Local Politics: December 2007 Archives

He's one of Bill Maher's Dickheads of the Year:

Even more disgusting than Craig. Caught dead to rights as a customer of the D.C. Madam, and explained it away by saying, "Several years ago I received forgiveness from God in confession." Oh, well, all righty then, it's all good, then you're obviously not a disgusting, horrible hypocrite who runs on family values and then fucks whores at home and in Washington.

h/t adrastos

Then there's this catch from oyster:

RSCC member challenges Vitter to sign affidavit saying "he never had a homosexual encounter

Huh? homosexual? our Vitty-cent?

Whatever will we tell the children?

Two pleasant year-ending stories, to be sure.

OK, even if she likes Michelle Malkin, reading Kiss My Gumbo is inspiring. Greta shared a post about her "J The Governor" sticker:

Well, should Piyush have a sticker and not Vitty-cent?

or perhaps

Does anyone know if I'll get in trouble if I add www.louisianaconservative.com to the stickers, or will Adams & Reese represent me pro bono like they're doing for Levees.org?

h/t to ersta for the pre-Greta inspiration. :-)

Which is why I'm surprised nobody's really addressed or mentioned DeBerry's column in Da Paper on Friday:

A fight broke out in the New Orleans City Council chambers Thursday as people opposed to the demolition of some of the city's housing projects struggled to exert some kind of influence on that morning's meeting. But if we were to go back 15 years or so -- about the same time Chuck D was the frontman for Public Enemy -- one imagines that a similarly activist crowd would have been decrying what they saw as the government's grand scheme to ghettoize and pin down the poor.

He makes a valid point here. Prior to the storm, public/affordable housing advocates in the city didn't have a problem with tearing down the projects. The argument was always over how to provide for the people displaced once they were torn down. Now, activists are trying to preserve these buildings. Asking which is it to be is a fair question.

Then there's DeBerry's money shot:

Wednesday morning, I visited the home of a 71-year-old woman who can't understand why Road Home has suddenly declared her ineligible to receive money to repair her home. She told me of her personal struggle as a factory worker and domestic to get out of the Fischer projects and buy the home that now needs repair. She'd wept, she told me, when she saw footage of people trying to fight their way back into the kind of environment she'd worked so hard to escape.
When she was there, she thought the projects were a bad place to live. And all these years later, she still thinks the same thing.

I think about some of the families who were living in the projects so they could afford to send one kid in the family to Redeemer, in the hopes that at least one kid would "get out."

An aerial view of Pontchartrain Park from the early 1950s. The area in the top left corner is Camp Leroy Johnson, an army supply depot. That land was turned over to the University of New Orleans in the 1960s, and is now the university's East Campus. On the right, jutting out into Lake Pontchartrain is Lakefront Airport (NEW). The top left corner of the undeveloped area is now the campus of Southern University in New Orleans. The drainage canal separating the park from the rest of Gentilly on the left is the Peoples Avenue canal. Next to the canal are the tracks for the Southern Railroad. They head from in town, curve right then travel east across the Industrial Canal and out to the train bridge across the lake that runs parallell to US90 and I-10. The canal and the train tracks make for a significant geographical boundary between the established part of Gentilly on the left and the new Pontchartrain Park subdivision on the right.

In the late 1940s/early 1950s, Pontchartrain Park was a new subdivision developed for upwardly mobile black families. Jim Crow laws were still in force at this time, making a new subdivision a gold mine for the developer, since a lot of black men took advantage of their GI Bill benefits, went to college, and now had good jobs. These men became the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals of the black community in the 1960s and 1970s. Shopping centers in Gentilly Woods and Gentilly Terrace (along Gentilly Blvd., just off this photo to the south) began an even faster growth. The archdiocese of New Orleans built St. Augustine High School to educate many of the young black men from these families, and St. Mary's Academy moved out to Chef Menteur Highway from the French Quarter in 1965. Southern University in New Orleans (SUNO) opened in 1959.

Fast forward to 2005. The Federal Flood hit the Pontchartrain Park area as hard as the rest of Gentilly. The combination of Army Corps of Engineers-designed structural failures in the floodwalls of the London Avenue Canal to the west as well as wind pushing water over the tops of the levees and floodwalls of the Industrial Canal in the east were a double-whammy for this neighborhood. Homes in the area got anywhere from 3' - 8' of water. Then, to add insult to injury, a tornado spawned from thunderstorms associated with Hurricane Rita touched down in this neighborhood.

