Feels like a Monday

Try not to go too hard out there. 

A vehicle fire in the eastbound high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes of the Crescent City Connection is snarling traffic on the West Bank, Monday morning.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development reported the fire just after 8 a.m.

I'm certainly not one of these people declaring a return to post-pandemic normalcy yet.. especially with only 25 percent of Louisianians fully vaccinated (31% with at least one shot) as of today.  But certain of the old familiar comforts of home, such as everything being on fire, do seem to be returning. 

Oh also, was there an election over the weekend or something? I found all this trash laying around. 

We'll definitely have to talk about this one later. There are so many bad takes flying around today it's hard to pick out the absolute worst. But this is a contender. 

James Carville, the New Orleans-based political strategist, believes the outcome has national implications, noting that Peterson had the advantage of her side spending more money and a low turnout special election (16.6%) that typically favors candidates who seek to excite their party’s most fervent supporters.

“Voters voted against wokeness,” said Carville. “They just did. Woke did very, very poorly.”

I mean, it isn't very surprising that Carville has adopted the pejorative form of "wokeness" to mean any political platform to the left of, say, Ronald Reagan.  But he's also wrong (or lying, if you prefer to call it what it is) to claim this result is a rejection of such a platform instead of a candidate.   But, more on that later.  

In the meantime try to avoid getting exploded by anything.

Someone is always out to get Billy

Billy Nungesser gave a speech this week where he attempted to frame the latest in what has been a string of FBI inquiries into his various dealings over the years, as politically motivated attempt to keep him out of the Governor's race in 2023. Maybe.  But the article also does a good job of reminding us those federal investigations are a long running feature of Billy's career. 

Nungesser has come across the FBI’s radar before. The agency has in recent years investigated Nungesser’s contracts and public works projects while he was Plaquemines Parish president.

Much like in that case, Nungesser said the new probe is politically motivated.

“I don't know who's behind all this investigation stuff. Is it a PAC? Is it because they don't like my political stance? All I want is the truth,” Nungesser said. “The FBI's got a job to do when they get a complaint. But I've been through this before with people that didn't want to see me be parish president. I only want to do the right thing. But you wonder why people don't run.”

Nungesser’s use of a Lower Pontalba apartment and space in other state buildings in the French Quarter has come under scrutiny before. The former Louisiana State Museum’s interim director, who resigned in protest in 2017, claimed Nungesser was using those assets for his personal benefit. That was around the same time sources told the Advocate the FBI was probing Nungesser’s administration as parish president years earlier.

But just because Billy is paranoid doesn't mean.. yadda yadda yadda.  There really is a fair amount of jostling going on right now for the next election. Republicans are arguing over whether or not to change Louisiana's open primary elections system.  The current theory there is that a closed primary will enforce more ideological discipline and promote more right wing candidates than currently advance to runoffs if one can even imagine such a thing.  Also the conservatives promoting this theory might not even be right about their assumptions, but that's an argument for another time. 

The interesting thing here is that we suddenly live in a world where Billy Nungesser appears to be on the moderate side of an intra-party political disagreement. If nothing else it's a measure of just how far off the map we are.

Why lie when the facts are bad enough

Every year Joe Bouie tries to nudge us ever so slightly in the direction of untangling the corrupt nightmare system that runs our public schools "like a business."  Every year it fails.  No reason to stop trying, though. 

A state legislator who has a history of criticizing the way New Orleans schools are governed is pushing a bill in the upcoming session that would strip NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. of his power to close or renew charter schools without an Orleans Parish School Board vote.

State Senator Joseph Bouie Jr. spoke briefly with board members during their meeting Tuesday about the bill, which he has prefiled for the 2021 legislative session beginning next month. Bouie’s bill aims to undo the charter school renewal system established by a state law passed in 2016 that brought the city’s charter schools — most of which had been overseen by the state-run Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina — back under local control. 

That law, Act 91, gives near unilateral power to the superintendent to decide which nonprofit-run charter schools up for contract renewal with the district will remain open and which ones will close. Under the current system, the board can only overturn Lewis’ recommendation with a two-thirds supermajority vote within one month of a recommendation’s presentation. 

Bouie’s proposal would require board votes on all charter renewals.

One of the principal authors of Act 91 is congressional candidate Karen Carter Peterson who, over the weekend, (just barely) slipped into a runoff against Troy Carter.  During the primary, Carter tried to make hay out of Peterson's relationship with the charter school movement. Those links do exist and voters should consider them during the runoff.  They should also, consider, however, that Troy Carter also supported Act 91 and does not appear to have taken a stand against the charter movement that meaningfully distinguishes him from Peterson. 

On the other hand, at least his attack ad acknowledged the devastating effect the charter movement has had on teachers. Leaving aside the question of his sincerity about that, it matters that it's something Peterson does not talk about unless she is refuting an opponent's accusations. Which is what happens in this article. 

Only days before Saturday’s primary, Karen Carter Peterson is calling foul on Troy Carter for a television ad that slams her and her husband on education matters.

“Troy Carter’s latest attack is a lie,” Peterson, who like Carter is a state senator from New Orleans, said in a statement.

She is correct.  Carter's ad does lie. It cherry picks certain events and compresses their timeline to imply a stronger causal relationship than the viewer would otherwise infer. I'll try to summarize this as clearly as I can.  

In 2004 Peterson sponsored a bill called Act 193 which empowered the state controlled Recovery School District (RSD) to take over so-called failing schools in Orleans Parish. Shortly after Katrina, a second bill (Act 35) enabled the RSD to take all of the schools in Orleans Parish. Peterson voted against this bill. RSD took over 102 of 117 schools and immediately fired 7000 teachers and support staff. This move effectively destroyed the teachers union and gutted what most people considered a core piece of the city's Black middle class at a critical moment. Those teachers, their union, and in many ways the whole city has never really recovered from that. The state then re-made the New Orleans Public Schools according to an experimental model of privatized autonomous charters working with largely non-union labor (although a very small number of charter school staffs have since been organized.) In 2016, Act 91, again, authored by Peterson, returned this reconfigured system to local school board's nominal control but locked the RSD's changes into place.  

