Somebody stop this joker

How unfortunate:
Some interesting names on this list of self-described "Batt Girls."

Anybody but Batt, y'all.

Who's Who: Unmasking the LSU/VA Team [Part II]

In 2009, the fights to reopen Charity Hospital and save Lower Mid City from demolition will come to a head. The proposed $1.2 billion plan to remake Lower Mid City into a biomedical district anchored by an LSU teaching hospital and a renovated VA hospital has been in the works for many moons.

High profile officials have infused massive amounts of political capital into realizing this project and would lose big if this project were to go down.

The Mayor, his recovery director Ed Blakely, and the New Orleans City Council worked in concert to allocate some $79 million of the 2009 budget toward acquiring land in the LSU/VA footprint.

The New Orleans business and university elite have invested considerable resources into developing the Greater New Orleans Biosciences Development District via the Downtown Development District and the New Orleans Regional Biosciences Initiative.

State leaders such as Governor Bobby Jindal and LRA Director Paul Rainwater have made obtaining full FEMA reimbursement for Charity in order to fund the new LSU hospital the state's number one priority heading into the new year and the new Obama administration's proposed infrastructure bill.

That the process for realizing these plans has been so slow in spite of the massive political firepower behind them is a testament to the salience of the arguments against put forth by housing activists, preservationists, public health advocates, and other reasonable progressives alarmed by official refusal to reopen the existing Charity Hospital and by a site selection process that favors the demolition of a residential neighborhood over more cost-effective, less destructive alternatives.

In Part I, I profiled Donald Smithburg, formerly of LSUHSD, now employed by a consultant firm contracted to contrive the $1.2 billion development plan currently on the table.

--

Part II: James P. McNamara

Mr. McNamara is a key player in New Orleans business and political circles and has considerable professional interest in seeing the LSU/VA project realized as currently constituted. He's got a long history. This is just a taste.

He made a big portion of his fortune in the late '80s and early '90s as President and CEO of McNamara Associates, a commercial real estate consulting firm. His company would represent commercial property holders in the CBD in their appeals against inflated property tax assessments.

In 2006, New Orleans voters voted to reform the tax assessor system into one office. However, until 2010, the city continues to operate under the old seven assessor system, which has been wrought with corruption for decades. Your tax assessor sets your property value, which determines the amount of property tax you pay. With seven assessors, personal and economic relationships have often played a role in the original property value set or one's chances at winning an appeal. Property values were generally set extremely low but were pumped up to reflect something closer to actual value upon sale, at which point one could appeal directly to the district assessor.

Mr. McNamara took advantage of this system through his close relationship with Kenneth Carter (father of Karen Carter-Peterson) via the political organization BOLD. Ken Carter was one of the city's first two African American tax assessors after being elected to represent the CBD as first assessor district in 1985.

McNamara's firm represented commercial clients who acquired property in the CBD only to see their property taxes skyrocket following reassessment. McNamara and Associates would be hired to appeal the value to Ken Carter's office and negotiate a lower property tax bill. This relationship obviously went pretty smoothly, as McNamara became closely involved with Ken Carter's 1994 mayoral campaign. Carter had to leave his assessor seat to run for Mayor and replacing him was Patricia Johnson. The Times-Picayune in 2004:

Johnson won the 1st District office in 1994 when incumbent Ken Carter, a fellow member of the BOLD political organization, ran for mayor. But she soon became unpopular, in part because of her aggressive upward valuation of downtown office properties.

Johnson had other problems as well. She feuded with BOLD, her methods were called into question and the state legislative auditor reported that her books were in shambles. But rocking the boat was certainly one cause of her 2002 defeat by Darren Mire.

McNamara and Mire were close to another BOLD stalwart in disgraced Councilman Oliver Thomas. In the late 90s, the two were caught up in an campaign ethics investigation into Thomas' '98 Council reelection involving loans made or not made to the campaign.

Mire and Kenneth Carter are still amongst the registered agents of BOLD today. And Mire remains tax assessor in District 1 through 2010.

So it's pretty clear that McNamara remains politically connected.

More recently, James McNamara parlayed the fortune and connections he made using McNamara and Associates into another venture called Exchange Equity. Rather than merely extracting consultant fees related to other people's property sales, Exchange Equity aggregates investors to purchase commercial real estate property and has mastered the 1031 exchange loophole that protects investors from paying capital gains taxes in real estate transfer deals.

Equity Exchange is listed as a partner in the New Orleans Regional Biosciences Initiative, an organization behind the LSU/VA development. According to their website:

The New Orleans Regional Biosciences Initiative (NORBI) is the action arm of GNOBEDD, a collaborative of a myriad of public and private entities all working to ensure that bioscience and healthcare sectors combined are a well-promoted and well supported pillar of the New Orleans economy.

James McNamara is the President of the GNOBEDD, though the true composition of that organization remains difficult to ascertain. He also sits as a Commissioner of the Downtown Development District and on the Board of the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center.

