File this under Obscure Presidential Trivia: On the night of April 5th, 1800, William Dunbar, a 50-year-old plantation owner and Natchez resident who eventually achieved some notoriety for his scientific discoveries and his work as an explorer, saw something he couldn’t explain floating in the night sky above Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an object that he estimated to be the size of a large house.
Baton Rouge, which was first established as a French fort in 1721, was still a small town, home to fewer than 2,000 people. Spain had just ceded the Louisiana Territory back to France. The historic neighborhoods of Spanish Town and Beauregard Town were still vacant land. It’d take another half-century before the town became the state capital of Louisiana and another 69 years before the school now known as Louisiana State University officially relocated from Pineville.
Dunbar, a native of Scotland and a member of the unfortunately-named House of Duffus, was, among other things, somewhat of an amateur astronomer, and as luck would have it, only a year before that April night in Baton Rouge, he had been introduced to one of the most famous men in the world, the author of the Declaration of Independence (among other things), Thomas Jefferson.
The Antares rocket ascending behind the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., Nov. 2018. Source: NASA
Jefferson, at the time, was the Vice President of the United States, an unwanted consolation prize for finishing second to John Adams in a race to replace George Washington. Of course, throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson collected nearly as many titles as his pen pal King George, and in April of 1800, he also just so happened to be serving as the President of the American Philosophical Society, which meant practically every morsel of gossip he shared with the organization’s members ended up making their newsletter.
William Dunbar
On page 25 of the sixth volume of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, the story Dunbar shared with Jefferson about what he saw in Baton Rouge is faithfully retold, under the title “Description of a singular Phenomenon seen at Baton Rouge, by William Dunbar, Esq. communicated by Thomas Jefferson, President A. P. S.” It reads, in full:
“A phenomenon was seen to pass Baton Rouge on the night of the 5th April 1800, of which the following is the best description I have been able to obtain.
“It was first seen in the South West, and moved so rapidly, passing over the heads of the spectators, as to disappear in the North East in about a quarter of a minute.
“It appeared to be of the size of a large house, 70 or 80 feet long and of a form nearly resembling Fig. 5 in Plate IV.
“It appeared to be about 200 yards above the surface of the earth, wholly luminous, but not emitting sparks; of a colour resembling the sun near the horizon in a cold frosty evening, which may be called a crimson red. When passing right over the heads of the spectators, the light on the surface of the earth, was little short of the effect of sun-beams, though at the same time, looking another way, the stars were visible, which appears to be a confirmation of the opinion formed of its moderate elevation. In passing, a considerable degree of heat was felt but no electric sensation. Immediately after it disappeared in the North East, a violent rushing noise was heard, as if the phenomenon was bearing down the forest before it, and in a few seconds a tremendous crash was heard similar to that of the largest piece of ordnance, causing a very sensible earthquake.
“I have been informed, that search has been made in the place where the burning body fell, and that a considerable portion of the surface of the earth was found broken up, and every vegetable body burned or greatly scorched. I have not yet received answers to a number of queries I have sent on, which may perhaps bring to light more particulars.”
Not everything named Jefferson in Louisiana is a tribute to Jefferson Davis.
William Dunbar quickly became one of Jefferson’s favorite sources, and, by all accounts, the two remained friends until Dunbar’s death in 1810. Indeed, while Jefferson’s impact on Louisiana history is difficult to rival, Dunbar also earns a legitimate footnote.
In late 1804, Thomas Jefferson, now President, asked Dunbar and George Hunter to lead an expedition that aimed to trace the Arkansas and Red Rivers to their sources. The president wanted to know as much as he could about the real estate he’d just purchased. But, after hearing reports about a violent group of Osage Indians stationed along their planned route, Dunbar and Hunter ultimately had to dramatically scale back their ambitious plans, which Kelby Ouchley of 64 Parishes described as comparable, in scope, to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Instead, the two men explored the Ouachita River, which they never quite figured out how to correctly spell and which, unfortunately, turned up no additional evidence of extraterrestrial life.
