suggest that the Mayor was giving serious thought to going ahead with his trip. I don't have those kinds of sources.

While we're on the subject, let me applaud Mayor C. Ray Nagin.

No need to adjust your screens. I would like to genuinely tip my hat to the Mayor for reaching out to Cuba and I hope he can reschedule his trip as soon as possible. I think the next Mayor should market New Orleans as destination for transnational tourism and immigration. The embargo against Cuba is going to end sooner or later. Our cultural similarities are so similar we'd be really dumb not to position ourselves to capitalize on the opportunities that may arise from loosened restrictions on travel and trade. It almost always seems like we fall behind the curve on stuff like this but this time maybe New Orleans might be shrewd enough to get ahead.

Since we're here, I really think New Orleans should do more to attract immigrants both legal and illegal. I think we should become a sanctuary city - like most other major cities - by adopting laws that protect illegal immigrants. Though I'm sure there are economic benefits to derive from opening up our arms to the world, my rationale is more based on my own anecdotal observation that this place would be more awesome if we had more immigrants from more places - I'm thinking especially Brazil, West Africa, and Cuba - to hang with.

Not a pretty picture

2009-10-08T21:23:00.002-05:00

When the NYTimes holds up a mirror.

Great article but not fun to read.

Note to the advance team

2009-10-08T15:58:00.004-05:00

I am really looking forward to President Obama's overdue visit next Thursday.

A White House memo, provided by Louisiana members of Congress, said the president would be in New Orleans for a town hall, but didn't provide any details.

Sorry but I'd like to know some details.

What kind of town hall are we talking about here?

Will it be come-one come-all? Obama-style? Room to accommodate a thousand of us or so?

Or will it be invite only? Landrieu-style? Room for only a few hundred?

I want to see the President speak. He might not be back again for a while.

It would make me real sad to miss out.

Get a big space reserved, mmkay?

This sounds promising for the country but not so much for us

2009-10-08T10:52:00.002-05:00

Healthcare reform is finally creaking forward in the Senate. The CBO score on the Baucus bill should pretty much guarantee that the thing is going to finally get out of the finance committee.

Senator Schumer has been leading the charge to rally Democratic colleagues to support sort of public option once the Baucus bill is married to the one that emerged from the HELP committee.

On that front, it appears that a compromise is in the works that seems like it could win the support of blue dog Senators without alienating progressive votes.

The bill would include a national public option healthcare plan, which I think, is a major victory.

But it would also allow individual states to opt out, to prohibit its citizens from choosing the public option.

Now for most of the country, this is a great deal.

For people in Louisiana and elsewhere in the Deep South this might not be so great.

Though I think the politics of denying Louisiana residents the opportunity to participate in a national program like the public option is quite a bit more difficult than halting the creation of the program in the first place, I don't think there will be a shortage of ultraconservative politicos willing to roll the dice.

It also exposes what I consider to be the central challenge to progressive politics in the United States. To what extent can the Democratic Party and the loose progressive coalition that brought it back to power continue to throw overboard minority, poor, and working class families of the South and other ultraconservative areas when it comes to enacting policies that poor and working class families in conservative districts and states need more than anybody else?

If families and individuals from Louisiana, perhaps the state with the absolute worst healthcare outcomes of all, can't take a crack at a national public option program because of ridiculous GOP intransigence and Democratic cowardice, it would be tragic.

Still, I think the right thing to do is to swallow hard, embrace this sort of compromise for the good of the country, and take our chances fighting any state politicians that want to deny Louisiana residents the right to choose the public option.

What say you?

OIG Report on Budget Processes (Updated)

2009-10-07T16:30:00.000-05:00

I've been looking forward to this report for a long time. The way we do our budget is a major source of frustration and a major impediment to some of the easier changes we'd like to see.

Last year's budget battle was awful for every single member of City Council. I'm not sure there is enough time before this year's negotiation but hopefully this report will stiffen the Council's resolve on items where there is common ground.

OIG Report on Mayors Budget

I'll be updating this post with different noteworthy items that I might find as I read through this. You should feel free to do so yourself in the comment section below.

UPDATE:

We've also learned that the city budget is now $68 million in the red, not the $43 million originally estimated.

I have a hunch that we will see the deficit go up again before the next budget is signed, perhaps to close to $100 million.

As it stands right now, the deficit represents almost 15% of the budget.

The Mayor is talking about across-the-board cuts, which as the Times-Picayune points out, is specifically criticized as a poor methodology. The report talks about what is known as 'budgeting for outcomes,' a system that forces a more critical look at what programs actually address municipal priorities and which do not.

I don't really want to talk about boring stuff like budgeting for outcomes but I do want to talk about municipal priorities. That's what immediately jumps out if you page through the OIG review of 2009's budget processes.

If you start at page 27 above and look at where New Orleans ranks on different spending priorities, it will really begin to crystallize.

One of the thing that frustrates me about discourse in this city is that criticism of municipal inefficiencies is too often translated into the language of Jefferson Parish conservatism. The stereotypical impulse to cut taxes and spending as a matter of reactionary opposition to post 1960s political gains has obscured the voices of those who are more-or-less interested in maintaining spending so long as that revenue goes toward programs that extend opportunity and improve quality of life.

It should be really simple to cut waste from the Dept. of Sanitation to shift additional resources to NORD. But it isn't simple here. It is extremely complicated.

I hope that if we can start by producing accessible and accurate budget documents, we'll soon be able to actually discuss whether or not budgets are actually addressing the needs of the city.

Council can win this much for us. This year.

Vitter condones workplace rape by defense contractor employees?

2009-10-07T12:33:00.003-05:00

He was one of 30 GOPers to vote against an amendment that would defund contractors that restrict employees from pursuing instances of workplace sexual assault in court.

The basis of the amendment is the heinous story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who working in Iraq for Haliburton/KBR when she was brutally victimized by several male co-workers and prevented from reporting it under threat of termination.

The Best Mayor in America

2009-10-07T10:23:00.003-05:00

My man-crush grows.

What this guy did to become Mayor of Newark, running in 2002 and 2006, demonstrates the incredible dedication required to triumph in cities with entrenched political machines and entrenched cynicism.

If you haven't seen it, definitely check out Street Fight, a documentary made about Booker's first run in 2006. You can watch it online w/ Netflix.

It wasn't the money that ultimately made him viable. This guy organized.

He took up residence in a housing project.

He knocked on doors. Lots of them. Every day.

Everybody likes comfortable furniture at rock bottom prices

2009-10-05T10:31:00.003-05:00

Kudos to Cliff for bringing us this breakthrough in race relations:

WITHOUT A DOUBT

2009-10-01T23:23:00.003-05:00

YES TO HIGH SPEED RAIL

Good luck with Governor Waaaambulance, Congressman Cao.

His administration was working toward high speed rail before he had a child-like reaction to being made fun of for previously opposing it publicly to score a one-off political point.

Ethics Review Board works to avoid filing financial disclosure forms

2009-10-01T20:00:00.006-05:00

This is lame. And unfortunately it reinforces earlier concerns.

LJI has the docs.

All governmental bodies that spend more than $10,000 a year are supposed to file financial disclosure forms. The Ethics Review Board requested an advisory opinion from the Louisiana Board of Ethics seeking an exemption.

The Louisiana Board of Ethics ruled(pdf) that members of the ERB are exempt from filing financial disclosure reports based on the premise, supplied by Rev. Kevin Wildes, that the ERB's spending decisions must be approved by the City of New Orleans' CAO, Brenda Hatfield.

Is it even true that all spending decisions by the Ethics Review Board must be approved by the CAO?

Wasn't the Ethics Review Board allocated $300,000 in both 2008 and 2009?