All of these organizations worked in concert to imagine the LSU/VA development and pass it through the relevant governmental bodies. It is easy to infer that Mr. McNamara's long standing political connections were an enormous help.

With so much at stake, personally and professionally, you'll have to excuse him if he considers the residential neighborhood facing demolition to be collateral damage:

“For us, that is enormous,” he said. That some will lose their homes as a result, he added, is “just the reality of life.”

Given that New Orleanians have just given a new zoning master place the force of law to prevent private development deals born and bronzed outside the purview of the public, it is curious that it is such a disservice to the residents of this city to ask questions about this particular insider development deal and the process that lead to it.

Very curious.

Mostly Crimey with Crime Expected Later

That was the weekend forecast and it was unfortunately accurate.

It is ubiquitous. It is in every neighborhood in this city, it affects every group of people in this city.

On Friday night, I was sitting on the stoop of a friend's house in the LGD and heard that morning's double shooting on the 700 block of Ninth.

On Saturday, I went to Wendy Byrne's memorial second line parade.

Today, Sunday, I learned that my old landlady was nearly beaten to death by her own son.

The Times-Picayune was chock full of long pieces detailing the many ways crime hurts our communities.

From Laura Maggi, Brian Thevenot, and Brendan McCarthy, on getting away with it:

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said the daylight killings speak to a pervasive lack of respect for the justice system.

"They are not concerned about the consequences," he said. "They are not concerned about who might be watching."

That attitude stems from a grim reality: Most killers here do get away with it.

So far, the New Orleans Police Department has made arrests in 59 of the murder cases in 2008, or 33 percent of the total. Prosecutors have accepted 32 of those cases, refused 11 for insufficient evidence and are considering whether to pursue the remainder. None of the cases has yet been tried.

Even if convictions are secured in every case accepted so far -- highly unlikely -- that would mean the city would punish just one in five killers. Police could secure more evidence and make more arrests at any time, but homicide cases generally do not age well, becoming tougher to solve with every day that goes by.

From Keith Spera, on front doorstep gunfire:

Until now, my wife and I have chosen to remain in the neighborhood and accept whatever risk that entails. But what of our responsibility to our child?

Does it make sense to raise her in a neighborhood, or a city, where killing is routine?

From Brian Thevenot, an artist asks the most important question:

"To me, I'm making American art; to a lot of folks, I'm making black art," he said. "It's the same with the murder problem -- people see it as a black issue. ... How can we get people to see that we live in one world?"

I leave that question for last because I think it helps give us a framework for evaluating WWL's Sunday panel on crime, featuring Samara Poche of the Lower Quarter Crime Watch, Mike Moffit of the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents & Associates, and Thom Khaler of NO Crimeline.

They got some things right and some things so very very wrong.

Perhaps the most glaring issue wasn't the fault of the panel at all, it was the panel itself. Limiting a discussion about crime in New Orleans to the French Quarter perpetuates the same kind of provincialism that has always stopped us from getting at the big picture. That the French Quarter has experienced a rash of high profile violent crimes recently shouldn't be put to the side, but it is a constant source of frustration throughout the city that panels aren't organized on WWL when young men are slain in the 7th ward. That crime seems to get be on the radar only when tourist-oriented businesses are threatened is insulting. And to hear the crime issue couched in these terms during the panel was bothersome.

The panelists were on the money about some really important things. The issues with the NOPD start at the top with Police Superintendent Warren Riley. So long as he continues to poorly manage his force, there will be no change. The panelists seemed to understand that the issue is not money or manpower. New Orleans has more cops per capita than most cities in the US and it's almost impossible for us to devote a greater percentage of our city budget to police equipment than we already do. They also pointed out that the typical Warren Riley PR move in during a crime wave, sending out officers on more vehicle patrols, will not do. Foot patrols force officers to interact with residents, to learn names and faces, and helps foster trust while increasing the sense of safety.

But by and large, things got sticky when the panelists were asked to prescribe medicine. Panelists seemed to think that one of the problems was that the NOPD was not making the quality of life arrests it needs to make, that it was not enforcing petty crimes and this was leading to big crimes. One panelist seemed to think that the NOPD had gotten away from the strategy of racially profiling potential criminals, following young men who wear hoodies and then frisking them if they spit or jaywalk or the moment they have a millimeter of probable cause.

This is most definitely the wrong approach. In fact, the major problem with the NOPD right now is that they're using up all of their resources making catch-and-release arrests for drug possession and traffic-related bench warrants. If anything, the NOPD is arresting too many people. New Orleans and Jefferson Parish arrest more people than anywhere else in the country. We prosecute more nonviolent crimes than anywhere else in the country. This wastes resources and is the biggest reason why we don't focus money on punishing violent crime or on preventing crime in the first place. And certainly encouraging more racial profiling, aside from being an offensive suggestion, is only going to exacerbate some of the other fundamental issues hurting the NOPD: public mistrust and police violence.