Carter's ad presents this story as 1) Peterson voted for Act 193 and then 2) All of the teachers were fired. Obviously that isn't how it happened. In between those events there was a hurricane, a flood, and a thorough takeover of the schools that Peterson voted against. However, it does not get her off the hook for writing and supporting Act 91 which we can see as a validation of all of those events after the fact. She is further implicated by the close involvement of her husband and brother-in-law in the leadership of RSD and Orleans charter schools during this period although Carter's ad also fudges the facts on this so as to make it appear even more sinister. 

Which, again, causes us to question Carter's integrity as much as Peterson's.  The facts are bad enough.  But Carter is as culpable as Peterson for much of the situation being what it is so he has to lie to make it sound even worse. 

Anyway, I'm not sure when Bouie's bill is due up in the session or if Senators Carter and Peterson will be available to vote on it when it does.  The legislative session begins on April 12 and the runoff election is April 24 so it's a real tight window. Which is a shame because we might miss a key moment of truth for both of them.

Is it possible to do less with more?

Now that the "Rescue Plan" bill has passed, it's time to pick around in it and see what we've won.  Of particular interest now will be keeping an eye on state and local politicians to see if they continue pushing for austerity budget cuts even though the stimulus specifically provides funds intended to prevent that from happening. This morning the LA Budget Project calls attention to one provision of the bill meant to head some of this off. 

The law also contains an important provision for states receiving the aid: for every dollar that a state government spends on net tax cuts, it will lose a dollar of federal support. As lawmakers gavel into session next month, they will have an opportunity to make long overdue investments in Louisiana’s people, families and communities instead of providing tax cuts to businesses and the wealthy. This provision provides an incentive to do just that.  Nicholas Johnson of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has the details: 

Cutting state taxes now would repeat a mistake many states made in the wake of the Great Recession: they cut taxes, which harmed families, undermined economic growth, and exacerbated economic inequality and racial injustice. Instead, states should address critical health and economic needs by making investments that can help build antiracist, equitable states. To help them do so, the American Rescue Plan Act includes $195 billion in fiscal aid for state governments (and more for schools and for local, tribal, and territorial governments).

They can't use the one time stimulus payments to create new "fiscal cliffs" made out of tax cuts for rich people.  Republicans in some states are already complaining, of course.  But the truth is there will plenty opportunities in the new law for them to steal whatever they want.  This line, in particular, seems like a just such an opportunity. 

(3) TRANSFER AUTHORITY.—A metropolitan city, nonentitlement unit of local government, or county receiving a payment from funds made available under this section may transfer funds to a private nonprofit organization (as that term is defined in paragraph (17) of section 401 of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 11360(17)), a public benefit corporation involved in the transportation of passengers or cargo, or a special-purpose unit of State or local government.

Which suggests that the city of New Orleans, still beset with serious infrastructure challenges, and which has spent the past year threatening layoffs, furloughing workers, and dropping cryptic hints about "shared sacrifice," could still move ahead with its plans to do all of those things while shoveling the federal stimulus funds out the back door to non-profits controlled by the NOLA Business Alliance or Leslie Jacobs, or even Stephen Perry with very little accountability for any of it. Especially interesting thing to watch for just ahead of an election season when people will need paying off.

How many Democrats are there in the US House of Representatives?

As of right now, with a few vacancies special elections pending, there are 221. 

How many of them signed this letter? 

Progressive House lawmakers are demanding Vice President Kamala Harris use her power as presiding officer of the Senate to immediately advance the $15 minimum wage that she has long said she supports.

“Eighty-one million people cast their ballots to elect you on a platform that called for a $15 minimum wage. We urge you to keep that promise,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Harris and President Joe Biden, pressing the White House to raise the wage for workers as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan. “We must act now to prevent tens of millions of hardworking Americans from being underpaid any longer.”

The letter released Monday was signed by 23 Democrats, including Reps. Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamal Bowman, and Cori Bush.

Oh... well okay. Good luck. 

Don't worry about Bill

#NeverForget pic.twitter.com/5OyfiIkgnt

— Bill Cassidy’s Mardi Gras Beads (@BillGras) October 4, 2020

Oh noooo Bill Cassidy voted to convict Trump in a meaningless gesture where the outcome was fore-ordained and is getting "harsh backlash" from Louisiana Republicans  

Almost immediately after his vote to convict, Louisiana Republicans blasted Cassidy. Attorney General Jeff Landry said the vote was “extremely disappointing,” calling the impeachment trial unconstitutional. He said Cassidy fell into a “trap laid by Democrats to have Republicans attack Republicans.”

Mike Bayham, the secretary of the LAGOP, said he hopes the Legislature will revamp the state’s election system to hold closed primaries, which he believes will result in more reliable Republican candidates. Currently, all candidates for office appear on the same ballot regardless of party, in what's known as a jungle primary.

“Bill Cassidy is a senator without a party as of today,” he said.

It would be a shame if the Republicans, who do control the legislature after all, decide to scrap the jungle primary over this.  It's one of the few good things about Louisiana's electoral system. But more likely nobody will remember any of this in six weeks, let alone the six years before Cassidy is up for reelection again.  By that time, the ever expanding Republican right wing will have found a new mode of expression beyond the personality of Donald Trump and Cassidy will just as likely be positioned relative to it in a way that rides that wave along with the rest of them. 

Because the thing to understand about the difference between the Republican right wing and the rest of the Republican Party is that there isn't any.  Regardless, wealthy liberals and corporate media institutions are going out of their way right now to pretend that there is some sort of schism between the "educated" Republicans and the crazy ones.  Here, for example, we see Nancy Pelosi repeating and expounding on a line that she has pushed for a few years now and Joe Biden has repeated.  America "needs a strong Republican Party" for some reason. Why? It's probably true that the Democrats enjoy the convenient excuse for not delivering things they promise to their voters.  But the country has had a strong Republican Party for decades and look where that got us. 

