Worst person of 2020?

Seems like a lofty title. The competition would be stiff. Pros only, please. Probably if you are a mayor of something, you've already got a leg up on it.  But it would be hard to beat Josh Guillory at this point. 

Instead of hurricane damage, Lafayette has faced the "serious, local security threat" of protesters, according to Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Josh Guillory's administration.

Cydra Wingerter, Guillory's chief administrative officer, sent a Saturday email to those involved in disaster response, urging them to "take a pause on any action to establish shelters at this time."

Hundreds of thousands of people without electricity or water right now.  But... "security threat." Brilliant. 

Joe says your complaint doesn't count

Appeal thrown out on a technicality. Oh well, we tried.  

Joe Biden: "Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting." pic.twitter.com/gGjazceXRq

— The Hill (@thehill) August 31, 2020

In addition to just being flat out wrong, Biden, here, is giving every right wing troll asking, "when will Joe disavow.." all week exactly what they want. It will not stop them from asking that. It will not stop them from continuing to throw up videos of things on fire and saying, "Joe Biden's America" over and over.  

It will further alienate the Democratic Party from the poor and working class people it claims to represent. It says to all the people getting gassed and punched and shot by cops all summer for expressing their grievance against racism and police violence that Joe Biden doesn't think it technically counts as a protest.   Okay. Thanks for that. 

Anyway, you may have heard, the country is not having the greatest year. In addition to all the racist police murders (kind of a long standing baseline feature, anyway) there are millions out of work, a deadly virus burning through the population, wildfires, hurricanes... Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? The people in the streets are the victims of these compound disasters. They are asking for justice. They are asking for help.  They are receiving a lecture about how the are doing it wrong.

I'm not a big fancy well paid political strategy guy, so I don't know. But that doesn't really strike me as a winner. 

Not going anywhere for a while?

Wow after all those years of watching the city build streetcars even though we kept trying to tell them they are glorified theme park rides for tourists, the city is cutting back on streetcars because... there aren't any tourists.

Since the pandemic triggered restrictions on businesses in early March, the Regional Transit Authority's iconic streetcars have seen a 90% decline from normal ridership levels. The RTA already has most of its system running on the less-frequent Saturday schedule in response, but the streetcars — which once provided millions of dollars in fares when they were filled with tourists — are now costing the agency much more to run per passenger.

As a fix, the RTA is considering running the streetcars less often. While the schedule now has an eight-minute wait between streetcars on Saturdays, the RTA could increase that to a 15-minute wait or longer.

"It's just time for us to take a hard look at what that service level should be, but still maintaining adequate social distancing," said RTA chief executive Alex Wiggins during a meeting of the RTA board this week. "Right now eight minutes between streetcars is just too much service."

Because fewer streetcars would likely make keeping distance more difficult aboard any one in particular, they probably wouldn't want to cut it back too far.  But do we really think the current bar is 8 minutes?  Because, no. Also we need to talk more about this fee-based system for public services and why we need to move away from that altogether. But that's for another time.

What's really fun about this is many of us have spent the better part of 15 years since Katrina arguing that the city devoted nearly all of its attentions to "rebuilding" a city that serves tourists while neglecting the needs of those of us who actually live here.  The streetcar projects have been a perfect example of this.  In the case of the Rampart cars, the explicitly stated goal was less about transit than it was "economic development."  But whenever the issue was raised in these terms, it was always met with denials. RTA has even been accused of re-configuring bus lines specifically to force more commuters onto the Loyola streetcar line in order to demonstrate its usefulness.  These are your streetcars, we built them for you. What would ever make you think they were just a tourist amusement?

Cut to today and we're cutting streetcar service because there aren't enough tourists anymore.  Oh well. The good news is, all these tourists who aren't here will be less frustrated figuring out how to get down to the pedestrian only French Quarter now that they can't ride or drive there. 

Another option might be for the non-tourists to consider soon will be to not take the boat.  Coming in September. We mean it this time. 

After more than two years of delays, failed inspections and fingerpointing, New Orleans’ public transportation authority has announced that one of its new ferry boats will begin carrying passengers across the river next month.

It’s the first time since 2018 that the Regional Transit Authority has given a hard deadline for a ferry's completion, after contractors and managers have repeatedly blown previous deadlines assigned to the $10 million vessels.

The ferryboat RTA 2 should be repaired and ready by Sept. 18, officials said at a transit board meeting earlier this week. Then, Metal Shark, the Jeanerette company building the boats, is expected to resolve leftover issues with its twin, RTA 1. Though officials said the second job should wrap quickly, the agency did not provide a timeline for completion in that case.