In fact, experts have already identified many of the major issues facing the NOPD. The NOPD itself ordered an audit by BGI in 2007. But after BGI identified several systemic failures and prescribed a blueprint toward the superior community policing model, the NOPD suppressed the report for months. To this day, Warren Riley has failed to substantively institute the suggested reforms.

At the end of the segment, Thom Kahler suggests that business leaders may be working behind the scenes to remove Riley, like they did for former DA Eddie Jordan. I'm not comfortable with this if we're not ready to be honest, a. that we can't have a shadow government of business associates determining when and if our ineffective leaders stand down and how much to pay them to do so, and b. that removing the police chief will not reduce our crime rate unless we're also able to get real about the actual problems our police department has.

Proponents of LSU/VA Feeling Threatened?

It was a good week to be a friend of Charity Hospital and Lower Mid City. Advocates successfully took to the airwaves to highlight the fundamental flaws of the monstrous LSU/VA redevelopment being proposed. Their most effective tool this week in Baton Rouge was the presence of architects from RMJM Hillier, who believe that renovating Charity into a modern facility would bring state-of-the-art medical care back to New Orleans faster and cheaper that the state plan, all without demolishing a residential neighborhood. Anyone who watched or listened to the LA House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday was treated to lots of stammering two-steps by flummoxed LSU officials unable to provide satisfactory answers to simple questions raised by curious legislators.

With Barack Obama taking office, proponents of the LSU/VA redevelopment have a lot working against them. They certainly can't afford to keep losing the PR war.

I won't be surprised if we experience a last-ditch barrage from groups quietly allied with the LSU/VA-GNOBEDD crowd.

For instance, let's say take, I don't know, the group Citizens for One Greater New Orleans, you know, the red coats.

Citizens for 1 GNO was founded after the storm by a group of highly influential uptown women. The imitative has worked on some pretty important issues such as assessor reform, levee board reform, and helped lead the push to establish the office of the Inspector General.

About them, emphasis theirs:

Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans is a non-partisan, non-sectarian grassroots initiative formed to be a voice for reform and renewal for Greater New Orleans and a better Louisiana. The community group provides a venue and resources for citizens to voice their opinions and concerns and to take action for rebuilding Greater New Orleans.
-
The group was formed in November 2005, when a group of 120 citizens gathered for the first meeting in New Orleans. They came together after the state legislature failed to pass levee board reform legislation. The Times Picayune reported, "These citizens want a safe city behind sound levees so that no generation would endure what we have endured, and more than that they want honest and efficient city government, one free of old habits of cronyism and patronage that stifled progress and made us all unsafe."

For a group comprised exclusively of white women, you have to give them credit for choosing truly nonsectarian issues. One false step, like if they'd come out with an official position on other tangential issues such as public housing or the BNOB plan, and the organization would simply not have credibility as a nonpartisan actor. They'd be forever damned as compromised by "the old habits of cronyism and patronage" that they had once set out to combat.

As it is, that's a tough argument for the executive committee of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans. It's executive director, Ruthie Frierson, was once one of the city's most powerful real estate brokers. Louis Frierson, her husband, was once king of Rex. Interestingly enough, CNN Money/Fortune has an interesting account detailing how Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans got its start:

Hours after she learned of the state's action [on levee boards], Frierson was visited by her neighbor Jay Lapeyre, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council. Low-key and conservative in temperament, Lapeyre looks as if he stepped from a box labeled Reluctant Public Figure. Laitram Corp., his family company, manufactures and distributes the creations of his inventor father: shrimp-peeling machines, alternating-tread stairs, and modular plastic conveyor belts.

--

"I said to Jay," Frierson recalls, "We ought to get signatures on a petition to reconvene the legislature for levee board reform. "He said in passing, 'Oh, that would be great.' I said, 'No, Jay, I want you to draft it with me.' "

Frierson and her husband combed through their Rolodexes. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, their house was packed with 120 friends and acquaintances, many of them wives of Business Council members, most of them from Uptown, the lush neighborhoods around St. Charles Avenue. Lapeyre spoke. The group named itself Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans and formed an executive committee, which met in Frierson's dining room to plot its course.

"The politicians in Louisiana are knitted together underground like an old root system," says committee member Kay Kerrigan, wife of a prominent city attorney. "We realized this has got to change. If we want to rebuild this city, we can't go back to the way it was."

Kay Kerrigan, whose husband is a wealthy corporate lawyer that once represented Pan Am against the victims of the '82 Pan Am crash in New Orleans, is the Vice Chairwoman of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans.

Jay Lapeyre is indeed the President of the shadowy New Orleans Business Council. You might remember him from such shady deals as the arranged consultant gig for former DA Eddie Jordan.

Unsurprisingly, the New Orleans Business Council is highly vested in the Downtown Development District, and the Greater New Orleans Biomedical Economic Development District. The LSU/VA redevelopment is their baby boy.