Yup. It's true(pdf, page 350).

This doesn't make me happy.
A legitimate Ethics Review Board is a must if we want a legitimate Office of Inspector General.

This whole thing is a serious mess and a serious disappointment.

The only solution that makes sense to me right now is to totally restructure the Ethics Review Board so that it has some legitimacy with the public.

First of all, Campaign Basics, OK?

2009-10-01T16:40:00.002-05:00

John Georges is smart to make his presence known to second liners.

He's going to put his money on the line for this race - he had a drop-top and logo throws ready to roll.

But guess what?

It doesn't take millions of dollars to go to a second line.

Why haven't other candidates made it out on Sunday afternoons to shake hands and kiss babies?

Mefstimony turns out to have been...

2009-09-30T15:50:00.003-05:00

...bullshit

Complete Bullshit

I wonder if Meffert will be called back to the stand for a more hostile examination.

Hot on HANO

2009-09-30T12:18:00.004-05:00

Just in case you don't remember our friend Elias Castellanos, I wrote about him recently.

I have been meaning to do some follow up on this amazing article by the T-P's Katy Reckdahl, which I think people may have missed because all of the goodies are buried after the fold. While I work on that, I want to make sure you've seen this. (Emphasis mine; bizarre formatting theirs)

Letten's office last month charged Castellanos with embezzling the money over three years. During the same time period, the indictment noted, Castellanos had bought a $1.6 million mansion in Davie, Fla., just north of Miami, and five high-end cars -- a Lamborghini Gallardo worth more than $200,000, a Ferrari F430, a Porsche 911 and two Mercedes-Benzes.

It's not clear whether Castellanos has sold any of his luxury items, but he has repaid $675,037 so far, Letten said.

Alan Baum, Castellanos' attorney, said that his client had no comment.

FBI agents and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general's office spent a year sifting through Castellanos' invoices and transactions. Letten said that Castellanos' theft was discovered during an unrelated inquiry. He added that the authority is the subject of other investigations -- "plural" -- that he could not discuss.

--

Castellanos' successor, Edwin Jamora, said that earlier this year, he had put a stop to years of routine payments made from HANO to Genalyn Duka, a subcontractor with a Florida address who colleagues told him was Castellanos' wife.

--

Three years ago, HANO hired Cabellero & Castellanos to clean up its finances, and Castellanos soon made the department his own.

"There was a complete turnover of personnel responsible for the accounting and finance activities of HANO, " according to HANO's independent audit that year.

It's unclear how much progress Castellanos made in the department, which had to be re-created from the ground up after the post-Katrina levee breaches inundated HANO's Gentilly offices.

But when Jamora took over the department more than two years later, he found it in disarray.

By then, HANO had cycled through two annual contracts with Castellanos totaling $6 million and was in the middle of a third, this one worth $2.4 million.

Despite that investment, when Jamora arrived in February he found no monthly statements and no general ledger. Annual state-required audits hadn't been correctly filed for years, he said.

The conditions made it "truly difficult" to detect both well-meaning errors and intentional corruption, said Jamora, who was fired from HANO earlier this month and agreed to an interview.

Jamora, who felt he made real progress in cleaning up the mess he found, was told by federal housing executive Karen Cato-Turner that he "wasn't a good fit" for HANO, he said.

Upon his arrival, Jamora, who had been a financial director at Philadelphia's housing authority, was shocked to find HANO paying $8,000 a month for what he called a "Jurassic" computer package, so outdated that it couldn't run financial statements.

Jamora said he began an inventory of HANO's fixed assets, which hadn't been done since 2002. And he recommended that HANO hire independent accountants to implement past audit recommendations, he said.

Audits from each of the past seven years have outlined significant financial problems, but the problems appear to have been ignored.

Terry R. Cassreino, communications director for HANO, issued a statement after Castellanos pleaded guilty.

"HANO and HUD are pleased to see this case come to a quick resolution with Mr. Castellanos pleading guilty. HUD has clearly and consistently stated that neither HUD nor HANO will tolerate any fraud, abuse or misuse of our funds as we carry out our mission of providing housing options for the citizens of New Orleans." Castellanos' plea comes in the midst of a string of scandals at HANO. Early this year, HUD's inspector general found that HANO's financial statements improperly documented or reported at least $7.2 million in voucher and housing expenses.

In May, the housing authority placed three employees on leave because of a ruse that siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to an employee's son and former boyfriend.

More recently, the man running HANO's Section 8 program -- designed to help the poor afford rent -- resigned amid allegations that he was benefiting from a voucher administered by HANO, despite earning a $100,000 salary.

Jamora said that agency policies sometimes frustrated his efforts to root out problems. For instance, he said, he wasn't allowed to speak directly with HUD or its inspector general; all conversations had to be routed through Cato-Turner.

HUD spokeswoman Melanie Roussell, speaking on behalf of HUD and HANO, said last week that anyone could talk with auditors.

"Consistent with HUD policy, all staff are encouraged to be responsive to investigative inquiries, " Roussell said.

But a May 1, 2008, memo from Cato-Turner to the staff prohibits anyone from talking to "governmental officials."

That didn't make sense to Jamora. "I used to be an auditor. I speak the same language, " he said.

This sounds like a pretty big deal. Castellanos was stealing money - a million bucks - from HANO in the most blatant way but his graft was stumbled upon accidentally in the midst of "plural" other investigations into white collar crime at HANO.

I'm looking for more information about her, but this Karen Cato-Turner character already sounds like a real winner.

She was appointed as the administrator of HUD's receivership of HANO in November, 2007, at the height of the public housing controversy, by disgraced former HUD chief Alphonso Jackson.

Sworn Mefstimony

2009-09-29T20:50:00.003-05:00

I walked into Judge Ledet's courtroom this morning at ten past eleven right as Greg Meffert was getting up to walk out.

"I gotta pee," he whispered way too loudly at no one in particular.

And so I found myself in Orleans Parish Civil District Court to check out the latest chapter in the ongoing crime camera saga.

I ended up feeling ill and going home to rest at the first recess so please check out David Hammer's reporting from the courtroom for the T-P, but I will add a couple of my own observations.

Hammer says Meffert "exuded confidence on the stand."

That's not an unfair characterization of how he conducted himself as testimony began. But watching him fidget in his seat beforehand makes me more inclined to consider his cute joke about talking to Drew Brees about his fantasy team to be a nervous defense mechanism. He seems to be a confident-sounding guy naturally. I remember when he went on Garland's show to defend himself. He sounded just as confident then, though he was also extremely agitated.

He was much calmer in court, and seemed to grow more comfortable and confident as the Jim Garner, the plaintiffs' attorney, established a pace to the questioning.

I suppose the big story is that Meffert even testified in the first place, or more specifically, that he didn't plead the Fifth at every opportunity, but someone must have tipped everyone off beforehand.

I really wanted to hear some audible gasps but none came.

So why didn't Meffert invoke the Fifth Amendment?

Isn't he worried about incriminating himself?

I'm just speculating here, but he wouldn't have to worry about incriminating himself if he'd inked a deal to cooperate with the Department of Justice in the swirling federal investigation of City Hall. If a plea agreement is already in place, Meffert may be assured immunity from additional charges stemming from his testimony in the crime camera civil case.

Meffert seemed primed to throw former employee Chris Drake under the bus. Meffert constantly reiterated how much he had on his plate and how he had trusted Drake and delegated the crime camera project to him.

Also from the T-P write-up:

"Good, bad or indifferent, Hawaii definitely had nothing to do with crime cameras, nothing to do with the city of New Orleans," Meffert said. "I had this buisiness. I had the opportunity to give him (Nagin) a break. We went up there as friends. We barbecued. That was when he broke his ankle, if you remember that."