During the past two weeks, through our investigative series “Wrecked: How Auto Insurance Takes Louisiana for a Ride,” the Bayou Brief has revealed how Louisiana motorists with perfect driving records often pay significantly higher premiums for basic auto insurance because of things that have nothing to do with how safe they are when they get behind the wheel.
A 60-year-old driver will find that some of the state’s largest insurers will raise her annual premium by as much as $172 after her spouse passes away. Another driver, who has never been ticketed or caused an accident, could face a nearly $1,600 premium penalty if he has a low credit score, and that’s just to buy the basic coverage required by state law. These are just a few of the ways that insurance companies have moved away from pricing customers based on how they drive and, instead, charging premiums tied to algorithms that place a lot of weight on personal and economic characteristics.
Put simply, in Louisiana, auto insurers have a license to discriminate.
State Sen. Jay Luneau
On Wednesday, members of the state Senate Insurance Committee will conduct a second round of hearings on SB 89. Authored by state Sen. Jay Luneau, SB 89 is the first and only proposal in state history that would prohibit auto insurers from discriminating against widows and widowers or on the basis of gender or credit score.
For decades, the industry’s practices have either largely been ignored or simply accepted as standard. But there is nothing standard or acceptable about the kind of institutionalized and pernicious discrimination currently allowed in Louisiana.
While a person’s credit score does not always directly correspond with their income, it usually does, and in a state that struggles with poverty, that means poor and lower-middle class drivers are disproportionately burdened.
Handing the premium setting of auto insurance over to these non-driving related algorithms is, obviously, unfair to the millions of Louisiana drivers who don’t have the right marital status or credit score. Just as importantly, it also harms public safety and contributes to high auto insurance rates.
When done properly, insurance pricing should send a signal to customers about how to lower their risk and, in turn, lower their premium. If you drive safely, you get a low price. If you drive a safe car, you get a low price. If you are wild on the road and your vehicle has a history of dangerous rollovers, you pay more. The premium drivers are charged will reinforce safety and incentivize higher risk drivers to change their behavior.
But what signals do consumers get nowadays when they open up their insurance bill?
“Fix your credit.” “Don’t let your husband die.” Or, at least, “Remarry soon after the funeral.”
If you can’t address those personal issues, you can’t lower your premium. But if you stay married and maintain an excellent credit score, you can be convicted of drunk driving and still pay a comparatively lower rate.
Insurance companies claim that these new pricing systems are the result of complex, data-driven research. But, really, the industry is just being lazy and greedy.
False Prophets Offering False Profits:
In Baton Rouge, state legislators are currently debating a number of proposals that claim to be designed to reduce the price of car insurance, the most notable of which, so far, is state Rep. Kirk Talbot’s HB 372, the so-called “Omnibus Premium Reduction Act of 2019.” Stephen Waguespack, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (better known as LABI), told his organization’s members that Talbot’s bill was the most important bill of the current legislative session. Now 45, Waguespack spent the bulk of his thirties working for former Gov. Bobby Jindal, eventually serving as Jindal’s Chief of Staff.
Last week, when members of the Louisiana state House of Representatives debated the merits of HB 372, distributed this floor note, inaccurately describing the proposed legislation as “a compromise legal reform bill aimed at reducing the 2nd highest car insurance rates in the nation.”
Initially, Waguespack had parroted the flimsy talking point that HB 372, which had been heard by the House Civil Law Committee instead of the Insurance Committee, was truly about reducing the price of car insurance, but after the bill passed the House, he relinquished the pretense. This was about tort reform, plain and simple.
LABI had never been able to get its name right anyway. When the full state House deliberated the bill last week, LABI sent a floor note to House members, incorrectly calling the proposed legislation the “Omnibus Insurance Rate Reduction Bill.”
State Rep. Kirk Talbot, whose campaign finance reports read like a veritable Who’s Who of the state’s insurance businesses and agents, had actually authored a tort reform bill masquerading, unconvincingly, as a consumer protection bill.