To the degree that the same social circle that is fighting for the current LSU/VA redevelopment project also funds the Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, it is feasible to think that Citizens for 1 GNO might be tempted to help rescue the redevelopment scheme by taking a public position on the matter.

However, doing so would directly contradict the group's founding principals. It would forever malign Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans as just another sectarian, tribal social network with an untrustworthy agenda inseparable from the selfish economic interests of their funders.

LSU/VA proponents are definitely looking to rebound. It will be interesting to see who they call upon for help.

Laughter Obscures Need for Introspection

Everyone has just had a ball teeing off on the corrupt Rod Blagojevich and crooked state of Illinois over the last week or so. Intelligent bloggers and bombastic blowhards came together to share a laugh.

How could he be so stupid?
In this day and age?
Hasn't he ever seen a movie or television show before?
Which state is the most corrupt?

Hardee har har.

I enjoyed it too, but at this point, I'm totally over it.

And no, it's not because I think Louisiana isn't getting enough credit for it's foibles.

It's because I think there is some wisdom to take away from the situation that is obscured when we marginalize Blagojevich or Illinois as anomalies.

Blogojevich is a thug and he should be put away for a good long while but I think it's useful to actually think about the different ways pay-to-play works instead of just laughing at Legojevich.


Everyone was just so appalled, not so much by the corruption but by Blagojevich's stupidity in getting caught. One of the things that I noticed some cable talking heads doing when discussing the Blagojevich scandal was a sort of half-hearted line drawing when it came to what was crime and what was just plain old politics. Some amount of political horse-trading is normal and sometimes necessary even, whereas trading a political horse for a personal money cow is a crime, or so the talking heads said on Hardball or whatever show I was watching.

But perhaps it's worth parsing this out a little bit.

I've noticed a pattern about the way some crooked or ineffectual politicians ultimately get taken down by the FBI. Guys like Edwin Edwards in Louisiana, Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit, Vince Fumo in Philadelphia, or Rod Blagojevich in Illinois don't just get caught up in corruption indictments out of the blue. Rather, these politicians develop grand reputations for thuggery and graft far in advance of any kind of criminal investigation. That reputation coincides with a certain celebrity-centered political lifestyle. Power provides, reputation develops, power erodes and then lifestyle become unsustainable. This leads to increasingly desperate and risky shake-downs that often occur in earshot of federal investigators that have by this time found an actionable complaint from someone no longer intimidated or dependent upon the boss' political power.

This helps explain why politicians that develop vast public reputations for crookedness, even if they never end up getting accused of anything by a prosecutor become so defensive or walled off as time elapses. Ray Nagin might be demonstrating this kind of bunker mentality. Other good examples are former Mayor John Street in Philadelphia or, I dunno, President Bush and all of his lackeys. They exercise their right to remain silent, taking that route over the desperate 0-60 cliff dive demonstrated by Governor Blagojevich, or by former State Senator Shepherd, who had his own unique style.

Allegedly, one of things Blagojevich tried to do by leveraging this Senate appointment was to obtain a plum foundation board salary for he or his wife.

The governor, already dogged by allegations of crookedness and low approval ratings, was likely becoming quite concerned with his prospects for income after his term. Forget his delusions about running for President in 2016, I think the desperation for six figure cash is a way more telling indicator of where he really knew he stood deep down.

This allegation was for some reason treated as among the most shocking in Fitzgerald complaint. That's not to say the behavior isn't deplorable, because it is. But it isn't entirely out of the ordinary.

Or at least, it is treated as regular political behavior in some parts of the country.

Like in Louisiana.

I think back to District Attorney Eddie Jordan's resignation in October of 2007. The writing had been on the wall for quite some time at that point but he remained in office, determined to stay on the job even as veteran prosecutors quit and accused murderers were released on 701s.

Do you remember how his resignation was finally arranged?

Remember this headline:

Jordan's new job part of resignation

Jordan resigned from his post two weeks ago, saying he hoped his absence would allow people to work out some way for the judgment to be paid, forestalling a crippling shutdown of the office he led for almost five years. Though the settlement still looms over the office, Jordan's resignation assured him a private sector job arranged by business leaders.

"It is part of the package that was developed," said Robert Stellingworth, executive director of the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, a nonprofit group. The business community will pay for Jordan's consultancy, Stellingworth said.

The consulting gig, cemented through a contract signed last week, is not a full-time job, said Stellingworth, who declined to give the amount Jordan will be paid.

"We believe he can add some perspective" to the foundation's work, Stellingworth said. The business community has remained in talks about the legal settlement but committed no private money to pay it. Lapeyre, who described himself as an "adviser" to the city on the issue, last week sat in on a meeting between Mayor Ray Nagin and Landrum-Johnson.

Quite literally, the former District Attorney Eddie Jordan nearly forced a total shut down of the criminal justice system, relenting only when he was able obtain a well-paying foundation job for himself.

