It's John's money club, after all

John gets to make the rules, I guess. 

A change shrouded in secrecy will exempt Treasury Secretary John Schroder from key rules governing how he can disburse a huge pot of federal money to small businesses.

The change for the $300 million program was included Monday in an amendment to a spending bill sponsored by state Sen. Bodi White, R-Central. The amendment would exempt Schroder from procurement rules and regulations regarding the program to distribute the federal money to help small businesses remain afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Maybe not even worth mentioning at this point.  The $300 million fund is already money the legislature stole from the state's CARES Act allocation so that they could pass out money to friends.  The deed is done there.  How fastidious they are about appearing to follow best practices now is kind of pointless.

Right around Bastille Day

As good a time as ever to storm the wreckage.

Work to recover the bodies of two workers trapped inside the Hard Rock hotel in New Orleans when it collapsed last October could begin as early as July 13, city spokesman Beau Tidwell said in a media briefing on Tuesday.

Demolition crews have finished taking down three buildings surrounding the partially collapsed hotel and are currently assembling cranes needed to work on the building itself, Tidwell said.

The landlord police are already de-funded

There's barely anything you can say to them. All these judges can do is ask them nicely to wait a few days.

“We gotta be aware and cognizant of the reality of life right now,” Judge Monique Morial said during one of the hearings. “Given the situation that we find ourselves in, the last thing that I want to do is contribute to an already dire homelessness problem in our community. I understand that landlords are entitled to their property. But I think also in the circumstances we find ourselves in we need to be a little bit compassionate in how we deal with these situations.”

In a typical “rule absolute” ruling, Morial gave tenants two days to move out. A notice would be put on the property the day after the ruling, which informs tenants they have 24 hours to vacate. But Morial urged several landlords to agree to give tenants extra time to find new housing. She said, however, that this was only a request she could ask of landlords, not an order she could impose.

“It doesn't mean that I can always force a situation, but I can ask you, because of what we’re dealing with, if you’re willing to give her a couple weeks notice to vacate,” she said. “Because it’s not gonna be easy for her to find another place to live.”

The first of the month is coming again. (There's one every month!)  The next few firsts of the next few months are going to be worse than this one. Unless somebody does something. Who can do something?

DeDecker, like Mabery, thinks that formal eviction filings will nonetheless rise over the coming months. Not only will CARES Act eviction protections expire, but the additional $600 federal supplements to unemployment benefits will run out at the end of July. Without those supplements, the maximum unemployment benefits that Louisiana residents can collect is only $247 a week — inadequate to cover the costs of living in New Orleans, critics argue.

“Extra unemployment is going to expire and the CARES Act protections are going to expire, and we are going to see a huge public health and housing crisis the likes we haven’t seen since immediately post Katrina,” DeDecker said. “Ultimately, reopening eviction court without ensuring that tenants can actually deal with their accumulated rent debts is a disaster. We need the state government, we need the city government, we need the federal government to step up and cancel rent and mortgages and supply enough funding to make sure people can pay their bills.”

Otherwise, a whole lot of renters are about to get the cops called on them. And the orders to vacate won't be delivered with anything like the deference the judges show to the landlords.

Brand worth more than the beer

I don't know if they've actually been selling much beer.  Does anyone drink Dixie? It's basically just a worse and more expensive Budweiser.  And why bother with any of that when there is plenty of Miller Lite to be had?  Anyway now that they're retiring the one thing that gets them any attention, they're going to squeeze as much cash out of it as they can. 

Sales of T-shirts, baseball caps, glasses, tin signs, dog bandannas and everything else emblazoned with the Dixie Beer logo spiked over the weekend, after owner Gayle Benson announced that the brew would be rebranded.

“There were people walking out with shopping bags full,” said Jim Birch, general manager of the souvenir shop at the New Orleans East brewery.

After that they're selling Not-Dixie. Which is what any of several local microbreweries is doing already.  So how sustainable is that?

All they can offer us is shame

The "second wave" is here. It happened during "Phase 2" of reopening.

Louisiana reported another 1,467 known coronavirus cases Sunday, bringing its total to 56,236 as the disease’s dogged resurgence continued across much of the state.

Sunday's numbers reflected a two-day lag in reporting because the Louisiana Department of Health did not update totals on Saturday due to a planned power outage. But they again climbing cases within and outside of the New Orleans area and more hospitalizations and deaths due to the disease.

"Planned power outage."  The virus was spreading too quickly so they tried turning the Health Department off and then turning it back on.   It didn't help.

Even less helpful has been the behavior of the death cult caucus that has emerged from among the Republican ranks of the Louisiana Legislature. Last week they all posed for a photo together.

A group of Republican lawmakers who have flirted with a petition to revoke the state’s emergency declaration since early May revived the effort this week. Several Republicans spoke out against Edwards’ extension on the House floor Thursday, and later more than 20 gathered shoulder to shoulder on the State Capitol steps, without masks, for a photo op.