Really, though, the Democrats who pine for it are telling on their own class biases.  Here is Pelosi talking about candidate recruitment.  

When we recruit candidates to run for office or we see them self-recruiting, we always say or we see them saying, well I could be the president of my university or the head of my hospital department or this or that so I have to think about whether I have to run for Congress, we always say we don't want people without options that's why we are looking to you to run. Because you have options.

You see, ideally, the republic is guided by university presidents and heads of hospitals as opposed to, say, bartenders or nurses who become civil rights activists. We can't trust those people because their "options" are limited. Remarkably, she's talking there about who the Democrats - the ostensible party of the people - envision for their party's leadership.  Specifically she means to contrast this with the GOP where we are meant to understand that the rubes have taken over.  But this isn't just about Pelosi's hostility toward poor and working class Americans' material stake in or aptitude for engaging with political outcomes. It's about the fundamental lie she and other like minded observers are telling about what's keeping us from enjoying the benefits of a "strong Republican Party" right now.  

A recent New Republic column by Osita Nwanevu written after the House voted to strip Marjoire Taylor Green of her committee assignments, talks about how conspiracy theories like QAnon are frequently mischaracterized as merely a consequence of ignorance on the part of their adherents. 

Of all the “big lies” distorting our politics, one of the largest and most popular—back in 2010 and now—has been the notion that our political divisions are the product of under- or miseducation. The Republican Party’s flight into lunacy, it’s often suggested, has a fairly simple cause. The unwashed aren’t getting The Facts in school or from their media sources, and it’s up to the enlightened to shower The Facts upon them—perhaps, as some “disinformation” experts recently suggested to The New York Times, with a “reality czar” at the White House manning the hose. This was the explanation many turned to as the Trump era began, and it was the explanation many turned to for how it ended. 

But this doesn't actually describe most conspiracy-minded Republicans. Or, at least, according to this Atlantic article Nwanevu cites, it doesn't describe the kind of people who stormed the Capitol in January. 

The average age of the arrestees we studied is 40. Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.

Looks like more than a handful people who "have options" there. Not that any of this should surprise anyone.  The Republican Party has long been and is still a party of the ruling class establishment.  Its radical movements are not subversive challenges to that establishment, they are establishmentarian reactions to progress.  

Democrats will still occasionally refer to voters' inherent understanding of this when it's convenient for them. But, as Democrats have become more dominated by ruling class interests themselves, those moments are less frequent.  A party that depends on finance capital for its funding and college educated white collar professionals for its electoral strategy is less likely to cast itself as oppositional to the elites in the other party.  Instead, they have to build a classist myth of paper "deplorables" to run against.  Whether or not one finds that strategy effective depends on what we assume are its goals.  If we think the point is to maintain the sinecures and fundraising streams maintained by the career pols and staffers embedded in the party infrastructure, it's been a smashing success. If we think the idea should be to actually halt or even resist slightly the country's inexorable decades long march further and further to the right, then the results have been less good. 

Nwanevu appears to be giving them the benefit of the doubt in offering this advice.

Democrats should try campaigning on the truth: The Republican Party is controlled by intelligent, college-educated, and affluent elites who concoct dangerous nonsense to paper over a bigoted, plutocratic agenda and to justify attacks on the democratic process. That agenda and those attacks are supported by millions of reasonably intelligent voters who will believe or claim to believe anything that furthers the objective of keeping conservatives in control of this country forever. Simply pointing to figures like Greene and hoping the indignation of college graduates will do the rest is a mistake. Instead, Democrats should present voters with a material choice between a party that has nothing to offer the majority of Americans but abuse and conspiratorial flimflam and a party committed to building a democracy and an economy that work for all. If they don’t, the lizard people who run the GOP will be running the government again in no time.

If the Democrats truly were a party "committed to building a democracy and an economy that work for all," they would be well served to take this advice. But assuming this much good faith on their part has become so absurdly fruitless an exercise that even going this far into the act of pointing it out is boring. So forget trying to convince them of anything.  What readers should take away from Nwanevu's analysis, though, is that it is possible for smart, educated people to believe in and pursue evil politics. The "we need a strong Republican Party" wing of the Democrats don't want to acknowledge this because they, too, believe in and pursue evil politics with a different branding. But justifying their kind of evil depends on the false idea that education/expertise automatically equals morality.

Bill Cassidy has a lot of education and expertise. He is, in fact, a medical doctor.  Before he cast his meaningless vote to hypothetically convict Trump, he directed that education and expertise toward the defense of the petro-chemical corporations who regularly poison Louisiana residents while funding his campaigns. 

President Joe Biden’s recent utterance of “Cancer Alley” has raised the hackles of Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. The Baton Rouge Republican said the president’s use of the term, rooted in longstanding concerns about toxic air pollution in the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was an insult against Louisiana.

“I'm not going to accept that sort of slam upon our state,” Cassidy said in a call with reporters Tuesday. “It sounds like great rhetoric. But again, I don't accept that slam."

In 2017 Doctor Cassidy's proposed "repeal and replace" scheme for gutting the Affordable Care Act would have resulted in massive cuts in Medicaid care for the most vulnerable patients.

Critics of Cassidy's proposals, though, said that amounts to a substantial cut in the Medicaid funding that would jeopardize care for the elderly, disabled and low-income residents in Louisiana.

Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, which advocates on behalf of low- and moderate-income families in the state, said the cuts in the Cassidy-Graham-Heller bill would leave states scrambling to cover inflating costs.

"This would rip a large and growing hole in our state budget while eliminating all guarantees of assistance for low-income residents," said Moller, whose group has actively opposed other recent Republican proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act.

His 2020 family leave proposal has been described as a "Trojan horse" bill that would push more families into bankruptcy. 

Some policy researchers have criticized this plan as tantamount to a loan that working families will have to pay off with reduced tax credits in the future.