Mayor Nagin needed to call in "the business community" to do him this favor, to find a job for Eddie Jordan. And "the business community" came through for the Mayor, placing him under Richard Stellingsworth at the Police and Justice foundation. His salary would be paid, not by the foundation, but by "the business community," all as arranged by "adviser" Jay Lapeyre, President of the New Orleans Business Council.

Isn't this exactly what Mr. Blagojevich was trying to arrange for himself in Illinois in exchange for the Senate seat?

Here in New Orleans, we allowed the same exact thing to occur out in the open. It was reported right there in the paper and nobody really batted an eye.

We never did learn if Mr. Lapeyre or "the business community" asked for or received anything in return.

Lucky for us Mayor Nagin doesn't get to pick Senators. He only gets to decide municipal policy.

Priorities: Rate-Gate v. Abuse of Power

Mayor Clarence Ray Nagin sure did create a stir toward the end of last week at a hastily organized press conference to entice Houston-area evacuees to come stay in New Orleans. In what has become his public speaking trademark, Mayor Nagin went off script, appealing to Hurricane Ike evacuees with promises of reciprocal hospitality.

From WDSU:

"Just ask for the Mayor Ray Nagin special rate," Nagin said. "I guarantee you're going to get one of the best rates you've ever gotten in the city of New Orleans. We're ready for you to come, to take care of you like you've taken care of us."

Immediately, this didn't sit well with the Gambit and after a few phone calls it was established that there had been no effort to actually organize a discount for Hurricane evacuees.

It turns out that these comments are indeed marginally problematic. While the Mayor may have only intended to attract evacuees to area businesses still suffering the economic impact of Hurricane Gustav, his off the cusp joke that hotels would be offering a "Mayor Ray Nagin special rate" to Ike evacuees was irresponsible. It is un-mayoral and insensitive to joke at a press conference billed as an informational appeal to hurricane evacuees. With millions of people displaced from the Houston, unsure of the fate of their homes, scrambling to find the cheapest way to safety, and vigilantly monitoring the airwaves for serious reports, Mayor Nagin's playful attitude was out of place. His quip alluding to a special discount for Hurricane evacuees opened the door for unnecessary confusion, potentially adding insult to injury to Houston-area evacuees.

Bloggers were pretty outraged over the Mayor's comments but I was very surprised to see that the Times-Picayune deemed the Mayor's false advertisement of a 'special rate' to be front page material for Saturday's paper. The AP wrote about it too and the story got picked up all over the place at WWL, WDSU, and nationally via MSNBC.

Was this a front page story?

No way. Not even close. Not even on a Saturday. The head of the hospitality bureau had to hastily send out a clarifying email to hotel managers? God forbid.

And it's not as if this was a particularly slow news day.

Our national financial institutions are being compromised, a major hurricane was bore down on the fourth biggest city in the country, and the most important election ever is just seven weeks away.

On the local level, Hurricane Ike brought new flooding to areas still powerless after Hurricane Gustav. State and municipal officials flunked on the basic task of food stamp distribution for thousands of New Orleans struggling to get back on their feet.

Even if the paper were to only cover Mayor Nagin and ignore everything else going on in the region or on the planet, "rate-gate" still doesn't deserve main page coverage.

This does. Also read this, this, and this.

In a strangely calculated grab for power, Mayor Nagin issued an unnecessary executive order during the Gustav state of emergency that suspends the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee that reviews properties slated to be demolished by the city. The stated rationale for doing this was to expedite the demolition of buildings in imminent danger of collapse. Yet immediately we know that this is ridiculous because buildings classified as in imminent danger of collapse already automatically bypass the NCDC. We know this because the Mayor was already rebuked for his lack of knowledge of the demolition process in July when he claimed that a collapsed building in Broadmoor would force the administration to streamline the historic review process. That building had long been cleared for demolition and was not held up by any review process but instead by the private contractor hired by the city.

So if NCDC has no purview over buildings classified as in imminent danger of collapse, then why has Mayor Nagin suspended it? From the T-P:

Of 162 demolition permits issued since last week, 64 percent were assigned to the city contractor hired to tear down properties in imminent danger of collapse, according to a review by Matt McBride, an activist who maintains a database of demolition permits granted since Katrina.

Of the remaining 57 permits that were handed to private contractors or to the city vendor assigned to tear down Katrina-damaged buildings, 52 are located in areas where the committee's review would have been required. Of those, 24 were slated for review at a meeting scheduled for Sept. 2, the day after Gustav struck, the review shows.