Meffert said he paid out of his own pocket for a "house" in Hawaii and had the mayor and his family stay there with him. He said he was there to meet with economic development officials in Waikiki, but was also there "for pleasure."

Meffert also used the NetMethods credit card to send the Nagins on first-class flights to Jamaica after Hurricane Katrina, but he hasn't fielded any questions about that today.

Meffert said the credit card was a way to supplement his $150,000 annual City Hall income, which amounted to a "50 percent pay cut" for him after some success in the private sector. He likened it to extra-duty pay for a police officer and said the card had nothing to do with crime cameras or work for Dell.

"My relationship with NetMethods was contemplated from the get-go of my coming on with the city," Meffert said, although he started at City Hall in 2002 and NetMethods wasn't created by St. Pierre until 2004. He said he needed the extra income to justify taking the city job because he had enjoyed an income of "a few hundred thousand dollars a year" at the time.

Meffert said the work he did for NetMethods had to do with kiosks and Web solutions the company developed, not crime cameras.
"I saw no conflict in what I endeavored to do," Meffert said.

Kudos to Hammer for contextualizing Meffert's testimony with the truth. Meffert said that the side pot credit card was part of the deal that allowed him to leave the private sector even though he didn't get a credit card from NetMethods until a few years later since NetMethods didn't yet exist when Meffert moved into City Hall.

For reasons I don't understand, the plaitiffs' attorney Jim Garner didn't press Mr. Meffert on that, didn't follow up with any questions seeking to clarify when Mr. Meffert began receiving payments from NetMethods.

I caught another really interesting quote that Hammer omitted from the T-P article from that same string of dialogue highlighted above.

Referencing the credit card he received from NetMethods, Meffert was explaining how he didn't think having this side account made a difference. He compared it to how NOPD officers have moonlighting gigs on the side of their regular hours on the force.

"When I decided to take a job with the city, the concept [of having a credit card paid for by NetMethods] was introduced to me."

(That quote might not be exactly verbatim, the part that caught my ear was "the concept was introduced to me," so I admit that I might not have the opening clause exactly word-for-word.)

That, to me, begs the question: Who, Mr. Meffert, was it that first introduced you to the concept of maintaining secret expense accounts with private contractors with whom the city does business?

When the court broke for lunch, I had to go home.

Hopefully this won't be the last time I make it in to watch this case

What are your thoughts? Does Meffert's decision to waive his right not to incriminate himself indicate a deal? Or do you think Meffert believes he's at no risk of incriminating himself?

Civilized Drinking With Civilized Drunks

2009-09-29T18:31:00.005-05:00

Jay and some Batt girls talk about how to spoil children and the good old days when they'd get drunk and pass out in the backseat of the station wagon on the way home.

Enjoy!

"First of all, Michael Bloomberg, OK?"

2009-09-28T13:37:00.005-05:00

Oyster had another great post this weekend.

This time, he has a laugh over John Georges' seemingly inexplicable decision to play nice around Ray Nagin in a recent WBOK appearance, contrasting it with memorable instances in which Georges has not demonstrated a penchant for respectful discourse.

Georges is not even willing to risk a lukewarm, "on the one hand/on the other" assessment of Nagin on a black talk radio station, for fear of alienating black voters. This guy is such a spineless putz. He has no political talent. He makes me want to vomit. I loathe his "if I don't offend them, maybe I can buy them later" mentality.

So, we're only looking "forward" are we? Phew, that's a relief, because I was worried Georges was going to repeat his wild claims about Bobby Jindal having "orchestrated" his child's home birth, and how Bobby intentionally put his son "at risk" so that he could play "midwife". I'm sure the Governor and his merry men have forgotten all about that zinger, among others.

And if we're looking "forward", we won't be reviewing how Georges teamed up with the odious Derrick Shepherd back in 2005 to remove Shawn Barney from the State Senate race. And if we're looking "forward" we won't be calculating how Georges tripled the going rate in street money to secure Orleans parish during the Governor's race. "Politics of the past" and all that...

Indeed, Georges is a putz who embodies the "politics of the past," as they say. And he often makes me want to vomit.

But I don't think he's totally without political talent, or if he is, he's certainly going to try to overcompensate for it. He's being very opportunistic and I don't think his candidacy should be dismissed lightly, especially given the current crop of candidates.

Observe another item from that WBOK interview, as reported by the T-P, one that I thought was far more interesting than his non-criticism of the Mayor (Georges and Nagin were Brass buddies; Nagin endorsed Georges for Governor):

Georges also addressed his relationship with eastern New Orleans businessman Sherman Copelin, the controversial former state representative who built a reputation as a wheeler-dealer during his 14-year career in Baton Rouge.

"Personally, I believe if you don't love every New Orleanian, you don't love any New Orleanian, " Georges said, adding that Copelin impressed him by opposing the push to "shrink the city's footprint" after Hurricane Katrina. "I watched his efforts to allow New Orleans East to come back. And I respect what he can contribute to New Orleans, " he said.

Georges said Copelin wouldn't be a member of his administration but that he would accept the ex-lawmaker's help in speeding the city's recovery.

"I tell you what, he is someone that I have not run from, " Georges said. "I will go to every part of this city and I will try to bridge gaps. . . . And the way to bridge gaps in New Orleans is to break bread with everybody."

John Georges is going to go all over this town with his millions and millions of dollars and break bread with people. That has never failed to be a winning electoral strategy in New Orleans.

I'm not sure if it will work this time, but it sure is a tactic with a track record.

--

Without a doubt, the best part of the T-P article was John Georges' new campaign slogan.

The way the paper published the following JG quote in response to a question about a lack of political experience makes it appear as though Georges sputtered like an engine on its last drop of gasoline before devolving into this handy distillation of what he'd like us to think when we hear his name.

"First of all, Michael Bloomberg, OK?"

You can expect that many future posts about Mr. Georges' bread-breaking will include that quote.

--

I am having a nightmare right now where I'm watching a Mayoral debate. The candidates are being asked easy questions about tough issues but are nonetheless struggling to respond. The candidates are giving these painful answers - from oversimplified to nonsensical - that demonstrate an unfortunate lack of knowledge about the city's big problems and more importantly, the possible solutions for fixing them. Then John Georges walks up to the microphone and instead of trying to answer the questions, he just confidently drops two or three word associations outside acceptable sentence structure. He's basically just using boilerplate slogans as sentences instead of trying to weave boilerplate slogans into actual sentences and paragraphs.

Norman Robinson: Mr. Georges, as you know, the NOPD is facing multiple civil rights investigations for possible cover-ups of post-Katrina homicides. There are numerous allegations of corruption and graft from the evidence room. Over n NOPD officers have themselves been accused of crimes over the last four years. Some people say we need to completely overhaul our police force, and possibly consider a federal receivership with the Department of Justice to ensure a new police culture has time to take root. Others say we just need competent administration over incumbent police practice. What do you think we need to do about the NOPD to make it a more effective crime-fighting agency?

Georges: First of all, national search, OK?!?

Georges sits down as the crowd goes wild.

What I've Been Reduced To

2009-09-25T11:39:00.001-05:00

This guy speaks for me.

Nobody 2010: We can sink into the gulf all by ourselves

2009-09-24T13:21:00.003-05:00

Thank you very much.

As much as I had my fingers crossed for a 40-50 candidate brouhaha, it's starting to look like this might only have 2-4 candidates capable of raising the $300,000 needed to make the smallest of dents.