There is zero empirical data that any of the proposals in the bill will result in a reduction in car insurance premiums. It is, instead, a grab bag of the industry’s wish list.
Louisiana may have the highest civil jury threshold in the country, but unlike other states, Louisiana doesn’t cover the costs of conducting a jury trial; that’s a risk plaintiffs must be willing to take. In some parishes, a typical jury trial can cost as much as $8,000. It’s not hard to determine why a person with a $5,000 claim for damages would be reluctant to risk nearly twice that amount merely for the opportunity to have their case heard in court. We also know, definitively, that there is no correlation between a jury trial threshold and the price of car insurance. Liability coverage is more expensive in at least three other states, none of whom have a threshold because they already cover the costs of jury trials.
This is nothing more than a ham-handed attempt to tip the scales of justice, a gift to the industry that, ostensibly, lawmakers should be regulating, and it was presented to the public with the quaint and almost laughable belief that, instead of maximizing profits, insurance companies will instead pass along whatever savings they realize from legislating their way out of court back to their customers.
To be fair, the insurance industry actually has a long history of investing in efforts to reduce risk in partnership with its customers. Not only is pricing supposed to send the right signals, the industry also backed safety measures. In response to increasing auto accident risks, insurers developed the Institute for Highway Safety to make roads and cars safer. At the turn of the 20th century, the industry developed Underwriters Labs to make homes safe from electrical appliance risk. Insurers invented lifeboats for cruise lines and developed safe boilers in reaction to increasing claims for those risks.
But with the auto insurance pricing practices we now see in Louisiana, the industry has stopped trying to forge a partnership with customers to reduce risks and rates and is, instead, letting unrelated data determine our fates.
Shuffling Cards:
It should not be too surprising to learn that state Sen. Jay Luneau’s proposal to eliminate the types of pernicious discrimination currently allowed has already been opposed by the auto insurance industry. But it may be surprising to hear what their top lobbyist, Kevin Cunningham, had to say to members of the state Senate Insurance Committee last week, during their first hearing on Luneau’s bill.
Kevin Cunningham, 04/24/2019, Louisiana state Senate Insurance Committee hearing.
“I think it’s a misnomer to ever really believe that your (car insurance) rates are ever going to go down,” Cunningham, a lawyer and a partner at Southern Strategy Group, admitted in a remarkable moment of candor during an exchange with state Sen. Rick Ward III. Cunningham, a lobbyist for the auto insurance industry, perhaps unwittingly, revealed that state Rep. Kirk Talbot’s “price reduction” proposal wouldn’t actually reduce prices.
It wasn’t the first time Cunningham seemed to slip up and tell the truth. At another point, when asked specifically about the possibility that state Sen. Luneau’s bill prohibiting marketplace discrimination would result in price reductions, Cunningham argued that the bill would not necessarily cause net decreases; instead, he claimed that it would merely shift the cost burdens from one class of consumers to another.
Kevin Cunningham, 04/24/2019, Louisiana state Senate Insurance Committee hearing.
“(SB 89) just means that 12% that’s paying a little bit more, that they’ll pay a little bit less. But the 39% that’s paying less will pay a little bit more. It’s just shuffling cards at this point.” Cunningham said. “You’re just taking one group and subsidizing with another. It doesn’t change behavior. It doesn’t pull any claims out of the system. It doesn’t lower any cost in the system because those same premium dollars still have to come out in order to cover the claims.”
Although couched somewhat disingenuously, this is nonetheless a damning and important admission: No matter what you try to do, insurance companies are going to hit their revenue targets. Right now, they’re forcing people who have been victimized by legal discrimination to subsidize those who haven’t been. If you close that loophole, “it’s just shuffling cards.”
“A big problem is that the things that make your rate go higher are often just proxies for class and race,” argues Douglas Heller, a nationally acclaimed insurance expert who, in collaboration with the Bayou Brief, has spent the past month researching the industry’s practices in Louisiana.