Victims of the Federal Flood who had less than 4' of water come into their homes, generally speaking have had an easier time of rebuilding, since it's possible to cut out drywall interior at 4' and replace it with new sheets of the same height. This is assuming you have the funds to fix your house, and that's where the problem comes in for many residents of Gentilly. Those doctors and lawyers who moved out to Gentilly in the 1950s are now old folks. Their mortgages have been paid off for years, and with those mortgages often went flood insurance coverage as well. When a bank holds paper on a house in most neighborhoods down here, the owners are required to buy flood insurance. The premiums are factored into your monthly note and paid by the lender. Since a lot of folks are on fixed incomes by the time they burn their mortgages, they drop flood insurance. After all, the Corps of Engineers built all these levees and floodwalls, right?

That's where "Road Home" is supposed to help, but the program has been problematic. The state was making it up as they went along, so a lot of early applicants got lost in the shuffle. By the time the process was refined and (supposedly) working, other homeowners found that the state was cutting back on what they were wiling to pay them, fearful in some cases that there wouldn't be enough funds to go around. In other cases, some accuse the program of deliberately being an obstacle to keep blacks from coming back to the city. (I don't subscribe to the notion that they're directly discriminating--I think they're just bloody stupid.)

Then there's the geniuses at City Hall. The city wants to demolish homes that are supposedly "threats" to the neighborhood. Judging by the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit (PDF) filed against the city to halt demolitions, if you're not living in your home or in a FEMA trailer on the front lawn, your house is in danger of being summarily knocked down, no matter what the condition is. Read the lawsuit, it's scary.

But if you think that developers are having a field day tearing down housing projects, just wait until the Shaw group and other contractors get ahold of entire subdivisions. People still in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houston, and Atlanta can't keep an eye on their homes 24/7 while they wait for Road Home money and insurance settlements. Those who voluntarily choose not to return are selling their houses back to the state. Imagine if your dad's house is one of two or three on a block that didn't get sold back to the state? Do you really think those couple of houses are going to slow down these people?

This is how we're treating our middle class in New Orleans. These are people who, in many cases, busted their asses to get out of the projects to make life better for their families. These are men who went to war and women who supported them. Entire neighborhoods still lie empty, hanging in limbo.

The public housing debate has made for dramatic theater in the last couple of weeks while the city, state, and Republican private sector are combining to eradicate what's left of the black middle class in New Orleans. Without a middle class, there will be no tax base. There will be no pool of skilled labor and professionals for corporations to employ. There will be no black health care professionals (and there already are bloody few white ones at the moment).

This is the story you should be blogging about. Those of you who are watching developments unfold in other parts of the country and world see the news coverage and read local accounts of the public housing debate are getting very emotional about what is essentially a small portion of the displaced population of the city. What about the homeowners? It's not fair to say that these people have more of a right to return than those who have less than them, but they damn sure deserve advocates as loud as the out-of-town activists who have been chaining themselves to fences. They're going to move on to the next kabuki stage while people in Gentilly struggle to rebuild.

and we start talking about fixing the rest of the fucking city now?

good first-person account here.

Frolic left this comment on Loki's blog:

It’s worth noting that woman pepper sprayed and dragged away was Jamie Laughner. She’s an anarchist and advocate from D.C. Google her name. She seems to get roughed up by the police everywhere she goes (Miami, D.C.). I’m not saying our police were perfect here (I really don’t know), but if someone is always getting strong armed by policed you’ve got to wonder if she’s not trying to provoke the action.

These people really are "outside agitators." Just what we need, for Stacy Head to be right.

And I've managed to put my finger on it. I'd seen a boobtoob like that big-ass boobtoob recently, and it was at the fishing camp down da bayou where we took the Boy Scout troop camping last month. The dads love this place, because the boys can fish in the bayou and they can watch LSU. It's a happy trade-off.

Thing is, there's a reason that big-ass boobtoob is down in a fishing camp. It's old. It's the sort of thing someone who is into large screen boobtoobs bought several years ago, and has now tossed out to make room for their plasma, high-def, big-ass boobtoob.

That does one do with a perfectly good, albeit old, big-ass boobtoob? Some folks put it in a fishing camp. Others might give it to someone who doesn't have a boobtoob.

In any case, dangerblond is right. It's none of our fukkin' business.

Shame on Da Paper for trying to make this woman into St. Ronald of California's apocryphal "welfare queen."