Kathleen Romig notes that this policy will have no actual protections for employees seeking to take time off, so many workers in service sectors would risk losing their jobs entirely. Romig also points out that the details are sparse on how this plan would cover costs for low-income workers. By front-loading the child tax credit, they would be sacrificing their tax credits on income tax returns for years to come.

“The bill thus provides no net new financial help for families,” she wrote in an article for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “In effect, it is a loan that families would repay during some of a family’s most financially crunched years. . . . Families who took this ‘advance’ would have to repay it for ten or 15 years.”

And who could forget Cassidy's most startling breach of the trust we are meant to place in our experts when, during a 2018 Fox News segment, the Senator from Louisiana demonstrated an alarming lack of understanding of how a jambalaya is prepared.  

While Mike Bayham might declare that Cassidy is "a senator without a party as of today," his consistent record of support for conservative causes and hostility toward the poor suggests that six years from now he will probably be as welcome as ever in either party.  Or to put it another way, he's not exactly someone "without options."

There's that "culture change" thing again

Now that Eddie Rispone has given up, Lance Harris is running for State GOP Chair.  He says he wants to change the culture. 

Harris said the party needs a “culture change” and that he wants to bring “consistency and stability” to the leadership.

His announcement comes less than a week before the Republican State Central Committee meeting in Baton Rouge on Saturday where officers are set to be elected.

He is challenging LAGOP Chairman Louis Gurvich, a New Orleans businessman who took over the party in 2018 after long-time party chair Roger Villere stepped down.

Previously, we heard about this "culture change" business from party secretary Mike Bayham who appeared to be favoring Rispone.  But as far as we can tell the actual dispute here is over how much Republican candidates will have to pay Villere's consulting firm if they want party support. Gurvich appears to be the pro-Villere candidate.  Looks like Harris is signaling he is the "culture change" guy now that Rispone is out.

The state budget is not yet busted

Some quick notes on what's being reported from the Revenue Estimating Conference today. The projection they adopted expects the overall budget to shrink by about $223 million this year. BUT there are multiple caveats and what-ifs that will determine the eventual impact on services. 

The REC is itself a politically contentious process.  Its purpose is to set an initial framework for the Governor's budget proposal before the legislative session begins.  After that, lawmakers can figure out how to find more money if they want or just move everything around. But this is where they come up with the number that sets the starting point.  But that starting point isn't an absolute truth ordained from the heavens. It's something that gets argued over by the committee. The result of that isn't so much as an agreement on the most reasonable forecast as much as it is an agreement to stop arguing.

The four-member Revenue Estimating Conference, made up of (JBE's Commissioner of Administration Jay) Dardenne, (Senate President Page) Cortez, independent economist Stephen Barnes, and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, picked the less rosy of the two available forecasts.

Manfred Dix, an economist for the governor’s administration, forecasted a drop of only $35 million in the state general fund for the upcoming fiscal year, citing what he sees as a quicker recovery as vaccinations ramp up.

Dardenne initially moved to recognize Dix’s forecast, saying the panel would meet again in two months to revise its forecast. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration is also expected to push for aid to state and local governments now that he has Democratic control in Congress.

The panel’s independent economist, Barnes, sided with Dardenne, but Cortez and Schexnayder refused, with Cortez saying the panel should proceed cautiously with so many unknowns. Instead, all four agreed to the more conservative estimate, with Dardenne saying he wanted to avoid going without a revenue forecast, something that had thrown the budget process into chaos amid previous disagreements.

So the REC number is important. But remember not to take it too seriously. Predicting the future is, after all, always more of an art than a science. For example, it says here that state sales tax revenues during the pandemic weren't quite as bad most people expected.  Also there's a fair amount federal money already allocated for Louisiana that hasn't been factored in yet simply because the rules for spending it haven't been established. 

However, the $292 million in higher-than-expected tax collections this year could be used to help cover some of next year’s expenses. In addition, Louisiana is receiving new federal aid passed by Congress in December, some of which could help offset state budget cuts next year. Louisiana and other states still are awaiting federal guidance on what strings exist on the latest assistance.

And, of course, no one expects that to be the end of the federal aid. We could end up being disappointed about the eventual size of it. But right now there are reasons to be optimistic that the next stimulus package could include real fiscal help for the states. Even Cortez thinks so. 

Once President-elect Joe Biden takes office, Congress could also put even more federal funding relief on the table — and that could also affect how large any state budget cuts would need to be.

“We fully expect to get more stimulus dollars,” said Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, a member of the Revenue Estimating Conference.

Cortez said he does worry any money coming from the federal government after Biden becomes president might not arrive in time to help prop up the state budget. Congress still has to negotiate the new package and the legislature often finishes Louisiana’s budget in June, right before it takes effect in July.

It's hard to know whether or not Page is joking there.  If the last few years have taught us anything it is that this legislature is not worried in the least bit about fiscal deadlines. 

The upshot is the pandemic fiscal doom is not yet upon us. Which is an important thing to remember when Republicans start talking about belt tightening during the session this year.  They are still in charge of deciding whether or not you have to suffer in order to protect the petro-bosses who fund pretty much all of them.  There are better choices, though. 

Oh also be sure and check out this FB event hosted by the LA Budget Project. Looks like they will be talking about a lot of this stuff.

Maybe this time we could actually try?

The thing to know about the US response to COVID in 2020 is that we did not even try to contain it. The leadership in the Congress and in the Trump Administration were more concerned about ensuring that the bosses and ownership classes in the country profited from the pandemic than they were interested in stopping it. Because of their utter and willful failure to put forth a national plan that would for pay people to stay home and prop up state and local governments during the lockdown, every locality was left to make its own policy dictated by local wealth and power.

Which is why, even in cities like New Orleans where the political leadership has been relatively serious about the threat, the lack of help from the feds has left that - to put it charitably - unfocused leadership vulnerable to pressure from the local bosses and ownership classes. And so even the local COVID restrictions were embedded with favoritism toward local power centers. Tourism business owners were allowed to expose their workers and customers to danger. Charter school boards were allowed to force staff and students into unsafe classrooms. Gayle Benson was allowed to gather crowds in the Superdome. 