“The Shuffling Cards argument — which is not incorrect in a vacuum— is that Auto Insurer A has to collect $850 million one way or another,” Heller explains.
In his hypothetical, which is based in data about one of the state’s largest insurers, high credit score drivers now collectively pay $300 million, while low credit score drivers collectively pay $550 million. When you eliminate credit score as a factor, those low credit score drivers will see their collective premiums drop by down to an aggregate total of $425 million, a net reduction of $125 million. But high credit score drivers will see their premiums go up to an aggregate total of $425 million, a net increase of $125 million. All to guarantee Auto Insurer A collects its $850 million.
But that’s just half of the story, according to Heller.
“Industry lobbyists stop there as if that’s the only moving part. But in reality, so many other rating factors are involved that when you change one factor you alter the dynamics of the rating process and, when done right, safe drivers get a benefit, and dangerous drivers have to take more responsibility for their actions (i.e. pay higher premiums),” he says. “That, in turn, creates more incentives for safe driving, which lowers the rates for everyone, and opens up the market to more drivers (who were previously and unfairly excluded), which also lowers the rate for everyone.”
Fixing Claims and Claiming Fixes:
Legislators do not shoulder all of the blame.
Unfortunately, Jim Donelon, the state’s Commissioner of Insurance, has sided with the insurance industry in allowing companies to use these non-driving data points to price policies even if the premiums do nothing to lower the risk of future claims. Commissioner Donelon has provided insurance companies the ability to shirk their responsibility for risk mitigation in the name of achieving their marketing goals.
The insurance industry prefers married drivers with high credit scores, because when insurers look at the high-credit, married driver, they see multiple cars to cover, a home to insure, a life insurance policy to sell, maybe even boat insurance and an account with the company’s bank affiliate. When they see a widow with a low credit score all they see is someone who will buy the basic auto coverage required by law. So the pricing signal is meant to attract the profit opportunity, at the expense of an average Joe or Jane who just needs to get the basic coverage, even if both drivers have great records.
The problem with this, of course, is that all drivers, regardless of their love life or credit history have to buy coverage under Louisiana law. Allowing companies to use these unrelated algorithms, like credit score-based pricing sends entirely the wrong signal.
When it comes to the legislation being considered in Baton Rouge, the insurance companies are not in favor of reforms – like one to end the use of credit history in pricing – that would strengthen incentives for consumers to improve their driving in order to lower the risk of accidents across the state. The industry proposals skips over the idea of reducing the actual number of accidents and focuses on just making it harder for people injured in accidents to get their claim paid. Insurance companies don’t really care if accidents go down, as long as the number of claims filed for those accidents go down.
When state Sen. Rick Ward III, for example, recently questioned lobbyists about why insurers’ use drivers’ credit history, they argued that credit history is an indicator of the “likelihood of filing a claim.”
We can, for the moment, put aside the fact that the industry lobbyists offering up this excuse provided no supporting data. And we can also set aside the strange argument that people should be punished because their credit score suggests they will abide by their insurance contract and file a claim if they have an accident.
Let’s instead focus on the massive hole in this argument. If credit history is, as they say, a way to guess the likelihood of a customer filing a claim, then it would only apply to coverages that could lead to a claim. But insurers charge a much higher rate even to lower credit drivers who are buying only the basic liability coverage to comply with state law. A driver can never file a claim under that policy, because the policy only covers claims by others, for which you are liable.
In other words, every driver, regardless of their credit score, has a 0% chance of filing a claim under their own liability policy, but the insurance companies don’t let that fact get in the way of their premium hikes.
The lesson is that insurers and their lobbyists will say just about anything to explain why companies want widows to pay more or for people with financial stress to face higher premiums. And, so far, it seems that Insurance Commissioner Donelon is not going to do anything about it.
So, that puts the problem of unfair auto insurance pricing squarely in the hands of the legislature, especially those conservative members who have told constituents that reducing premiums is a top priority yet have, thus far, championed profits over people.