In his song "Rednecks," Randy Newman sums up David Vitter's position on public housing in New Orleans. Vitty-cent has risen in opposition to a housing bill proposed by his senate colleague, Mary Landrieu. Landrieu's bill would require a one-to-one replacement of public housing units. Tear down a unit, it has to be replaced by a new one. Vitty-cent, of course, doesn't want to build public housing that will be occupied by the Eebil Coloreds. His response to Landrieu's proposal that he can't believe we need the units. Then there's this comment:

Vitter has said the bill "wants to re-create the New Orleans housing projects exactly as they were."

This is a good example of the code-word racism that Vitty-cent has been famous for since he succeeded David Duke in the LA State Legislature. To the white-flighters of Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes, "exactly as they were" means all those black folks who were laying on the leg of hard-working white people. There's also the perception of crime--many white folks believe that razing the projects will somehow magically lower the incidence of violent crime in the city. That Vitty-cent would pander to the redneck vote in the state is no big surprise. When I saw the headline, however, my first thought wasn't that he was pandering, but how a defeat of this housing bill actually becomes a win for Landrieu. She's standing for re-election in a Louisiana that is much more red than when she ran her last tough campaign in 2002. If the Republican party gets behind State Treasurer John Kennedy (Landrieu's main opposition next year), one of the things they'll throw up is how "liberal" she is. Taking steps to bring more black folks back to New Orleans will most certainly be viewed by rednecks as a policy out of sync with Randy Newman's song. Thing is, Landrieu needs even more of those rednecks to vote for her this time around. Watching this housing bill go down in flames, stifled by Vitty-cent's delaying tactics is a huge win for her. A defeat gives her an issue on which to campaign in the city, and takes away something that Kennedy can hang on her. Some would argue that this is a pretty cynical attitude, particularly at a time when the odds are so stacked against public housing residents. Mary Landrieu is extremely afraid of being labelled a "liberal," and runs from that moniker regularly. For all the pride she takes in getting defense appropriations through the Senate in her fund raising literature, there's not much bragging about pulbic housing going on. The bottom line is that New Orleans' most vocal public housing advocate is Maxine Waters. Jefferson is too busy defending himself. Landrieu's motives are suspect because we're in an election cycle. And the Republicans are signing along with Randy Newman.

Bash 'em in the morning, praise 'em in the evening...Jason Berry's article on William Jennings Jefferson is compelling, and worth the read.

I have to admit, I was very non-plussed when I heard that Gilda Reed was running Bobby Jindal's seat in Congress. LA-01 is so white-bread and redneck that I didn't give her much of a chance. Hey, I'm all for tilting at windmills, but this windmill is the size of the Empire State Building.

Then I met Gilda (who is also a Kossack) at our NOLA Kossacks meet-up last week, and she pointed out something very important to me: she is running in a closed primary.

That's right, starting in 2008, Louisiana goes back to separate Republican and Democratic primaries. Instead of Reed being one Democrat running against four or five Republicans, those candidates have to slug it out amongst themselves, then run against the winner of the Democratic primary (presumably Reed) in the general election.

That changes things a good bit.

When presented with a choice between your typical East Jefferson (parish) Republican and a person of Gilda Reed's qualifications and beliefs, people who would have simply picked one of the Republicans might change their minds.

• The soccer mom whose 14-year old might get drafted by Republicans will think twice.
• The Catholic who believes in social justice will think twice.
• The victims of the Federal Flood will think twice.
• The retired union worker will pause.

All of a sudden, the windmill that is LA-01 isn't so tall anymore.

So, NOLA Kossacks, let's talk about how we're going to help Gilda. We know now from New Orleans' experience with NetRoots Nation that we really can't expect all that much but lip service from the dKos community at large unless we step up for Gilda.

It's time to step up.

I've created a blog, supportgildareed.yatpundit.com, which I would like to be a multi-author/community effort to drum up support for Gilda among metro New Orleans bloggers. Please go there and comment, or drop me a note at edward@ebranley.com and give me your e-mail so we can start a true netroots movement for Gilda.

Let's get moving!

In spite of all the hand-wringing I've seen, read, and heard on the subject of public housing, the issue I don't see any housing advocates willing to tackle is what to do with the people they would have return to public housing. There is no government infrastructure to support people living in poverty at this time. If you re-open public housing, where will the residents get health care? Where will their children go to school? How will they get to jobs without efficient public transportation? "Right of return" is a good emotional slogan, but there's still nothing for people living in poverty to return to, and that's not going to change until there is a change of administrations at both the local and federal level. Even then, the little unsympathetic carpet-bagging turd who just got elected governor will be a huge roadblock in any effort to help people.