The petition, circulated by Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, needs 53 signatures in the House. It would repeal the governor’s public health emergency declaration, which Edwards contends would put federal aid at risk, though Republicans challenge that.

“Quite frankly, it’s gone on long enough,” Seabaugh said of the restrictions.

It's disgusting that Seabaugh, et al would participate in a trolling event intended to discourage the wearing of masks which, it has been shown, is one of the few things most of us can do that actually makes a difference.  It's egregiously offensive for them to complain that the reopening guidelines have been too restrictive even as the news is breaking that plan has led to a massive new outbreak of the virus.  In fact, it's absurd for any of these Republicans to criticize the failed plans given that, by and large, they were written by panels assembled by the Governor, the Legislature, and by localities, deliberately loaded with political and business insiders so that the rules would be as unrestrictive and"business-friendly" as possible.

Probably the Republican lawmakers are just trying to see what they can get away with. They've got these new super-majorities to play with and if that means they have the numbers to overturn a governor's emergency order, it's hard for them not to see if they can actually pull something like that off. Besides, this is less of an argument now about how best to contain the virus than it is about what people can be made to endure. More to the point, it is about asking, when the designed-to-fail system indeed fails, where can we most easily direct the blame?

If we were really going to stop the spread of the virus we would do this. The US Congress would follow the advice of economists, like Stephanie Kelton here, and fire up the money printer so we can pay everyone to stay home until the virus is isolated or vaccinated. That is it. That's the only thing that would stop it.  But they didn't want to do that because our politics isn't really capable of doing anything but protecting the interests of wealth. So here is what happened instead.

Congress did print up some money. But that was only so they could send trillions of dollars to things like airlines, cruise ship companies, and the massively fraud based financial sector of the US economy.  The rest of us were left at the mercy of our bosses, the business tyrants who wanted to "reopen the economy" and politicians who wanted to "balance" that death drive with the perception that they care about protecting the public health. Hence, the "phased reopening" plans drawn up by all of those panels of worthies.

But if you "reopen," if you tell everyone to go back out under strange new circumstances where they must re-invent their operations on the fly while most misunderstand and some completely ignore the rules, then the virus is definitely going to spread. And so, guess what, now the virus is spreading.  Again, the only thing to stop it is to pay everyone to stay home but they still don't want to do that. So instead, now we must make a policy that will identify and penalize one individual scapegoat after another even as the virus continues to spread. And so that is what we are doing.

New Orleans-area leaders took a harder line against the coronavirus Monday amid rising infections in the region, with Mayor LaToya Cantrell warning of possible stricter restrictions on businesses in the city and Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng mandating mask-wearing for the first time.

Cantrell said Monday that more stringent rules in the city could come ahead of Independence Day weekend, after a task force she appointed last week found cases of non-compliance with current mask rules at local grocery stores and other businesses.

It's not that they're wrong to tell people to wear masks. It's just that every office holder with the charge to offer support and encouragement to the public during this time has failed to do that in multiple and compounding ways. And now all they can offer us is shame.

Here is John Bel this past weekend reacting to the very bad news about the rate of spread.

96 percent of today’s reported cases are associated with community spread, rather than congregate settings.

43 percent of today’s cases are from people 29 years old or younger.

It’s on all of us to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Louisiana. #lagov #lalege https://t.co/LbaBFwjOpu

— John Bel Edwards (@LouisianaGov) June 28, 2020

It's "on all of us" to stop it now. Is it, though?  The governors and mayors and senators and presidents who actually have the power to make policy, shouldn't this be on them? They've been pretending it is on "all of us" because that's what they need to say in order to rationalize these bogus reopening phases. But the phases don't seem to be working.  Turning around and telling every individual that it's on you to make the unworkable plans they've drawn up work is an abdication of responsibility. Politicians and bosses love to talk about "personal responsibility" when it applies to the powerless. But when those so-called leaders have already set up the objects of these sermons to fail, the admonition amounts to little more than bullying.

We did the right thing by going into lockdown. When the governor and the mayor ordered everyone to stay home back in March, we stayed home. But that was when we needed assurances from those holding power that they were in this with us.  We needed some guarantee of support. We needed to have our income supplemented with better than temporary unemployment benefits and a one time check.  We needed our housing stabilized.  We needed our jobs protected.  None of that happened.

It wasn't allowed to happen because wealth controls all the levers of power. Because Congress abandoned everyone and left the states and cities whose budgets were devastated by the shutdown to twist in the wind. Because desperate local business people yelled and screamed at the governor and mayor to "reopen the economy" and because the desperate governor and mayor obliged. And so the reopening, quite predictably, led to the virus coming back. But we're now not supposed to blame the governor or the mayor or the rich people they listen to. Nope. Instead "it's on all of us." Which is to say all (or any) of us can be blamed at any moment so long as it isn't anyone with any real power.