If Steve Scalise hadn’t shown up for baseball practice on the morning of June 14th, 2017, it is likely an Illinois man named James Hodgkinson would have been forever known as the mass murderer responsible for more political assassinations than anyone else in American history. That morning, while most of the country was still asleep, two dozen Republican congressmen gathered at Eugene Simpson Stadium in Alexandria, Virginia for their final practice before the annual Congressional Baseball Game. They’d been on the field for about thirty minutes before the first shots rung out.
“The players (in the dugout) were unarmed, confined to a small space. They were sitting ducks,” writes Scalise in his book Back in the Game: One Gunman, Countless Heroes, and the Fight for My Life. “The gunman would be able to mow them all down, to kill a dozen congressmen in a matter of seconds, plus staffers and other volunteers.”
Scalise was the only member of leadership present that morning, and because he was there, so were Dave Bailey and Crystal Griner, two Capitol Police officers assigned as the security detail for the then-House Majority Whip. As soon as Hodgkinson began firing, Bailey and Griner responded, engaging in a six-minute-long gunfight that ultimately left Griner wounded and the would-be assassin dead.
Steve Scalise, a Republican representing Louisiana’s First District, was the first and only member of Congress who was felled by the gunman, shot in the hip as he practiced near second base. His book, Back in the Game, which debuted last November and which was cowritten by veteran journalist Jeffrey Stern, recounts the terrifying pandemonium of those six consequential minutes and the often agonizing months he spent in recovery and rehabilitation.
Stern also was one of four co-authors of The 15:17 to Paris, an account of the heroic efforts of the three Americans who successfully thwarted a terrorist attack on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris. While the book received generally positive reviews, Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation, which debuted last year and earned nearly $60 million at the box office, was criticized for straining its narrative around a single, brief event.
Although Back in the Game contains several compelling and potentially cinematic moments, the book is similarly bogged down by its focus on the Big Event. Nearly half of the book is a slow-motion, second-by-second retelling of the assassination attempt. Readers are provided very little background or context about the protagonist- Scalise- or the gunman.
We also learn nearly nothing about the lives of the two most notable heroes of the story, Dave Bailey and Crystal Griner. Scalise never mentions that both of them are African American, and we only learn toward the end of the book that Griner is married to a woman, details that the media found notable considering Scalise’s strident conservative record and his acknowledgement that he attended a white nationalist conference in 2002 (for which he publicly apologized).
Bailey and Griner receiving the Medal of Valor Award from President Donald Trump.
Indeed, considering Back in the Game was written by a member of Congress, the extent to which Scalise avoids almost all mention of partisan ideology is surprising; the only real policy discussion in the entire book is about the regulations of fishing redfish. Donald Trump makes only a couple of appearances; shortly after the news broke, we learn that President Trump telephoned Scalise’s wife, Jennifer, and awkwardly lamented the fact that it was his birthday.
The book is at its best when Scalise describes the mental, psychological, and temporal confusion he experienced both during the shooting and throughout his recuperation. Make no mistake: He was much, much closer to death than had been widely reported.
Back in the Game will never be considered a part of the canon of Great Louisiana Political Books, and while it is competently written, it’s largely an extended, apolitical thank you letter to the medical professionals and law enforcement officers who saved Steve Scalise’s life. Perhaps this was an important and necessary exercise for the congressman, but for readers, particularly those who have followed Scalise’s career, Back in the Game is still- somehow- a remarkably impersonal memoir.
For years, Saints GM Mickey Loomis has always managed to find room to sign free agents despite the team’s apparent lack of salary cap space. It’s been a popular joke to suggest he does it with the help of some Creole voodoo.
Well, whatever it is, Loomis seemed to take that same voodoo and apply it to the Saints’ draft this weekend.
Despite starting with a dearth of picks (the #62 in the second round being the team’s only selection in the first four rounds), Loomis and Sean Payton managed to not only get a possible day-one starter at the team’s biggest position of need, but acquired a second prospect many observers considered worthy of a top-50 selection.