Here are the odds as I see them for what the runoff could look like:

Georges v. Murray - 3:1
Georges v. Badon - 7:1
Badon v. Murray - 30:1
Murray v. Sapir - 150:1
Sapir v. Badon - 250:1

All of these scenarios look ugly. I see dwindling prospects for whatever viable alternatives might exist in our collective imagination.

Maybe this is a stretch

2009-09-24T09:51:00.004-05:00

Lefties (obviously) and Righties (maybe less so, but check here or even listen to Mark Levin if you can stand it) have, for months, tried to understand the rise of the cult of Glenn Beck.

Yesterday, Nate Silver put it this way:

Beck is a PoMoCon -- a post-modern conservative. And his philosophy is not all that difficult to articulate. It borrows a couple of things from traditional American conservatism:

-- It shares an extreme distrust for government, particularly the Federal Government.
-- It shares the notion that American society is in some sort of state of existential decline.

On the other hand, it also features some important differences:

-- It is much more distrustful of non-governmental institutions, such as labor unions, corporations, political parties, community groups, the media, and scientific institutions.
-- It is largely indifferent toward 'social issues'.
-- It is much less explicitly aligned with the Republican Party.
-- It has much less use for elites, which it also distrusts.

The PoMoCons are not so much less self-consistent as they are less concerned with consistency, as compared with traditional conservatives. Theirs is a bric-a-brac, skeptical (sometimes to the point of paranoid), play-it-by-ear, relatively spontaneous reaction to the here-and-now -- not something cooked up by a K Street thinktank. There is no future, no past -- there is only today. And today is a pretty good day to be Glenn Beck.

This is mostly right but not entirely.

Beck constantly clings to a revisionist past, it's one of his most important rhetorical tools. He uses his own interpretation of what "the Founders" envisioned to justify any number of political positions.

Glenn Beck rails against community organizers but defends oil company profits. He might use the language of elite vs. working man, he might occasionally rail against "corporations" but on substance, he's a big defender of carnivorous capitalism except maybe when applied to the banking system.

David Frum has a post putting Beck closer to the Ron Paul side of things.

Beck does seem to share some beliefs with Paul. There is a definitive anti-establishment spirit, I agree with Silver on that.

Often in a similar breath, people have compared Beck's base to that captured by Ross Perot.

They're trying to define it as a conservative populism, which might be the best way to put it.

But when I think of Glenn Beck's rise to popularity over the last couple of years, I wonder if the historical derivative is not David Duke. I'm not suggesting that Beck shares any of Duke's neo-nazi viewpoints but I am saying that Beck's unexpected share of the airwaves is analogous to when Duke elbowed his way into the mainstream political discussion behind a cloak of anti-establishment rhetoric.

His regular referrals to perceived African American benefit at the expense of whites, his fear-mongering around the fictional power of organized labor, his inexplicable predictions that Obama is Castro in a tailored suit - it's to me, much more Duke than Paul or Perot. It's obviously way softer because Beck doesn't have a litany of ties to Nazi and KKK groups or statements to that effect. Beyond that, he is able to manufacture an aura of nice-guy authenticity using his tears and his selective memory of American strength cooperation after 9/11.

At other times, I wonder if the whole cult is overblown. Apparently 42% of Americans have never even heard of the guy. Nonetheless, his show is now the highest rated on Fox News or close to it. That's quite frightening, maybe more so for traditional conservatives than for liberals.

Karen Carter Peterson says no

2009-09-23T16:57:00.002-05:00

Maybe I should change my running Mayoral odds segment from Race to the Punchline to Race from the Punchline. Maybe the bets should be for the next person to declare they're NOT running.

Yeeesh. This looks like a school board race more than it does one for the highest office in town.

Karen Carter Peterson would have been the front-runner but there are a lot of tough choices involved beyond your own electoral consideration.

Karen Carter Peterson's younger sister, Tara Carter Hernandez gets a lot of contract work through the city and would have had to quit all that if KCP won. That's not the case if Karen Carter Peterson successfully takes Congressman Cao's title, which is the job she's probably wanted all along anyway.

So with Arnie Fielkow, Mitch Landrieu, and Karen Carter Peterson bowing out, megatrillionaire John Georges looks increasingly tough to beat.

There's a lot more to elections than street money but when you're going up against a bunch of no names, being able to erect lots of big billboards and pay a bunch of sign-wavers might be enough to win.

Until someone else gets in the race or one of the other declared candidates can show they have a snowball's chance; we might be talking about Mayor Georges next year.

OIG office in crisis

2009-09-22T10:22:00.005-05:00

I apologize for my infrequent posts lately, this one may have been more timely if I had written it a week ago. Oh well.

Anyway, things are not going very well at the fledgling Office of Inspector General.

It is both depressing and embarrassing that the office seems to have devolved before ever really becoming an intelligent life form in the first place.

To quickly recap, the original inspector general, Robert Cerasoli resigned for health reasons last winter, leaving the office on an interim basis to his number two guy, Len Odom. Over the summer, Interim IG Len Odom circumvented process to select an Independent Police Monitor, Neely Moody, just before the Ethics Review Board was to make a final decision on Odom's position as temporary head honcho. This undermined the credibility of the new police monitor with those that had fought for the creation of the position. After the new IG was selected, Odom was pushed out entirely by Ethics Review Board Chairmen Rev. Kevin Wildes before being promptly reinstated on a temporary basis by new IG Edouard Quatrevaux, who himself then immediately took a leave of absence. Odom resigned within a week. Immediately following that, the police monitor, Neely Moody resigned.

In between, Moody and Odom collaborated on a report bashing Robert Cerasoli's handling of the office and released it to the press. Quatrevaux claimed Moody told him he would "take the office down with him" during a heated argument preceding his resignation and the release of the report on Cerasoli.

Do you got all that?

It is a gigantic mess. And it's shameful. For all of those that fought for the creation of the Office of Inspector General, this sideshow basically proves the naysayers correct. It has become what they said it would become - an ineffective joke of an office that drains city resources while providing little of value in terms of exposing municipal inefficiencies and advising lawmakers and the public on how to improve governance.

Perhaps more upsetting, it has become yet another ridiculous racial lightning rod, another battleground in a never-ending and sometimes fictional turf war between dying political factions of various complexions.

Central to this is a never-ending disagreement over who is responsible for corruption and injustice in New Orleans This debate is almost always counterproductive because it is simultaneously oversimplified and overcomplicated by partisans for one side or another.

African Americans are not being unreasonable when they complain about the media and a lot of the white establishment's never-ending crusade against perceived corruption within African American political and business classes. It is unambiguously hypocritical for whites to moralize about perceived African American corruption while turning a blind eye to or openly advocating for the continuation of the structural and historic racism that has created an entire economy of white privilege and an almanac of horrible outcomes for black children born into it. Besides, it is not as if there isn't plenty of entrenched corruption amongst white political and industrial elites - superfluous boards, tax assessment treats, and the like.

However, that certainly doesn't mean that corruption in what are generally perceived as African American hustles in the municipal game should just be ignored or brushed under the rug. Not everyone who wants the law of the land enforced against crooks of color is party to white tribalism.

The whole concept of the Office of Inspector General became part of this never-ending tug of war from the moment the City Charter was changed to authorize it many years ago. That's why it took damn near a decade between the authorization of the office and it's actual creation.

Who's corruption would the OIG prioritize?

Black or white?

It's a circular firing squad and nobody feels safe enough to be the first to put down their gun.

--

Robert Cerasoli once had the credibility and goodwill to create an effective culture and reliable systems within the Office of Inspector General. He had the chance to staff the office with responsible, dedicated, and selfless auditors and investigators.

He was the general manager and head coach of the team. He not only did the hiring and firing, but he was also in charge of how his employees operated on the field.