The insidious thing about this rhetorical trick is that part of it rings true. In certain ways, we really can say it is on "all of us" to deal with this. We should all wear masks and do social distancing when we are out. We should be checking on our neighbors. We should be looking for ways we can help one another. But none of this is a "personal responsibility." It's a collective responsibility. We all need to do it together. We need to support one another in the effort. "Personal" responsibility implies that we are each doing it in isolation where we are subject to bullying and shaming. The situation calls for mutual aid and trust. Not more policing and punishment.

We shouldn't have to endure the pandemic while also living in perpetual fear of a boss or a landlord or a cop.  We need to be able to trust each other. We need to be able to say "it's on all of us" and believe that in good faith. Unfortunately, it's quite clear our leaders are incapable of anything like that.  

The Dread Index

Ten days ago, in keeping with the (obviously very well thought out, very safe and successful) "Phase 2" reopening process, the First and Second City Courts of New Orleans once again began accepting evictions filings from landlords. The response was...  impressive.

Last week, some courts and justices of the peace accepted eviction requests, but didn’t begin assigning them court dates. Badon waited until Tuesday, the first full day after Edwards’ order lifted.

Badon said his clerks on Tuesday received 63 requests for evictions, compared to about 25 on a normal day.

And that's after having turned away an apparently sizeable number of landlords who are still constrained by the federal rules that pause evictions on certain properties until August 25.  The city courts had been urged to push back their moratorium to match the federal guidelines but they decided to move ahead anyway.

It's hard to know what the reasoning is there. But there has obviously been pressure from property owners. We know they've been talking to the mayor, at least. In this interview back in April she was already talking about the coming eviction crisis in terms of having to "find a balance" with the needs of "our landlords."

Clearly she was still thinking about "our landlords" this week when she extended the deadlines for short term rental license applications and permit extensions. This extension even applies to STR licenses that were set to expire anyway due to a recent change in city regulations. It's basically using COVID as an excuse to keep STRs operating even while we are allowing people to evicted from their homes. That's one hell of a way to strike a "balance."

Anyway thanks to these policy decisions our leadership has made on purpose, a wave of evictions is coming soon.

NEW ORLEANS, La. (WVUE) - As the coronavirus pandemic persists it is feared that many low-income families in Louisiana and around the country could face eviction soon and as a result homelessness.

The Center for Planning Excellence of Baton Rouge and Urban Footprint released their analysis of the housing crisis amid the pandemic.

Camille Manning-Broome is President of the Center for Planning Excellence.

“In Louisiana, our development patterns are increasing the likelihood of this, of homelessness and high-risk burden because many areas your combined housing and transportation costs had up to more than 50 percent of your income,” Manning-Broome said.

The analysis found that Louisiana ranks 3rd in the nation for having a high risk for evictions due to job losses. Further it says 130,000 households across Louisiana are at risk of evictions and it shows the parishes most in need of rental assistance beyond July 31 when federal protections and assistance expire are in order of need, Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Caddo, Lafayette, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Calcasieu, Ouachita, and Bossier.

For further context, here is a cheering analysis of the Census Bureau's "Household Pulse" survey which finds:

Based on the Household Pulse Survey results released on June 17, which examined responses between June 4 and June 9, almost one-third of all households expect to experience a loss of employment income over the coming four weeks. Fully 10 percent of American families—that’s 25 million, half of which have children at home—did not have enough food to eat in the prior week. Even more disturbing, one in five households—over 50 million in total—are doubtful that they will be able to afford sufficient food in the coming month. And of the nation’s 65,000,0000 renters, almost 20 percent were unable to pay their rent last month and an even higher percentage—close to 30 percent—doubt that they will be able to pay their rent in the coming month. 

This week, another one million plus new unemployment claims were filed.  So it's staggering to think how many households are currently trying to calculate, according to their savings if they have any, how much time they might have between the day they are laid off and the day they are evicted. Call it the Dread Index.  And it's a frighteningly short number now that the courts are ready to hear evictions again.

We regret to inform you, this evening, that the mayor is somewhat of a ding dong

Hello, and welcome again to posting on the internet.  It's a time honored tradition that, over the years, we have discovered is the only... okay well not only... but one of the best ways we can maintain a decent record and therefore remember at all any of the things that happen.  Maybe that's not important to a lot of people, but it helps us out a fair amount. 

And so we intend to continue doing it. Hopefully we can continue on in our accustomed space for that, in fact. But, in case we cannot, then this space will be available. If we do have to use this page, at least we can probably write down all the things without having to concern ourselves so much with maintaining an audience.  It's fine if you've found your way here and would like to read and comment, of course. We welcome the conversation.  But the primary reason we've ever typed anything on the internet is so that we ourselves can remember a little bit of what happened. If we end up posting here regularly, that will be the reason.