The biggest hole the Saints had was along the interior offensive line, with the surprise retirement of Max Unger. While the team signed Nick Easton in free agency shortly thereafter, he missed all of last season with a broken ankle and was still something of a young up-and-coming player even before that. He should be a good player– and the Saints have been very good at identifying offensive linemen in the Payton-Loomis era– but there’s still enough uncertainty there, both in 2019 and the long term, for the Saints to want to find an immediate starter there.
The two highest regarded interior offensive linemen of the draft were Chris Lindstrom from Boston College and Garrett Bradbury from North Carolina State. Neither was expected to make it to New Orleans’ pick at 62, but they went even higher than expected– Lindstrom at 14 to Atlanta and Bradbury at 18 to Minnesota. This left Texas A&M’s Erik McCoy as the highest-rated remaining interior lineman, although he was being pushed for that slot by a late riser, Mississippi State’s Elgton Jenkins. When the Green Bay Packers took Jenkins with their pick at #44, the Saints had to make a move to get the last option for a potential day-one starter at center or guard.
So they pulled off a bit of a complex trade with Miami, who had their own reasons for wanting to move down. As has become common for the Saints, they gave up some future assets to do so. To move up from 62 to 48, they also included their original 6th-round selection (#202 overall– they kept the one they got from the Jets in the Teddy Bridgewater trade) and their 2020 2nd-round pick, also receiving Miami’s 4th-round selection in return. With that selection, the Saints took McCoy, who will challenge Easton for the starting job at center in 2019. The McCoy selection clears up some of the uncertainty on the interior line in 2019. Andrus Peat will be a free agent, and with his name regularly floating in trade rumors, he may not be back. If Easton recovers and plays well, he and McCoy can fill the interior spots vacated by Unger and Peat. If he doesn’t, McCoy takes over at center and the team either re-signs Peat or looks elsewhere. Either way, I love the pick for need, and it’s a strong pick on talent as well. McCoy allowed only one sack in 1,528 pass blocking snaps, per Pro Football Focus; The Draft Network rated him as their #1 interior offensive line prospect this season. McCoy will have to improve his run blocking, but his excellence in pass protection makes him a particular fit for the Saints and how important interior protection is to their scheme. (I even suggested him as a potential pick for the Saints in round 2.)
And while I’m never a big fan of trading future assets to move up and target a player, the Saints made the most of their moves. After acquiring the #116 pick from Miami in the fourth round as part of the McCoy deal, the Saints packaged it and their own fifth-round pick to make a deal with the Jets, moving up to #105 to select defensive back Chauncey Gardner-Johnson from Florida.
I’d mentioned safety as a possibility for the Saints, but in my list of possibilities I’d completely forgotten about Gardner-Johnson, in part because he’s more of a safety/cornerback hybrid than a pure safety, in part because I expected him to be long gone by now, as many draft analysts rated him a top-50 prospect. (For example, CBS’ board has him at #40 overall. DraftTek has him rated as the #20 overall prospect in the class.)
Gardner-Johnson is an intriguing prospect both short- and long-term for the Saints. He’s a hybrid player who had loads of success as a slot cornerback, but can also play a more traditional safety role or even a “robber” role where he can line up all over the field or be unleashed to make plays. He was a big-time playmaker at Florida with a nose for the ball, returning three of his nine interceptions for touchdowns. He’ll be a great fit because he’s the kind of talented, instinctive playmaker every secondary could use, the kind of player whose talents often go overlooked at draft time because they don’t measure up to some physical prototype in one way or another. Gardner-Johnson isn’t a mind-blowing athlete, but he isn’t deficient in any area and doesn’t have any fatal flaws.
He’s a good long-term fit, too. At slot corner, Patrick Robinson is going to be 32 years old this season and it’s unclear if he’ll be back to form after his ankle injury, and P.J. Williams is on a one-year deal. At safety, Vonn Bell is entering the final year of his contract, though he took a significant step forward last season. It’s possible that the Saints decide to move on at one position or the other after 2019 and install Gardner-Johnson as the full-time starter. (I’d bet it’s more likely they keep Bell over the other two, if that’s the case.)