We've seen the results of all of that and they have not been good. So, given this experience, what happens when these new COVID variants begin to proliferate? It says here we will have to do "something dramatic."

“I’m very, very concerned that we’ve now gone from a virus that we could control to a virus that we really can’t, unless we do something very dramatic,” said Kristian Andersen, an infectious diseases expert at Scripps Research Institute.

A spike in infections — on top of the existing caseloads — could force hospital leaders to consider how to surge capacity, staff, and resources — and weigh what happens if they have too many patients to care for. It could force schools to close again or delay plans to reopen. The variants are also ramping up the pressure on the country’s sputtering vaccine rollout, to try to protect more people and snuff out transmission before the variants become dominant

Are we prepared to tighten down further? The promise of the vaccine rollout plus general 2020 fatigue strongly suggests we are not. But, as we saw this week, the vaccines aren't quite rolling out as quickly as we had hoped.  So the critical matter now, if we want to handle this correctly,  is that we don't botch the federal relief effort a second time. Unfortunately it looks like we are well on the way to botching it a second time.

Biden is seeking to garner 10 Republican votes for the plan and approve it through "regular order," the usual path for legislation. But it's already running into early Republican opposition ranging from Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, to Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

"Republicans have made it clear they're not going to go for something of this size," Jim Manley, a former senior Democratic aide and now a political strategist, told Insider. "I can't imagine Republicans going for a package like this that includes minimum wage."

Republicans, of course, do not care who lives and who dies as long as the bosses and owners make out okay. And Joe Biden obviously doesn't care about anything as much as he cares about making Republicans happy.  So here we go again. A whole new chance to get it right and a whole new chance to blow it. Is it too much to ask that we try at least?

Some real soul searching going on here

Turns out Eddie Rispone, despite having spent the past several months scheming and maneuvering and spending a fair amount of money in an effort to become the next chair of the state Republican Party, has suddenly discovered he's too busy.  

Eddie Rispone, the Republican businessman who lost a bid to unseat Louisiana’s Democratic governor in 2019, is suspending his campaign for chairman of the party, weeks after saying he wanted to take over after seeing the party outworked and outspent during the governor’s race.

Rispone said in an interview he has “major obligations” in his personal and business life that would prevent him from devoting enough time to party chair.

Can't even spare them decency of coming up with a convincing lie. Boss move.  

On the other hand why bother when he's got Mike Bayham around to make stuff up for him. 

Mike Bayham, the secretary of the party, said Rispone “got a taste of unfortunately how fratricidal this party is.” Bayham has previously said the party needs a “culture” change, pointing to an attack mailer against him in his race for re-election to the Republican State Central Committee, whose origins weren’t disclosed.

“The guy is a serious businessman,” Bayham said. “I think he didn’t fully appreciate how much herding of cats there would be involved. When you’re chairman of the party you answer theoretically to over 220 (central committee) members.”

See the thing is Rispone, who spent the 2019 gubernatorial election on television cartoonishly praising Donald Trump in front of as many pickup trucks as he could find, is just too good for this party.  And since the "culture change" he's hoping for has more to do with who gets paid to make ads than anything else, maybe he's got a point.

In 8 days nobody will remember any of this

If we took it seriously, Trump would already have been removed. Instead he's giving a speech in Texas today while everybody keeps arguing over what the most civil, move-forwady, bipartisan response can be. If we took it seriously, the large majority of congressional Republicans would be resigning today.  Don't expect they're going anywhere. 

If we took it seriously, Jeff Landry would resign in disgrace.  Instead he's going to remain a likely candidate for Governor in 2023, in disgrace nonetheless. But still... 

Anyway the point is, in a week they're going to change the subject. Maybe it won't exactly be a thing where nobody remembers this happened. But it will definitely be digested into the regular theater by then.

Was he grounded?

Cameron Henry's brother has run into some kind of a problem.  Let's try not to imagine what it could be with so little information available.  

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana lawmaker from Jefferson Parish has abruptly resigned from his elected position.

The House of Representatives clerk’s office confirmed Tuesday that Republican Rep. Charles Henry submitted his resignation to House Speaker Clay Schexnayder on Monday. The resignation from the 105-member chamber was effective immediately.

“As of today, he is no longer a member,” said House Clerk Michelle Fontenot.

Because if we don't give him the benefit of the doubt and it is what we think it could be, then why are Steve Scalise and John Kennedy not resigning as well?

"Beyond punishment"

Jason Williams was sworn in as DA today. We are, as always, prepared to be disappointed in how he actually plans to translate his rhetoric into practice.  But he does know the rhetoric well. 

Williams says he will end the use of Louisiana’s stringent habitual offender laws, never transfer juveniles to adult court and become much pickier about charging cases for prosecution. Underscoring his new approach, his large transition team includes many liberal policy advocates and former colleagues in the defense bar.

"Being more selective about prosecutions will allow us to focus on the crimes that matter most to all of us. We’ve got to go beyond punishment and invest in our community," Williams said in his inauguration speech.

Again, we'll see if those words carry any sort of commitment. We already expect the increase in crime commensurate with worsening economic conditions during the pandemic will lead to new political pressures on every politician to "get tough." That's especially likely to be worse during a municipal election year. 

Speaking of which, the timing of Jason's resignation from City Council means there will not be an additional election just to fill his seat. 

Monday also brought some clarity regarding Williams’ now vacant at-large seat on the City Council. Tyronne Walker, Williams former campaign manager and transition director, said that his resignation of the seat was effective Monday at 11 a.m., meaning his seat will be filled by an appointment by members of the City Council. If he had decided to resign any earlier, there would have been more than a year left in his term. Under city law, that means the seat would have been required to be filled by a special election.