When he and his health failed, the team lost.

I don't know what it was that caused the rift between he and Len Odom. I don't know if it resulted from how Odom went about hiring the police monitor, but it seemed to have happened sooner.

Perhaps the rift appeared immediately.

When Cerasoli turned down access to a city car upon arrival and began to audit how the city distributes cars, maybe Odom disagreed with that prioritization. The IG's office did indeed hook up some cars after Cerasoli left.

I don't know how it happened exactly.

It certainly does seem like Mr. Odom hijacked the power of the office. He totally blew the Independent Police Monitor process, hiring someone with whom he was personally close and undermining an effort by police brutality and corruption watchdogs that had been in the works for a decade. He used his office to pursue what largely appears to be a personal vendetta against Mr. Cerasoli. He decided to sandbag the OIG on his way out of the door by releasing that report to the public and otherwise conducting himself like a child.

The report on Cerasoli could have been useful if it had actually been an audit of OIG systems to date, one that had recommendations on how to improve office operations. But it isn't. Instead, it's a largely personal hatchet job. That doesn't mean that some of the observations made don't expose mistakes for which Cerasoli is responsible - there are some bad bits in there - but you only have to read the 15 page report to realize that it's personal. So many of the issues examined are a direct result of the city's efforts to obstruct progress at the OIG not Cerasoli's shortcomings.

Yet the Odom-Cerasoli dynamic isn't the only thing at play here.

I was also struck by the way Odom was asked to step down upon Quatrevaux's hiring. Again, Rev. Kevin Wildes told Odom to pack up his things and get out even though Odom's resignation wasn't to be effective until sometime in October. Quatrevaux reinstated Odom and then Odom voluntarily resigned at the end of the week.

I don't know what got into Reverend Kevin Wildes but the Chairman of the Ethics Review Board does not have the despotic authority to fire the Inspector General.

His anger is what caused the ridiculous and embarrassing gymnastics that lead to Odom in and out dance.

The whole sad affair has created the political room for Mayor Ray Nagin to launch into one of the more insulting and hypocritical tirades of his administration.

The credibility of two of the most important reform offices of the city, the OIG and the Independent Police Monitor, is at risk. That is something that should alarm all of us.

We need working systems for accountable governance, not a total retreat from of the concept.

I fear that the latter is more likely than the former.

So how do we clean this mess up?

I have no doubt that the offices will remain, but that's not enough. We need them to have credibility so that they can actually be effective. They cannot be a lightening rod offices.

1. Reverend Kevin Wildes might need to fall on the sword. I don't know if people were insulted by his behavior but it didn't look classy from afar. He may not have "started it," but he took it public and that was inappropriate. His actions demonstrate his ease over the Ethics Review Board that makes me wonder if the length of his tenure there has lead him to treat it too much like a personal fiefdom. Other members of that Board should assert themselves.

2. Eduard Quatrevaux should be given a chance to stabilize the office with the support of our elected officials and the public. I wonder if he might need to agree to a sunset date for his administration of that office if a cloud of mistrust remains overhead.

3. The new Independent Police Monitor should be selected by a commission independent of the Inspector General and the Ethics Review Board.

4. City Council has got to band together and create an uninhibited consensus on how to proceed. They must resist all efforts by the Mayor to further undermine or de-fund the OIG or the Independent Police Monitor as the 2010 budget proceedings begin. However that needs to happen - let it happen. The Council factions, too often divided by race, need to set all their BS aside and agree to act as one. Each side must compromise to do so.

-

It really really sucks that we're starting from scratch again. It's pathetic.

Given the elections and investigations underway and on the horizon, we'll have plenty of ridiculous politics over the next year that we'll be just fine if we do this one thing the right way.

Best Party Ever?

2009-09-18T13:02:00.005-05:00

It could be if you show up!

Don't miss this. It's going to be a blast.

Tickets can be purchased here or at the door.

The fun will start right away at 8 so it won't be fashionable to be late.

I hope to see you there.

Does Arnie mean Eddie?

2009-09-16T10:08:00.002-05:00

We shouldn't be all that surprised that Arnie Fielkow isn't running for Mayor.

He clearly doesn't have the stomach for a potentially nasty election. I think the ground for this was laid last February and March when the Councilman couldn't get the votes to pass his contract transparency measure and was totally demoralized. Within days, this widely-circulated rumor was reported by Oyster. He was in full-on sulk mode at the time.

I don't mean for that to sound so disparaging. This is going to be a difficult job for whoever is elected, one that I'd liken to a weekly water-boarding.

I respect the Councilman's decision.

--

Everyone is probably abuzz about who might pounce on the opening.

I think the in the short term, it means that Eddie Sapir looks like a lock to run.

I don't know very much about Mr. Sapir.

What has he been doing since he last held elected office?

If you've got background, please provide it in the comments below.

Similar storm, different city

2009-09-16T09:58:00.002-05:00

Are we done with Joe Wilson now finally?

2009-09-16T09:43:00.003-05:00

House approves motion to disapprove.

I think that Congressman should be held accountable by their colleagues for violating Congressional rules of decorum. I think that's fair.

I think the way this was pursued was petty and counterproductive.

Basically, House Democrats witnessed one of the greatest speeches of the last twenty years, one that stated eloquently the financial and moral imperatives for healthcare reform, one that took back the reigns of the debate in stunning fashion.

They responded by focusing singularly on a sensational outburst of an uninformed no-name goofball and instead we're pretty much back where we started.

We almost were about to have a national conversation about the best way to reform healthcare.

Almost.

The House could have gone about censuring Congressman Wilson in a classier way. One would have been to just quietly hold the guy accountable for the breach of decorum the very next day without all the cable news grandstanding. The other would have been to have waited until near the end of the session after the sensationalism of the moment had passed.

In related news, Congressman Cao was one of seven Republicans to cross over and vote for the motion to disapprove Congressman Wilson. A number of progressive Democrats voted against the motion or as present, which I think is very interesting and maybe even admirable.

Dell stall tactics fall flat

2009-09-15T14:34:00.007-05:00

I've obtained some court documents from the crime camera civil case.

In the article about Meffert's hilarious change-of-venue motion, there was another late breaking item hidden toward the end of the piece.

In a strange twist Friday, a previously absent company sought to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs, Southern Electronics and Active Solutions.

More than two years after the two companies filed the lawsuit, Camsoft Data Systems Inc., appeared in court Friday, claiming its right to a third of anything Southern and Active might win at trial.

Camsoft was initially a subcontractor to Southern Electronics, and helped put up networked crime cameras for a pilot project for City Hall in 2004 and 2005. The Baton Rouge company claims it helped develop a special network system for the crime cameras, and therefore deserves to have an equal share of the plaintiffs' pie.

Ironically, even though Camsoft's attorney Jason Melancon said Friday he agrees with the gist of the plaintiffs' case, his basis for intervening is a claim that Southern Electronics owes Camsoft money for work it did on the New Orleans camera project.

The unexpected intervention sent the courtroom into a tizzy.

I only had vaguest recollection of Camsoft but it didn't seem to me to be relevant to the case that they had some sort of payment issue with Southern Electronics. That ought to be handled in a separate case. It would seem to be quite suspicious that such an intervention would suddenly surface at the eleventh hour. Anyway, these documents should shed some more light on this.

The first is a motion to appoint special process server filed by the lawyers for Dell, who also filed to stay the trial to subpoena and depose the folks from Camsoft.

SCAN6724_000

The second document is the response from the Plaintiffs' lawyers. This is a good read. Essentially, Dell asserted that they'd been kept unaware of the relationship between the Plaintiffs and Camsoft and claimed that in their depositions, Plaintiffs had failed to disclose Camsoft under questioning.