I hated him last year when he was all over the field making plays as Florida defeated LSU, but now that he’s a Saint, I love him and I’m looking forward to seeing him force some turnovers, an area the Saints defense could always use help with.
(Side note, he changed his name to Gardner-Johnson to honor his stepfather Brian Johnson. While I admire the gesture, as a bit of a film fan I can’t help but wish he’d kept the name Chauncey Gardner.)
While I’ve often been skeptical about how the Saints use the draft– too often trading up, seeming to have odd evaluations of players– their selections have largely gotten better since 2016, and I think this year they had the right approach for their relative lack of picks, not overpaying for anyone while landing an immediate starter at the team’s biggest position of need as well as a great playmaker to shore up a unit that could take a major step forward with his addition.
Next time: The Saints only had three other picks, in the sixth and seventh rounds; we’ll look at those, as well as the highlights from their undrafted free agent class.
It’s a typically sweltering late summer day in south Louisiana, and state officials hold a press conference announcing another economic development win. A new oil export terminal, Plaquemines Liquids Terminal, will provide up to 1250 temporary jobs while being constructed, and 35 permanent full-time jobs when complete. The promised $2.5-billion investment by Kansas-based Tallgrass Energy and hedge funder Drexel Hamilton includes building a 700-mile pipeline to serve it. The project is ballyhooed as a “public-private partnership” between the Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal District (PPHTD) and Tallgrass, and will include multiple deepwater docks and tank storage for up to 20-million barrels of crude oil. It is to be located south of Belle Chasse on the Mississippi River, on the former St. Rosalie plantation.
The
date is August 29, 2018 – the 13th
anniversary of Katrina.
The
first prompt toward
initiating
this deal came in May 2017, when, after several years battling local
residents, environmentalists, and the state’s Coastal Protection
and Restoration Authority (CPRA), RAM Terminals conceded defeat. With
their US Army Corps of Engineers permit expiring in another 6 months,
RAM notified Plaquemines Parish officials they were abandoning their
plan for a coal terminal on the St. Rosalie plantation tract. In
particular, they asked Port officials for assistance in offloading
the property.
There’s
a gap, then, in the documentation provided subsequent to a public
records request – a
gap
due to “purges and deletions.” But in October 2017, Drexel
Hamilton shared a slickly-produced brochure with Plaquemines Port
officials, touting the Port’s and Drexel’s “partnership of
targeted investments that together are intended to better use
existing facilities and develop new facilities to achieve expanded
economic activity.”
Brochure provided to port authorities, October 2017.
Drexel
Hamilton is self-described as “a service-disabled veteran owned
broker dealer,” but is also referred to as an “investment bank”
or as “hedge fund management”. With branches in New York City,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Winter Park, Florida, the firm’s
apparent eagerness to advise and partner with Plaquemines (with an
entire parish population of just
over
24,000
souls) was too intoxicating for the locals to resist.
A
scattering of “recoverable” emails (deleted
prior to records request) indicate
that by
November 2017 Plaquemines Port director Maynard “Sandy” Sanders
was fully engaged with Drexel Hamilton and several other advisers in
developing a grandiose scheme to purchase and develop the RAM
Terminal site. NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) were passed around
and signed, and by the end of December 2017, the Port and Drexel
Hamilton had inked a memorandum of understanding., with
full approval of the Port’s governing authority.
Nearly
every parish and region in Louisiana that has an active port has a
separate and discrete governing body for that port – except
Plaquemines Parish. The Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal
District’s (PPHTD’s) sole governing authority is the Plaquemines
Parish Council. And
as this project plan develops they will vote, nearly always
unanimously, to approve every part of the scheme.