On Monday morning about an hour before the ceremony began, Walker told The Lens that Williams had not recommended an interim candidate for the council to consider. Council President Helena Moreno on Monday announced the opening of applications for the post.

So.. you know.. if you're looking for a job...

Con d'etat

The reason I don't think of it as a coup attempt is because there was no actual unachievable path to holding power in its wake. Certainly not one that Trump was capable of designing and seeing through. That would have required him to actually focus and do work for a minute which he does not do. 

That isn't to say that he would not have accepted the results of the coup had there actually been one. He definitely would have. But the thing to get about Trump is he isn't actually the person who does anything.  In his mind, he's just watching all of this on TV the way you and I are. In real life, he's a con man who lives off of whatever the suckers in the downline end up bringing him. That isn't how you run a coup. This was more like multi-level militia marketing. 

Anyway here's David Roth. 

So of course Trump didn’t have a plan for losing the election. He expected that the people working under him—that is, the entire United States government—would find a way to stop the election that he’d lost from becoming official when he gave that order, but he had no sense of how that might work beyond them just somehow doing it. He promised evidence that would show he was right and then told other people to find it. It never came, but at some point he just started acting as if it had been delivered and denied, and began talking about how unfair that was.

No, they still are not doing a coup

Big fun for the cosplayers at the Capitol today. Looks like the cops let the other cops dressed up like..uh.. vikings or something run wild inside the building for a while.  The President put out a video telling them they are all "special people."  The other President is on TV right now complaining about broken windows. Nobody knows when the cops will finally ask the other cops to leave. Maybe they will spend the night there. Who knows?

Overall, I gotta say, not great.  But, despite the breathless hype-slobber coming out of the usual suspects at cable news, it's not a "coup."  It's more like, well like this.

It’s a coup in their minds but not in real life. The United States government cannot be sacked by a mob of angry white dudes. If the police or the military wanted to flex and end this right now, they could. They’ve decided to let them blow off steam

— Keeanga-Yamahtta T. (@KeeangaYamahtta) January 6, 2021

It is a shocking display of double standards, the rot of the GOP, and the utter racism of American police and those who direct them. This is desperation, not an actual plan to take power. it’s frightening and appalling, but I don’t think the US govt is abt to collapse.

— Keeanga-Yamahtta T. (@KeeangaYamahtta) January 6, 2021

Trust me, we are still living under the same shitty undemocratic and racist regime of increasingly authoritarian oligarchy.  Today's LARP will not interrupt that.  If anything, it can only make it.. more of what it already is. Looking around Twitter and TV the only possible acceptable policy response will come in the form of an expansion of police powers and a crackdown on political organizing.  Not a crackdown on the kind of people who made the riot happen, of course, but there will definitely be some cracking down. Probably on leftist and Black Lives Matter groups first. You know.. usual suspects.   Hilariously, but predictably, some of the loudest voices already calling for such a thing are emanating from ostensibly "left of center" actors.  It's always amusing to see what brings the inner cop out in certain people.

Anyway, rest assured, your government is not overthrown. It remains in full possession of its power and glory fully poised to once again meet the moment of crisis by punching  down and left.

No, they aren't doing a coup

Republicans are not "doing a coup" today. They are just setting the premise for the next four years of obstructionist behavior.  The ceremonial hooting, hollering, marching, and LARP counter-programming going on in D.C. while Congress receives the electoral votes from the states, is the opening bit in the opposition party strategy.  Even as they technically cede office, they are saying that they don't actually have to recognize the legitimacy of the incoming government.  Materially, that is as bad for you and me as if they were in fact doing a coup which of course is why they don't have to do one.  They don't have to do anything at all, really, besides be rude and raise money for two years before they take the Congress back. This morning, Democrats are already celebrating their victories in Georgia by talking about the things they aren't even going to try to do in the meantime.  In other words, the strategy works. Nothing will fundamentally change.

It's also important to say that this is the exact same strategy Republicans always employ whenever it is their team's turn to be out of power for a while. To believe any of it is new one would have to have no memory of the conspiracy stuff Rush Limbaugh's listeners regularly wallowed in during the Clinton years. And, supposing, some are too young and precious for that, surely they can reference the rolling boil of  birtherism and "secret Muslim" theory and whatever the hell was on Glenn Beck's dry erase board throughout the Obama years, right?  Right?  Like that just happened. Does anyone remember any single thing that ever happens?

Maybe it doesn't matter. All that matters is what can hold attention right now. And we can make that whatever we like as long as there is money to be made from pushing it out there. Cable news is going to wring the "coup" story line for all it is worth. It's great sensational #content. It keeps the folks watching and worrying and arguing about nonsense.  Nothing makes advertisers happier than that; perfectly alienated and insecure consumers at full attention.  But it distorts the reality of what is happening in unhelpful ways. And that sucks because, again, what is happening is actually very bad. 

We're not getting anything out of this deal.  What we want. What we need the Democrats to do for us during this fleeting moment when they hold a little bit of power is, at the very least, address the emergency seriously.  We need them to distribute the vaccine with some competence. We need them to pass a new stimulus that bails out the bankrupt municipal and state governments before everything collapses.  We need them to cancel rent.  We need them to pay people to stay home and be safe until the pandemic is over. 

But we aren't getting any of that.  Instead we are getting... "a new era of bipartisanship"

Of course he did:

Sen. JOE MANCHIN (https://t.co/cGSSO03KHm.) called for the results to usher in a “new era of bipartisanship.”

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) January 6, 2021

Which, looking at D.C. today, we can count on to mean, Republicans refusing to participate in anything constructive on the grounds that  "*wink wink* the government is illegitimate" while the governing party refuses to even try to do anything without them. All of this bodes ill. But it's not a coup that poses the danger.  It's the same continuity of government for and by the ruling classes we've been experiencing forever.

Eddie Rispone: Perpetual outsider

One of the state Republican Party's long time major fundraisers and "kingmakers" who hilariously ran for Governor in 2019 as an "outsider" is going to run for the party charimanship as.. a self-described outsider. 