The lawyers for the Plaintiffs document in detail the numerous times Camsoft or its employees came up during discovery.

"A search of the documents produced by Plaintiffs in this litigation reveals Carlo MacDonald of Camsoft was referenced at least 1,613 times and Camsoft itself was referenced at least 410 times."

Lawyers also pointed to another stunning example, when Dell's lead council, Phil Whittman, the same guy who filed the motion to stay, asked Brian Fitzpatrick of Active Solutions during a deposition:

"Did you have anything to do with the camsoft data systems verbiage wire portion?"

So when Plaintiff attorneys excoriate Dell lawyers within the document for "feigned ignorance," this is what they're talking about. They then follow that up with another 130 pages of supporting evidence including emails included as trial exhibits and depositions.

PDF of Letter to Counel Enc Opp to Dell's Emerg Motion for s (00040822)

I don't think I've ever seen some of the emails before but I don't have time for a close read. If you have a chance to browse through these and find anything interesting that we haven't seen before, please please post away in the comments.

It's how come I'm so much dumber now

2009-09-14T14:28:00.003-05:00

I drink the water.

Darwin passes along this disturbing map of local Clean Water Act violators.

Go check out his post.

You'll never guess who the offenders are.

A Nor' E-mailster?

2009-09-14T09:27:00.004-05:00

Not sure if that nickname will catch but...

Boston--

Mayoral hopeful Michael F. Flaherty is accusing the Menino administration of a cover-up after the mayor’s top aide admitted deleting public e-mails even as the FBI subpoenaed his documents - a bombshell that has all three challengers calling for a criminal probe.

“They’ve been operating under a system they know violates the law,” said Flaherty, a city councilor at-large, who alleges the mass deletion of e-mails by Michael Kineavy potentially destroyed evidence in the public corruption probe against former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson last year.

Flaherty is planning to ask state Attorney General Martha Coakley and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley to probe the missing documents. Forging a rare unified front, fellow mayoral hopefuls Sam Yoon and Kevin McCrea asked to join Flaherty at a press conference scheduled for today.

“If you’re deleting e-mails methodically . . . you have something to hide,” said Yoon, councilor-at-large.

The Boston Globe requested six months of Kineavy’s e-mails starting Oct. 1, 2008 - but received just 18 messages and an admission that Kineavy was routinely deleting public e-mails potentially in violation of open records laws, the paper reported yesterday.

Meanwhile, our very own e-maelstrom crime camera civil suit begins today. First, Judge Ledet will have do deny one of the more hilariously written change-of-venue motions I've seen during my inconsequential career as someone who reads the news.

"It is indeed a rare and tragic occasion when a litigant must state that the tide of public opinion in his home parish has so turned against him that he cannot seek refuge in the hallowed halls of justice in that parish."

-

Smith said Meffert's shot at a fair trial has been compromised by media coverage, specifically two years' worth of Times-Picayune articles about gratuities Meffert collected from city vendor Mark St. Pierre -- including access to a boat, a corporate credit card and exotic vacations for himself, his family and the family of his boss, Mayor Ray Nagin.

He even contends that future jurors have been prejudiced by the newspaper's coverage of Smith's own statement in open court that Meffert is a target of a federal criminal investigation.

He cited comments posted by readers on the paper's affiliated Web site, NOLA.com, to argue that potential jurors have already formed an opinion against his client.

Someone should really live-blog this trial. Someone really should hire me to live-blog this trial.

Let's move on from Wilson already

2009-09-10T21:35:00.004-05:00

Sean Quinn:

Importantly, Obama should take this approach and also remind people that although Wilson’s objection was not a truthful one, that if anyone out there was bothered by what they saw with that display, the best action would be to not waste energy attacking Mr. Wilson but instead to contact their Representative and Senators and express their opinions on getting a health insurance reform bill passed. If people don’t know the phone numbers & emails for their Representative’s or Senators’ offices, he should say, just go to www.barackobama.com and type in their home address/zip code to find it. He’d have a big platform to make that pitch with media attention hot on the story.

Okay, it was fun for a day. Let's fight for healthcare now.

Mary Landrieu:

Washington D.C.: (202) 224-5824
New Orleans: (504) 589-2427

Joe Cao:

Washington D.C.: (202) 225-6636
New Orleans: (504) 483-2325

Charlie Melancon:

Washington D.C.: (202) 225-4013
At home: See here

--

And most importantly, an opportunity to get organized.

Feeling Bullish

2009-09-10T09:41:00.004-05:00

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

I thought this speech was brilliant in so many ways.

He avoided drawing hard lines in the sand on most of the specific policy proposals he personally favors.

But he drew several lines in the sand on the principles at stake here.

Either you're for participating in the creation and passage of a critically important but imperfect healthcare and health insurance reform bill or you're against it.

Either you're for working with the President to fix problems or you're against it.

He's putting his Presidency on the line.

Because if we can't fix healthcare, with all the general agreement there is on what the problems are, we're not going to be able to fix anything at all.

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, corporate Democrat enemy number one of liberal progressives for his role watering down healthcare reform in the upper chamber, who stood steadfast against the public option in the face of hundreds of thousands of dollars of ads, said after the speech that it was a "game changer."

He's on board and will work with the President to pass the best bill they can.

Who else we got?

Max Baucus of Montana?

Olympia Snow of Maine?

Susan Collins of Maine?

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana?

George Voinovich of Ohio?

The New Guy of Florida?

What are you all going to do? Who you with? What side are you on?

Senator Landrieu's statement after the speech:

“President Obama’s speech tonight was very much needed to keep Congress on track to find a solution for the health care challenges facing our country. It was a sincere and heartfelt effort to unify Democrats and reach out to Republicans to forge common ground and build a broader coalition. Moving this debate forward will take principled compromise and an approach that draws from the very best ideas – regardless of political party.

“The President rightfully focused on the need to lower health care costs for families, businesses and the government. If Congress does not find the resolve to pass health care legislation, people will not be able to afford the insurance they like or get the quality coverage they need, and the federal government will not be able to balance its budget.

“Skyrocketing health insurance premiums and unstable costs have hurt even our most successful small businesses and stifled job growth at a time when our economy needs a jolt. Insurance reform and the new insurance exchanges that the President highlighted are excellent solutions to giving consumers and small businesses greater choice, and with it, competitive prices in a market-based approach.

“The coming weeks and months will produce a spirited debate. But as the President said, the time is now for improving health care. Our current system is unsustainable and is costing our nation more than $2 trillion a year. Louisiana and all of America simply cannot afford the status quo.”

This sounds like she's is ready and willing to vote for healthcare reform even if it includes a public option triggered four years from now with the launch of an insurance exchange and I hope that my interpretation of her position is correct.

It is shameful she hasn't been a strong advocate for healthcare reform. I don't think it's politically risky to contrast oneself with David Vitter's position. I think there is way less downside risk if one is a fierce supporter of healthcare reform but a lot of potential benefit. Conversely, hanging back until the last minute before ultimately voting for healthcare reform, which is what I expect the Senator to do, would seem to be to carry all of the downside risk without any of the potential benefits.

It was cowardly, especially given that she's not even up for reelection for another five years.

Congressman Cao told the Times-Picayune he was "relieved" by Obama's assertion that there would be no funding for abortion in the healthcare reform bill.

That's important. At a forum last week in New Orleans East broadcast by WBOK, Cao insisted that there was federal funding for abortion in the bill over the objections of the crowd.