Very plainly, Mayor Nagin's suspension of the NCDC was not about IDC properties but about subverting the review process to hand out demolition permits that otherwise may not have been authorized and pay out demolition reimbursements to another closely-tied private contractor firm. Durr Heavy Construction, which appears to be the biggest monetary beneficiary of demolition contracts, is registered to Steven Stumpf. Remember that the Stumpf is amongst the partners that profitted from the post-Katrina reopening of the Old Gentilly Landfill. Stumpf and Jimme Woods, of the much-maligned Metro disposal, secured a sweetheart deal at the end of the Morial administration:

In 2001, Stumpf and Woods formed a joint venture and submitted the only proposal to operate the new facility. In the final days of the Morial administration in early 2002, they signed a deal under which -- provided the landfill received a state permit -- they would keep 97 percent of the proceeds, with the city getting the other 3 percent.

According to campaign finance filings, the Amid partnership organized for the landfill have given $12,500 to Ray Nagin since the storm. The last $2,500 was given in 2007 while the first $10,000 was given in two $5,000 chunks a few days apart in April of 2006. The donations were obscured so as not to overtly violate campaign finance law. The first $5,000 donation came from Amid Metro Partnership LLC. of 817 Hickory Ave. 70125. The second came from Amid Landfill of 817 Hickory Ave. 70123. Another Stumpf company, Harvey Canal Holdings, gave an additional $5,000 to the Nagin reelection campaign that same week. The only listed contribution originating specifically from Durr Heavy Construction was one for $2,500 received in 2004.

When you give $15,000 in a one week period to a candidate fighting for his political life you tend to get your needs met.

(FACT CHECK UPDATE: It would appear that I misinterpreted the relationship between the executive order and Durr Heavy Construction. In fact, the regular permits that normally bypass NCDC for imminent danger of collapse go to Durr Heavy Construction. The city has continued to issue these types of permits since Gustav to Durr. However, the under the Executive Order, a separate contractor is used, DRC Emergency Services, the biggest beneficiary of the Mayor's unnecessary order. DRC Emergency Services is moments from being fired by the city for failure to live up to the requirements of it's post-Gustav debris removal contract. In addition to being one of the primary contractors indirectly implicated in the federal lawsuit filed earlier this year against the city for improper demolitions, Moldy City reminds us that they've won at least one Post-K contract in partnership with Southern Scrap. From the T-P:

DRC also holds a contract with the city to demolish blighted homes. A company executive, Robert Isakson, co-hosted a fundraiser for Nagin shortly after his 2006 election. DRC, a sister company and Isakson combined donated at least $11,500 to Nagin's war chest.

But as Moldy has pointed out already, DRC's relationship with the city is complex and has been alternatively hot and cold. Sorry for the confusion, it seems I got caught up in the alphabet soup.)

So while I applaud the T-P and other New Orleans news sources for having picked up on the NCDC suspension scandal, I would suggest that it is an everyday headline-caliber story. With everything going on, to so scandalize the hotel rate slip-up seems awfully petty, particularly when considering the Mayor's much more vindictive and unethical activities this week.

UPDATE:

New Orleans bloggers are increasingly aware of the influence they have. We can fight the Mayor on this and we must. Contact members of the City Council NOW

Let me second this post from Moldy City. Councilman James Carter, a candidate for Congress, has had ample opportunity this summer to win over skeptical voters by exercising his power on Council and standing up to Mayor Nagin. During the NOAH scandal, after Jackie Clarkson embarssed herself in a feeble attempt to make it appear as though everyone was playing nice, Councilman Carter could have stood up and provided real leadership during a tense week. He did not.

He would be wise not to pass on this. It may be his last opportunity to demonstrate in practice what he promises he'll do at Congress in theory.

Support Jim Harlan in the LA 01

Jim Harlan is a self-financed Democrat running for US Congress against Steve "the Sleaze" Scalise in the LA 1st district, encompassing parts of Uptown, Lakeview, and Jefferson Parish. Here's an ad he's produced (h/t: Daily Kingfish)




Steve the Sleaze (aka 'the mistake by the lake') should also answer for his political dependency on anti-hurricane protection forces like Edward Diefenthal and Boysie Bollinger. If you look up either of those two New Orleans haters on the interwebs, you'll see they represent some of the Sleaze's biggest contributors, his base. You'll also notice that even though the Sleaze campaigned on the promise that coastal restoration and levee protection would be his top two priorities once in office, when a Congressional delegation was actually in New Orleans to specifically examine these issues, the Congressman felt it was more appropriate to be in Alaska of all places, fluffing big oil's drilling agenda in the Arctic wildlife reserve. (PGR caught this when it happened over a month ago)

In the middle of hurricane season, the Sleaze passed on an opportunity to advance a bipartisan coalition to federally fund levees and wetlands for Louisiana and instead stumped for the profits of big oil. What's even more inexplicable is that he was pushing for drilling expansion IN ALASKA instead of off the Louisiana coast. How is that representing your district, Steve?

What is wrong with this guy?

Southern Scrap: More Than Meets The Eye [updated]

According to the Coast Guard, all 70 of the vessels that broke loose in the Industrial Canal during Hurricane Gustav belonged to a company called Southern Scrap.