Only one boat is ready.  The good news there is since these boats don't carry cars, and we already know there are no tourists, and nobody has a job to get to downtown anymore anyway, they probably won't need the second boat any time soon.

 

The first of the month is coming back around

You know, there is one every month. What's this one gonna be like?

Just over one million Americans filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week, the latest sign that the economy is losing momentum just as federal aid to the unemployed has been pulled away.

Weekly claims briefly dipped below the one million mark early this month, offering a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy job market. But filings jumped to 1.1 million the next week, and stayed above one million last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.

“It’s devastating how stubbornly high initial claims are,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the employment site ZipRecruiter. “There are still huge numbers of layoffs taking place.”

The state of Louisiana began issuing the first of its now greatly reduced unemployment benefits payments.  Thanks to Donald Trump, that money now pulls money away from FEMA just as Louisiana begins recovering from a Cat 4 hurricane strike. 

Also no one has a job or any money.  Rent is still due, though.

Nobody wants this big pile of money

Last week, City Council passed a non-binding resolution instructing the Criminal District Court to stop collecting conviction and bail fees from defendants and to return money to people from whom they've already collected these fees.  Supposedly, the idea is to discourage the courts from hoovering up unnecessary money from the poor and indigent who make up the vast majority of people wrung through our brutal criminal justice system. But there are problems.

To begin with, at least some of these fees (the bail fees) are mandated by state law which supersedes the council's authority so at least some of this money has to be collected. The courts are already in a state of limbo regarding that money since a different state law passed this year instructs them to hand it over to the city.  The new law is intended to eliminate a perverse incentive whereby the courts use these fees to fund their own operations. As a result of a 2018 lawsuit ruling that forbids the judges from keeping the funds, they've been collecting in a separate escrow account. 

Anyway that's as good a job as I can do summarizing the Lens's article.  The point is, because we haven't yet managed to ban cash bail altogether, there is a tub full of money that the courts aren't allowed to keep but the city council asserts that it does not want.  

OR maybe they do want it. 

At a City Council Criminal Justice Committee meeting last week, prior to the passage of the resolution, Councilwoman Helena Moreno wondered what would happen with the money judges do not have discretion over collecting. 

“So let’s say that the judges say, OK, the city isn’t going to collect, so it’s not worth imposing some of these additional fines and fees,” Moreno said. “But for those that through state law — statutorily — they have to, and it ends up in the escrow account, what do we do with the money in the escrow account?”

Will Snowden, executive director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, said that money from mandatory fees would go to the city, as is prescribed by state law. 

“This resolution can’t address those mandatory fines that the judges are required to assess on an individual. I know specifically, the bail fee is not something they have discretion in not imposing. That’s a fee that is assigned to every bail that is already set. So my understanding is those funds going into the escrow account — those bail fees — that escrow account will go on to the city as it is currently prescribed.”

“So then it would be up to [the annual city budget passed by the council] on how we use the escrow account, is that right?” Moreno asked.

The subsequent discussion between Moreno and Kristin Palmer there suggests the council could return the money to individuals themselves.  Something tells me that's going to be more easily said than done. 

Something else tells me, it won't be what they choose anyway.

Chemical fire

 Yikes

A large chemical fire has sent a dangerous cloud over Lake Charles, hours after the eye of Hurricane Laura passed directly over the city.

Gov. John Bel Edwards says the fire was burning Thursday morning just outside the city, and he’s advising storm survivors to shelter in place.

Edwards tweeted that people “in the Westlake/Moss Bluff/Sulphur area” should close their windows and doors and turn off their air conditioning units.

The National Hurricane Center says Laura remains a hurricane, sustaining top winds of 75 mph more than 170 miles after landfall.

Sounds comfy

 

All's well that ends well if you own a well

There were some 1400 oil wells in the path of Hurricane Laura's storm surge.  Plus multiple chemical pipelines. Plus the offshore rigs, plus the LNG terminals. What happens if all that stuff gets blowed up?  Well, there is precedent.

Hurricane Katrina struck a similar trove of coastal oil and gas infrastructure in 2005. A Category 3 storm, Katrina made landfall with less force than Laura but managed to damage an estimated 100 drilling platforms, 400 pipelines and caused about 540 spills in Louisiana waters. Added up, the spills likely released roughly 11 million gallons – the same amount as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Fifteen years later, no environmental damage assessments have been completed and no companies were fined.