As a result, Tracie Washington posed a hypothetical question to the Congressman, which he clearly answered. Even though the abortion myth has been debunked by nonpartisan fact checkers for weeks prior to the President's speech last night, Washington wondered whether Cao would support the bill if it had everything he wanted but didn't include additional specific language pertaining to abortion.

She asked if abortion was a deal-breaker.

And Cao said yes.

So Congressman Cao's statement to the Times-Picayune is very encouraging. I would strongly urge him to become that rare Republican advocate for healthcare reform from here on out. I don't expect that but I would applaud him loudly if that's what he ends up doing.

Leadership for a change?

2009-09-09T11:22:00.007-05:00

When I think about State Senator and Mayoral Candidate Ed Murray, the first things that comes to mind are Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Voting to facilitate the relocation of the Hornets to New Orleans is just like leading Civil Rights movement, averting the Cuban missile crisis, or navigating the Great Depression!

In all seriousness, this is well-produced opening ad for man with no name recognition, no charisma, and without a particularly exciting record of accomplishment.

I think that his slogan, "Leadership for a change," is excellent. His new logo is also pretty fresh.

And he's launched a website.

The ad above will run for three weeks and cost $100,000 by itself.

So Ed Murray is really running for Mayor.

A few weeks ago, the first batch of campaign finance filings were reported on by the T-P. Murray had $131,600 as of the end of July.

Murray's fundraising either accelerated like crazy in August or he's making a big bet that it will soon.

Hat tip to Papa Bear for tracking down Murray's video so quickly.

Overslept

2009-09-08T12:12:00.004-05:00

Did Cedric Richmond declare his candidacy this morning?

Update: Politico says yes.

Chicken Soup

2009-09-08T10:29:00.001-05:00

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

No more political pussy-footing. Pass healthcare reform now.

With Baited Breath

2009-09-08T10:23:00.003-05:00

Right now in Judge Rosemary Ledet's courtroom at Orleans Parish Civil District Court, lawyers for Active Solutions and Southern Electronics are laying out a narrative describing a wide-ranging conspiracy by city officials including Greg Meffert and Mayor Nagin and Dell Computers to steal technology from the two plaintiff companies while they held city contractors.

There should be some interesting material unsealed for the first time. Keep an eye on the internets for fresh docs and reports from the courtroom.

Which is it?

2009-09-04T10:18:00.003-05:00

The strange comings and goings at City Hall this week didn't just look weird to those of us on the outside. Perdido Streeters are not having a good week at the office, that much is clear.

Lots of sweating and scrambling.

Are we seeing a purge or an exodus?

Botched

2009-09-03T17:16:00.006-05:00

Not even a promotion could keep Austin Penny from jumping ship.

Three days after Austin Penny was named a top director in Mayor Ray Nagin's next-generation recovery bureaucracy, a city spokesman confirmed Thursday that Penny is poised to leave city government, setting up another leadership transition in New Orleans' ongoing rebuilding effort.

Wacky stuff.

This was awesome

2009-09-03T12:17:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came. Fun times.

Elias Castellanos indicted, questions about HANO-backed nonprofits abound

2009-09-02T11:17:00.006-05:00

Don't know if you caught this but Mr. Castellanos, a former CFO of the Housing Authority of New Orleans while it was under HUD's federal receivership, was charged with embezzling nearly a million bucks.

HANO was notoriously corrupt for about three decades before it was finally taken over by HUD under President Bush. Unfortunately, it has emerged from that receivership as bad or worse than before because of the corrupt leadership Alphonso Jackson, who was GW Bush's HUD chief.

Jackson resigned in disgrace toward the end of the Bush administration after Philly's top housing guy blew the whistle on Jackson's move to withhold federal money from Philly public housing residents in a transparent attempt to extract payments for a derelict contractor and Bush supporter. Carl Greene of PHA knew how to save emails.

There have been widespread allegations of corruption in Jackson's office and some of them involve his stewardship of HANO.

I've worked on this a lot. Check out my archives for Alphonso Jackson for more.

Anyway, the little T-P blurb gives absolutely zero context on Mr. Castellanos, who worked at HANO under Jackson.

But the minutes of March 19th meeting of the Legislative Audit Advisory Council in Baton Rouge provides some details.

LAAC03172009

Crescent Affordable Housing Corporation and Lune d'Or Enterprises. LLC

Elias Castellanos with Crescent Affordable Housing Corporation, a nonprofit of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and Jamora Erwin with the Housing Authority of New Orleans and Crescent Affordable Housing came forward to state their case. Mr. Castellanos said that like most of the entities that they oversee, HANO has been in a continuation of rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. Crescent Affordable is a managing member of some of their operations that were going through the mixed planned development. As those audits were held back and must be completed so that the audit of Crescent Affordable could be finished. They are in the process of completing those audits. Crescent Affordable audit for 2006 should be delivered to them today, and upon their review and approval it would be released to the Legislative Auditor. They will have all related audits completed within the next month and ready upon approval and release from the auditors, will then be released to the Legislative Auditor. He further stated that Lune d'Or Enterprises, LLC is a member of Crescent Affordable Housing Corporation.

Mr. Purpera said that the report pending is the 12/31/2007 reports. Mr. Castellanos said that their auditors have indicated that Lune d'Or will be released on April 30th • Crescent Affordable audit will be released to them today for review. Senator Murray asked if Crescent Affordable Housing is an affiliate of HANO in New Orleans. Mr. Castellanos said that it is a nonprofit organization created by HANO to help support the redevelopment effort. The mixed plans developments they are entering into require separate partnership entities to initiate the financial transaction and because HANO is an agency funded through HUD, and they have certain restrictions on obligating our resources, they have to create the nonprofit in order to facilitate these mixed line developments.

Senator Murray asked if each one of the nonprofits is responsible for a separate development in New Orleans, or if all combined together. Mr. Castellanos said Crescent Affordable is generally the parent and then the nonprofits and related LLC's are under Crescent. Senator Murray asked if Crescent Affordable Housing was standing in the shoes of HANO overseeing all. Mr. Castellanos said it is the nonprofit parent entity for all mixed plan developments that they enter into. He explained that Lune d'Or Enterprices, LLC was the managing member for the Fisher 1, Fisher 3 and Gus 1 properties. Also Crescent Affordable is the sole owner of Lune d'Or, and throughout the audit it is still Crescent Affordable

Senator Murray asked if all are private nonprofits. Mr. Castellanos responded that the sole owner of Crescent Affordable is the Housing Authority of New Orleans, but it does not stand in the shoes of HANO. Senator Murray asked if HANO owned Crescent Affordable Housing and Mr. Castellanos said yes. Senator Nevers moved to grant the extension and with no objections, the motion was granted.

Senator Murray asked Mr. Castellanos to provide to himself the names of the board members of the respective nonprofits for Crescent Affordable Housing and Lune d'Or and any other ones that are in the City of New Orleans that are operating under these housing redevelopments. Mr. Castellanos said he can provide the information through the Legislative Auditors. Senator Murray said they can provide it directly to his office on Broad Street in New Orleans.

For more on Lune D'or and Crescent Affordable Housing, I found this HANO RFP (pdf) from 2007 that includes some helpful background information.

Crescent Affordable Housing Corporation (CAHC), a non-profit corporation, was created in December 2003 by HANO to facilitate the development of affordable housing. CAHC is the sole member of Lune d'Or Enterprises LLC, a for profit entity created by HANO that serves as the managing member of several for-profit Limited Liability Corporations (LLC's) that own and operate affordable housing projects developed on HANO properties. Through Lune d'Or, CAHC serves as the managing member of each of the LLC's, including those named in this Request for Proposals (RFP). Each LLC owns a phase of development at the given site. Those sites are part of the new comprehensive redevelopment strategy HANO has developed to accelerate the revitalization of low income and affordable housing. HANO and eighteen (18) affiliates of HANO have received or expect to receive tax credit allocations for Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) to assist in its redevelopment efforts and are seeking a qualified, full service certified public accounting firm with expertise in affordable housing and tax credits to conduct full spectrum audits, cost certifications, tax credit carryover, 10% tests, financial statement audits, tax valuation, and provide litigation support, trust and general consulting services.