'Loose Ships Sink Levees'

The loose vessels produced some of Gustav's scariest moments as they careened around the waterway, with some crashing into an interior floodwall, a bridge and industrial warehouses. At least one barge knocked holes in a nonfederal floodwall -- one not responsible for protecting New Orleans residents -- and there were fears that the next big storm could unleash barges in an unprotected industrial area and sweep them across open parking lots toward a federal floodwall that protects the Upper 9th Ward.

The rest of the Times-Picayune article outlines Coast Guard suspicions that Southern Scrap may not have followed it's own mooring plan :

Capt. Lincoln Stroh, the Coast Guard's New Orleans sector commander, wrote in his order to Southern Scrap that the "company has not shown the ability to follow (its) Heavy Weather Protection Plan as hurricanes approach this Port."

But the Times-Picayune avoids providing critical context. People should know about Southern Scrap and it's history.

First, let's remember that Southern Scrap has a history of failure when it comes to securing it's Industrial Canal assets as storms approach. That link leads to a T-P story from just a few weeks that details a court ruling allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to move forward with a lawsuit against Southern Scrap dating back to an unsecured drydock that sunk during Hurricane Katrina. Two other companies are moving forward with their own suits against Southern Scrap because their barges were damaged attempting to navigate the drydock wreckage. Additionally, the Port of New Orleans is suing Southern Scrap for the damage done to the Florida Avenue Bridge.

After their failures during Hurricane Katrina, Southern Scrap was somehow given the latitude to implement their own plan to secure vessels on the canal for Gustav without any oversight. The ongoing lawsuits related to Katrina represent critical context that T-P readers were denied.


--


But unfortunately that's not the only boat the T-P's been missing in its coverage of Southern Scrap.

As the paper does point out, Southern Scrap is a subsidiary of Southern Recycling which is a subsidiary of Southern Holdings. Or I should say it was a subsidiary of Southern Holdings.

Briefly, Southern Recycling (and largely, Southern Recycling and Southern Scrap can be discussed as one and the same), is one of the largest recyclers of scrap metal in the United States. It is a major force within that industry and gets a lot of fat contracts to help the government dispose of old ships.

Southern Recycling and the above umbrella Southern Holdings were founded by the extremely politically-connected Diefenthal family. Edward L. Diefenthal is one of the most active and loyal Republican donors in the South, having given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates all over the country. The Diefenthals are also amongst the cabal behind David Vitter's Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority (see this link also), a PAC that funnels untold amounts of money to Republican campaigns. Edward L. Diefenthal is amongst Governor Bobby Jindal's biggest financial boosters, which may be why we're not hearing much from the Governor's mouth about the barges.

It must be pointed out that Diefenthal and Southern Holdings sold Southern Recycling/Scrap in 2006 to a European company for just over $160 million and in no way am I insinuating that Diefenthal himself should have tied the barges. However, it may be helpful to ask whether or not his political influence had anything to do with the lack of oversight awarded to his companies, particularly since ownership only changed hands very recently and since Diefenthal still lists himself as CEO of Southern Scrap in campaign donations from this year.

It is also helpful to remember that Diefenthal only sold off Southern Scrap/Recycling after it became abundantly clear, especially to the politically connected, that it would be impossible to preserve the 'Hurricane Highway,' the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, on which Southern Scrap relied to move big ships. That was after Diefenthal and other monopoly men dependent on MR-GO like shipping magnate Boysie Bollinger worked desperately to prevent or delay work on this critical security project on which the future of all of SE Louisiana depends. (Boysie Bollinger is another principal behind Vitter's LCRM and served on the BNOB commission, ensuring that MR-GO closure was not made a priority by that body's levees subcommittee)

Though the push to close MR-GO has been ongoing for decades, one wonders why even after the Katrina disaster so sinisterly exposed the risks of continuing to preserve the man made channel, it has still taken over three years to begin work. And at a relatively reasonable $25 million, it certainly wasn't the funding or the price tag that held things up. Of course that $25 million only pays for the plug and does not fill in the channel or restore the wetlands around it, but it's a critical first step that we should have taken years ago but did not because of the inordinate political influence of selfish millionaires like Bollinger and Diefenthal.

Now I think that's pretty critical context.




UPDATE: Loose Links and the Greater New Orleans Republicans

1. Mouthpiece background bio on Boysie Bollinger

2. Article detailing the parties for and against closure of MR-GO

Yet for several maritime companies along the Industrial Canal, including Bollinger Gulf Repairs, New Orleans Coal Storage and Lockheed Martin's Michoud plant, the MR-GO offers the sole outlet for ships too large for an alternative route through locks leading to the Mississippi River. If the MR-GO closes without an alternative route opening first, Bollinger Vice President Robert Socha said the repair dock's 300 jobs could go, too. "If one or the other isn't met, Bollinger Gulf Repair would probably cease to exist," he said.

And here's Congressman Jefferson really fighting for the people:

But St. Bernard Parish Councilman Craig Taffaro said his parish cannot wait that long.