After successfully electing several candidates to the committee in December, Rispone is now looking to take even more control over the Louisiana GOP, running for chair of the party.

“It was never my intention to run but recognizing the substantial challenges we face as a body and as a party, I believe we need someone with major business and large organizational skills to ensure the party can be the most effective in helping elect conservatives in the future,” Rispone said in an email to party officials.

Remarkable that he can keep up that pose. Even now after having "recruited" (i.e. bought and paid for) a number of candidates to turn over seats on the central committee, Rispone continues to insist it was  "never my intention" to run for chair.  Until it was. 

Eddie also complains about having been "outworked and outspent" during the Governor's election. There's actually some truth to that. But it's Rispone's own fault. He and his campaign decided the way to win was to hide behind the President and a barrage of TV ads rather than appear at a runoff debate or god forbid actually talk to any real live people. But now Eddie says he's the guy to change this culture? 

Anthony Ramirez, who ran Rispone’s communications during the 2019 governor’s race, said after reviewing the results of the race, “we saw that the Republican party was clearly outworked on the ground.” And after poring through attendance records, they discovered nearly 40% of the Republican State Central Committee didn’t attend a single meeting last year.

See that? Republicans don't even want to talk to each other.  And who can blame them, really? Read the rest of this article and see how they treat each other.  

After stepping down as party chair in 2018, (Roger) Villere dove into political consulting work through CRV Consulting, who he runs alongside Phil Capitano, the former mayor of Kenner who was arrested this summer after police said he used his vehicle to ram the back of a woman’s car during a dispute over allegedly stolen property. Villere and Capitano also run the Louisiana Conservative Republican Coalition, which is registered as a nonprofit and which doles out endorsements to Republican candidates. It endorsed Capitano in his bid for re-election to the Republican State Central Committee this year, but Capitano was unseated by Keith Conley, a longtime Jefferson Parish government official.

State Rep. Mark Wright, a Covington Republican, said Villere’s group sent a mailer endorsing his opponent for the Republican State Central Committee, using “the Republican party seal or something that looks exactly like it.”

The picture coming into focus here is one of a good old fashioned dispute over territory and patronage.  You wanna run for something in Louisiana as a Republican?  Well here is the list of people you need to hire or bribe or both. Villere and Capitano and  want to be those guys on the one hand.  Rispone is installing his own people on the other. (There are others vying for position as well including Lenar Whitney apparently.  You'll just have to read the article.)  

The Villere faction is backing current chair, New Orleans private security mogul Louis Gurvich, over Rispone.  It doesn't take much reading between the lines here to see why.  Eddie "refused help" from Villere.. which is to say, he didn't pay him for anything.

“I have made up my mind I’m going to be against Ripsone,” Villere said. “I thought he was a poor candidate (for governor) … You need a party chair who can bring people together. Why would you elect a party chair who refused help in the runoff and didn’t bring people together in his own race?”

And, of course, the pro-Rispone side's motivations are just as petty and personal. 

As part of the race for state central committee – typically low-profile, low-wattage affairs that are decided by a few dozen votes – Bayham said he was hit with an “ugly” mailer that attacked his weight, which he says was sent by someone other than his opponent. (Spending on Republican State Central Committee races doesn’t require disclosure under Louisiana’s ethics laws, like other campaign spending.)

“This is what this party does. We cannibalize ourselves because this is about control and contracts and not about defeating the Democrats,” Bayham said. “We have to see who is going to finally change the culture of this party. Is Louis prepared to do it or is an outsider like Rispone prepared to do it.”

Villere said in an interview he had “nothing to do with” the mailer attacking Bayham, calling it “reprehensible.”

There's that "outsider" characterization again, though. It sure is doing an awful lot of work. 

Running out the clock

The first thing to understand about this "bi-partisan" stimulus proposal is that it is, in fact, a total cave on the part of the Democratic leadership.   

The top Democratic congressional leaders on Tuesday embraced a $908 billion coronavirus relief framework -- a massive concession meant to prod President Trump and Senate Republicans into accepting a compromise as covid cases spike and the economic recovery shows signs of faltering ahead of the holiday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that “we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.”

The "framework" would amount to about a third of what the Democrats had been asking for which also was not going to be enough. And, of course, as a "starting point" it is only going to be watered down further from here. McConnell has already rejected this first offer, in fact. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pushed for a smaller deal and it appears unlikely he is poised to support the bipartisan agreement.

He circulated a proposal on Tuesday that offered minimal aid to the jobless, in a sharp break with the bipartisan group that could represent an obstacle to a final deal.McConnell has also delivered an ultimatum, requiring any legislation to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. 

Nothing is written into a bill yet so the details of the "framework" are still fluid, as they say.  But according to this article we know it aims at a $300 per week boost to unemployment benefits matching the now expired emergency stop gap written by Trump after the original $600 provided by the CARES act ran out.  Today we learned another 712,000 new jobless claims were filed this week.  A lot of headlines highlight that the number is "fewer than expected" or down from last week, but as Atrios points out, "Every week since this began has been higher than the peak week of the Great Recession," so what are we really looking at here?  An historically large number of people need help and will continue to need it. $300 is not really help. 

The starting point framework includes $160 billion for state and local governments.  The notion of any state and local aid at all has previously been a non-starter for Republicans so expect that figure to come down.  Our friend, Senator John Kennedy was seen "trashing it" on TV today, in fact.  In any case, the starting figure is not enough.  According to, still incomplete estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities  state budgets are expected to take a hit of at least $194 billion.  This Brookings study figures that state and local revenues will take a hit of well over half a trillion dollars in the next few years.  Obviously we aren't going to get where we need to go from this "starting point." 

Certainly this $160 billion (but likely much less) sop isn't worth trading this for. 

The measure, spearheaded by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would restore lapsed federal jobless benefits, providing $300 a week for 18 weeks; would include $288 billion for struggling small businesses, restaurants and theaters and $160 billion for fiscally strapped cities and states; and would create a temporary liability shield for businesses operating amid the pandemic.