The services contemplated herein are also required for any future affiliates created by HANO in 2007.

The current Housing Authority of New Orleans affiliates include the following:

Crescent Affordable Housing, LLC

Lune D'Or Enterprises, LLC

Place D'Genesis, LLC

Fischer I, LLC

Fischer III, LLC

Guste I, LLC

Florida IIA, LLC

Mazant Royal, LLC

General Ogden, LLC

Imperial I, LLC

Imperial II, LLC

Guste ll-B, LLC

Fischer IV-3, LLC

Tchoupitoulas, LLC

CJ Peete I, LLC

St. Bernard I, LLC

CJ Peete III, LLC

BW Cooper I, LLC

HANO is currently designated by HUD as a Troubled Agency. Further, H ANO has been placed under an administrative receivership, whereby an Administrative Receiver has been charged with the responsibility of quickly transforming the agency's overall operations and performance into one reflective of a standard or high performing public housing authority. To that end, HANO's success will, in part, be contingent upon verification of its compliance with laws and regulations applicable to all federal assistance programs.

That's all for now. This is not the first time in recent memory that a quasi-governmental nonprofit in the housing field has allowed massive graft and corruption to go under the radar. I hope that major audits of all affiliated non-profits are underway.

Would appreciate any tips in the comments section. I won't be able to google through all of these by myself. There are lots of other pdf docs online that will at least provide better context on this.

I'm curious how Mr. Castellanos came to be employed at HANO and wonder if he had a personal relationship with Mr. Jackson directly or through the contractors that were awarded funds to redevelop the Big 4.

L?

2009-09-02T09:49:00.002-05:00

That non-compete clause can't possible apply over here, Lee.

Feel free any time.

-

Seriously, how could Mr. Zurik not cover the last months of C. Ray Nagin and the circus election to succeed him? I'm sure there's another peabody or two in there.

Some rats swim away, other rats swim back.

2009-09-01T18:23:00.004-05:00

Mayor Nagin had Jeff Thomas walk the plank today. It appears he was fired.

Kenya Smith is back on board to replace him.

Thomas sent out an email announcing his departure earlier.

I wanted to let you know that as of today I will no longer be an
employee of the City of New Orleans.

With the City transitioning from disaster-recovery policy development to
implementation, the Administration is restructuring.

Jeff out, Kenya back in.

I guess this is what passes for recycling in Ray Nagin's administration.

6PM SHARP! See you at the Second Line!

2009-08-31T11:11:00.003-05:00

A party with a purpose. It ain't like you got anything better to do on a Monday.

Don't miss it. It should be a lot of fun.

Blowing Up

2009-08-31T09:24:00.003-05:00

Lots of referring traffic today now that the AZ is out and about as the other JB.

Good times.

Signals

2009-08-28T13:26:00.004-05:00

Today, the Department of Justice confirmed an ongoing federal probe targeting Greg Meffert. It has long been assumed that he was a primary target of what everyone can boost my ego by calling the e-maelstrom.

First, it's comforting to finally see this confirmed.

Second, let's speculate:

Though announced on a Friday, to see this come out on Katrina Anniversary weekend (also known as the Great National Media Flashback of 2009) would indicate to me that US Attorney Jim Letten is making a strong commitment in regard to pursuing this case and others closely related to it.

Keep in mind that with the closure of the Bill and Mose Jefferson trials (especially Mose, since he was tried locally), the local DOJ office's labor resources diverted to those cases are now available to be deployed to work on other investigations.

Thus, starting this weekend and over the next 4-6 weeks, I would advise keeping a close eye on the papers and the blogs.

Not that you don't already.

SELLOUT

2009-08-28T11:39:00.003-05:00

I've gone mainstream.

My most recent installment of The Punchline can be found here at The Root, which is the black people version of Slate.com.

I bought a Jaguar, a house in Cape Cod, exclusively date heiresses, and am making a concerted effort not to remember the names of my friends.

Somebody stop this joker

2009-08-27T12:21:00.007-05:00

How unfortunate:
Some interesting names on this list of self-described "Batt Girls."

Anybody but Batt, y'all.

Tough Loss

2009-08-26T09:56:00.004-05:00

Everyone says that they don't make Senators like Ted Kennedy anymore.

I think they're right.

Joe Biden was reduced to tears. A little difficult to watch but you should anyway.

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

Here is precisely what we'll be missing. This is an awesome video of Ted Kennedy fighting on the floor of the Senate for a vote on an increase in the minimum wage.

DeBerry hits it on the head

2009-08-24T12:48:00.003-05:00

This column by Jarvis DeBerry is required reading.

The issues of the poor often intersect with those who are racially oppressed, but not always. We see the conflicts between the two groups when black people with money wage campaigns against those who are without.

Eastern New Orleans has often been a battleground for this kind of intra-racial class warfare because that part of the city has included beautiful mansions and huge unsightly apartment complexes -- one of which I used to call home. Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis gave the impression soon after Hurricane Katrina that she spoke for the entire area when she trumpeted the phrase "right to return."

She's fought mightily for homeowners -- that is, those who have already acquired some semblance of wealth. However, she has shown herself to be indifferent -- if not outright opposed -- to the interests of low-wage residents who require affordable-housing options to return to the city.

In leading the opposition against a developer looking to build 36 affordable single-family houses near Lake Carmel at an average cost of $200,000, Willard-Lewis said the interests of current residents are her chief concern. So much for everybody else returning.

The City Planning Commission voted 6-2 to approve the legal subdivision developer Harold Foley needs to start his project. The New Orleans City Council, however, voted 5-2 against the project. The only two members to show Foley support were James Carter and Shelley Midura.

In voting against the project, the City Council isn't showing itself to be any different than the St. Bernard Parish Council, which has twice been scolded by a federal court judge for violating the Fair Housing Act.

The judge found that St. Bernard officials have withheld a routine re-subdivision request for a developer planning to build apartments because parish officials are trying to keep out black people.

See Judge Ginger Berrigan's order.

The City Council is employing the same strategy St. Bernard officials have used. It's difficult to imagine a judge looking any more kindly on the city's blockade of this project. The federal court would be unfairly punishing St. Bernard if it allowed New Orleans to do the same thing.

What a weekend

2009-08-24T09:28:00.003-05:00

As bizarre it felt to me to be going to two conferences in two consecutive weekends, Rising Tide IV hardly feels like a conference. The schmoozing is anything but business-like.

A full tip of the hat and bow to all of the RT organizers who sacrificed their time and labor to pull this thing off.

I thought Harry Shearer delivered a great keynote and I hope he energized some of my favorite bloggers to start writing more regularly again. All hands on deck!

Good panels, good food, good people, good times.

It was great to see everyone in person again.

Also a hearty congratulations is due to our good friend the American Zombie, winner of this year's Ashley award for MVB (most valuable blogger).

Did anyone get photos of Bob Ellis and Daya Naef with their goon squad? What exactly did they expect to do? Shake down our blogger of the year in front of a room of 200 or more close friends?

It comes across as desperate, don't it?

--

I think we need to have another big event (Rising Tide 4 and a half?) before the citywide elections next February.

Hay Problemas

2009-08-22T11:46:00.003-05:00

James Perry suing the Mayor doesn't make the paper edition.

Ouch.