"Congress needs to understand the people of St. Bernard lost everything, including loved ones, due to the negligence and lack of responsiveness by the federal government and Army Corps of Engineers in the maintenance of that structure," Taffaro said.

But the port has an ally in U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans. In a statement issued last week, Jefferson signaled his support for keeping MR-GO open until the locks are completed.

"I will continue working with the Port of New Orleans and other interested parties so that New Orleans does not lose valuable business at the port," the statement said. "In the interim, I will also seek funding for the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal lock, which will allow us to close MRGO to commercial traffic."

Jefferson spokeswoman Nicole Venable said the congressman also wanted a floodgate system such as Melancon described. But she warned "not to cut off the (Gulf Outlet) altogether in the face of irrational fears."

Nice to see Congressman Jefferson tending to his constituents - the Bolinger and Diefenthal families. Just look at Edward Diefenthal's campaign contributions from 2004 alone! He gave to the horrific Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and rained $15,000 on the Greater New Orleans Republicans Fund. (Anyone remember them?)

3. Here's a strike against Boysie Bollinger from Oyster's archives.

4. Here's a link to some work by Mike Davis. It's a long, well-researched article.

Here's a quick hit:

Power and status in New Orleans have always been defined by membership in secretive Mardis Gras 'krewes' and social clubs, with the Krewe of Comus and the Boston and Louisiana clubs at the apex. 'Perhaps more than any other city in America,’ historian John Barry has written, 'New Orleans was run by a cabal of insiders...Looking on as if from behind a two-way mirror, these insiders watched and judged and decided.’

Then in the early 1990s, civil-rights activists led by feisty councilmember Dorothy Mae Taylor forced the token desegregation of the Mardis Gras and some of the clubs reluctantly admitted a few African-American millionaires. Despite a few old-guard holdouts (like Comus, which preferred to stop parading rather than integrate), Uptown seemed to be adjusting, however grudgingly, to the reality of Black political clout.

But, as post-Katrina events have brutally clarified, if the oligarchy is dead, then long live the oligarchy. While elected Black officials protest impotently from the sidelines, a largely white elite with overriding common interests - especially prime real estate and Tulane University - has wrested control over the debate about how to rebuild the city. This de facto ruling krewe includes Jim Amoss, the publisher of the Times-Picayune; Pres Kabacoff, developer-gentrifier and local patron of the 'New Urbanism'; Donald Bollinger, shipyard owner and prominent Bushite; James Reiss, real-estate investor and chair of the Regional Transit Authority (i.e. he was responsible for the buses that didn't evacuate people); Alden McDonald Jr., CEO of the largest African-American-owned bank; Janet Howard of the Bureau of Government Research (originally set-up by Uptown elites to oppose the populism of Huey Long); and Scott Cowen, the aggressively ambitious president of Tulane University.

But the dominating figure and literal kingpin is Joseph Canizaro, a wealthy property developer with friends in high places. First and most importantly, Canizaro is a leading Bush supporter with close personal ties to Karl Rove and the White House inner circle. Secondly, he is the power behind the throne of Mayor Ray Nagin, a nominal Democrat (he supported Bush in 2000) who was elected in 2002 with 80 percent of the white vote. And, thirdly, as the former president of the Urban Land Institute, he mobilizes the support of some of the nation's most powerful developers and prestigious master-planners.


5. Notice when the monopoly men were finally forced to cave to reality, they made sure that their puppet David Vitter would take all the credit.

Oh and don't you dare miss this one:

6. The New Yorker describes the "broad-chested and jowly" Boysie Bollinger as also possessing the "carriage of a viceroy." The following passage indicates the repulsive perspective from which this racist dirtbag sees the world:

Bollinger held the view that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was pampering evacuees, by handing families two thousand dollars in emergency help. “I said to the President, ‘You’re empowering people not to come back to work.’ The President said, ‘I don’t think two thousand dollars will do that.’ I said, ‘Mr. President, these people haven’t had two thousand dollars in their lives.’ ” Rather than wait, Bollinger was hiring as many Mexicans as he could find. “I’m hoping the people of New Orleans come back and take a different attitude toward employment,” he said, pulling open the door to a small office building. “But until they do . . .”

Boysie then shot an infant and kicked her screaming sister toddler into the river.

Last one I promise:

7. An Advocate article on Believe in Louisiana, a 527 created to promote Governor Jindal's conservative agenda exposes both Edward Diefenthal and Boysie Bollinger as top contributors, each giving at least $100k.

-

What these guys are doing and have done, the inordinate control they have on our political process - it ain't right.

They have a racket and if they don't break the law as it is, we've got to write laws that make it illegal to do what they do. When a social cabal of millionaires can drop $15,000 a pop into a hat that magically produces a mayor and a congressman with original favors to owe, you've got a problem on your hands.

Not too many towns in America that have it quite like New Orleans.