"Temporary" or not, there can be no compromise where the US government allows your boss to simply order you to your death with no repercussions. 

Anyway, the punchline to all of this is now that the vaccines are almost ready, the political pressure to do more emergency stimulus will quickly reduce to zero. So Joe Biden can say all he wants about how whatever comes out of the lame duck session is a "first step," come the new Congress, the focus will be on the quickest way to just vaccinate everyone and tell them to get a job. Nevermind that the jobs are half gone and what's left out there is gig-a-fied beyond all recognition. That's the "new normal" all of this has been leading toward all along.  McConnell has run the clock out all year and the bosses have won the pandemic. They're even going to be shielded from future liability. The rest of us will just have to get used to it.

Informational purposes

Yes, there is another election date coming up December 5.  There are runoffs in a couple of the judicial races from November, a very important District Attorney race, a Public Service Commissioner, and several school board seats on the ballot along with one constitutional amendment and a few ballot propositions that may be of some interest. 

Early voting is already under way this week!  And it's a little more convoluted than normal this time because of the holiday.  Here is the schedule. 

Early voting is Nov. 20-28 from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. (excluding Sunday, Nov. 22, Thursday, Nov. 26 (Thanksgiving) and Friday, Nov. 27 (Acadian Day); early voting is advanced one day because of the holidays)​

You can't go Thursday or Friday.  The good news is if you do end up waiting until December 5, then that will give you time to do some reading beforehand.   The extensively researched  DSA New Orleans and Antigravity Magazine voter guides have are available now and should prove to be a big help.  You probably won't end up following all of their recommendations. In fact, they rarely make those.  Quoting the AG guide here.

Our most consistent position through all the years? That no aspiring politician has earned our endorsement. We review candidates with the mentality that we ought to elect the people that grassroots movements might successfully push and pressure, to lessen suffering among those most likely to suffer. In other words, we vote for who we most want as our opponents.

And DSA's slightly different approach here.  

The New Orleans DSA has not endorsed any candidates in this election. We are a member-run and funded organization, and our endorsements are material investments of resources. In this guide, we describe candidates openly, wearing our politics on our sleeve. It may be clear which candidate our guide prefers, but we've tried to give you more than just a name to copy down

Still, whether you're voting against one terrible candidate or for one you want to keep kicking around,  you're probably not going to fine any more thorough examinations of your choices than you will in those documents.  So study up and happy voting.  

After that , of course we will have solved all the politics and you won't have to worry about any of this stuff ever again. 

Orrrr.. on the other hand...

The reformer's dance

Here is Jason Williams today the city budget hearings rejecting calls to defund police. 

City Council members were generally complimentary of the department, and did not signal that there would be any major changes to the proposed budget. 

City Council President Jason Williams — who is also running for Orleans Parish District Attorney, casting himself as a progressive criminal justice reformer —  addressed the calls to defund the police at one point, but he questioned whether or not there were ways to change public perception of police, rather than exploring the idea of cutting the department’s budget further. 

“Given the changing of culture, people crying out for defund the police, people protesting the departments — whether or not there has been a particular egregious situation in their communities or not — across the board there has certainly been a different perception of police officers and law enforcement,” Williams said. “What are we doing now, or what can the council do to start addressing that perceived lack of trust or actual lack of trust, to redefine the NOPD?”

Here is reform candidate Jason Williams suggesting that we put more cops in the schools, while also suggesting that everyone's "older brothers and siblings" are all in jail, maybe?

Williams suggested focusing recruitment efforts toward people who might not normally think to go into law enforcement, and outreach programs in elementary schools to change young people’s perception of the police.

“I would encourage you to figure out a way to get in front of elementary school kids before they have older brothers and siblings helping to frame their narrative about what police mean, and what police do in their community,” Williams said.

Here also is reform candidate Jason Williams helping us get a lid on NOPD's use of intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology by.... helping NOPD write a policy that lets them use intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology.  

Jones told The Lens that the NOPD only used facial recognition for “violent cases,” but that “documentation of frequency of use of Facial Recognition is not currently available.” Asked whether there was any written policy or procedure regarding the technology, Jones responded by saying that NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson “is currently working with Councilman [Jason] Williams on a policy as to when facial recognition tools should be used.”

Everyone agrees. Of the two candidates remaining for District Attorney, Jason is definitely the more inclined to speak out on behalf of reforming the criminal punishment system. So, you know, as the saying goes, with reformers like these, who needs anti-reformers?  

Well, it turns out, a lot of people think we do. 

Cannizzaro hasn’t endorsed in the race to replace him, but Williams made him a centerpiece of his attacks on Landrum on Thursday, calling her a “surrogate” chosen when the current DA realized he couldn’t win re-election. Cannizzaro did not qualify for the race.

Williams also sought to use against Landrum her stack of endorsements, a list that includes five of Williams’ six colleagues on the council and the BOLD political organization. “You shouldn't have to go through (Councilman) Jay Banks or the BOLD political organization to get to the next DA,” Williams said.

Landrum said Williams had sought the same endorsements she won, and she rejected the idea that Cannizzaro would have any hold over her.

Landrum has wrapped them all up, basically.  It's been something to see.  Not too long ago, Jason Williams, coming off of two overwhelming victories in citywide council races, seemed like he was on a fast track to unseating Cannizzaro, or possibly becoming the next mayor. But now it looks like the whole establishment is lining up against him. The only significant voice we're still waiting to hear from, in fact, is third place primary finisher Arthur Hunter's.  What does Arthur want? Well it sounds like he wants to watch the candidates dance between both sides of the reform question. 

Just out of the money was former Judge Arthur Hunter, with 28%. He has yet to endorse, but in a statement Friday he called on the contenders to prove they would “focus on violent crime while restoring public trust in the DA’s office.”

But dancing is what the so-called "reform" candidate Jason Williams has been doing all year. And look where that has gotten him. I wonder if he will recognize that.