The
MOU states
the Port
will acquire the RAM Terminal property to develop a bulk liquids
terminal, while Drexel Hamilton will be the developer and exclusive
provider of consulting for financing the property purchase, and for
arranging the facility’s long-term use. The Port is prohibited from
entering into any agreement with any third party for financing or
development of the property, without the express written agreement of
Drexel Hamilton.
At
the start of 2018, Port officials began negotiating with RAM
Terminal’s ownership for purchase of the property. By February 7,
they had a signed agreement for the Port to buy the land for
$30.5-million.
In
March, the Port applied to DNR for a Coastal Use Permit, certifying
in their application they were “sole owner” of the riverfront
property. And in late April, the Port tendered another ten dollars to
RAM’s owners, to acquire the previously-issued Corps of Engineers
permit.
You
see,
much
of the hush-hush, behind-the-scenes negotiations to this point were
predicated on repeated assurances the St. Rosalie tract “is
permitted and ready.” Yet the prior
project for the site – the RAM
coal terminal – had failed to come to fruition in no small part
because
they ran afoul of the permitting process. DNR sat on the permits
because CPRA would not sign off, since the location of the coal
terminal was atop the planned Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion.
Area in red: location of planned Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, on former St. Rosalie plantation in Plaquemines Parish. Courtesy: CPRA
The
new project for the site may be oil tanks instead of coal piles, but
the location remains the same. And in fact, barely a week after the
Katrina-versary day
economic development announcement regarding the Plaquemines Liquids
Terminal, the CPRA announced there was a clear conflict with the
$1.4-billion Coastal Master Plan’s
sediment diversion
project, and therefore all permits for the Port’s project were on
indefinite hold.
That
was September 6, 2018 – the same day the Port’s governing
authority okayed issuance of up to $650-million in bonds to
underwrite the new oil terminal company, and construction of the
tanks and docking facility.
So
at this point, the Port has a
contract to buy
the land, and is taking out a 20-year, $650-million loan to help pay
for creating the company and building the facility. They are
saying
it’s a “public-private partnership,” after all. But where does
the “private” investment come into it, you ask?
You’ve
got to combine information from the 72-page cooperative endeavor
agreement (CEA), the property lease, press
releases from participants, and details
from emails among the various parties
and their
advisors in
order to figure it all out.
The
“private” of the project is Plaquemines Liquid Terminal, LLC,
which
we’ll refer to after this as “PLT”.
The managing partner of the corporation, created for this project and
registered in Delaware, is Tallgrass Terminals, a new sub-entity of
Tallgrass Energy Partners. Tallgrass
was
founded in 2013, is
based
in Kansas, and
is primarily an oil and gas pipeline company. The PLT project will
be the
terminus – the endpoint – of a new Tallgrass pipeline.
The
Seahorse Pipeline will run from Cushing, Oklahoma to the St. James
(Louisiana) hub, and then on down to the PLT storage and transfer
facility in Plaquemines. It will be “exclusively”
carrying
crude from Kinder Morgan’s fields in Colorado’s Powder River
Basin (which
are transported to Cushing, OK, via another Tallgrass pipeline.) Much
of that crude is pre-contracted for refining at the Phillips 66
Alliance Refinery – conveniently located next door to the St.
Rosalie/Port/PLT site.
(Interestingly
– coincidentally? – one of the partners in the former
RAM Coal Terminal project previously attempted at this same site was
Kinder Morgan, which
already has a coal and pertroleum terminal at Myrtle Grove, 4 miles
downriver from this very site. The
source of the coal that was to be shipped in was…wait for
it….Colorado’s Powder River Basin.)
That’s
what we know of the players in the “private” part
of the scheme, and the business they ultimately intend to conduct.
And
the
Cooperative Endeavor Agreement (CEA) declares unequivocally that the
business they’ll be conducting will be good for Plaquemines Parish.
“The
Project
is expected to result in new inventory taxes and sales and use taxes
benefitting the taxing authorities of the Parish,” the
CEA states.
“The Port, through its sole governing authority
– the
Plaquemines
Parish
Council – has determined the Project’s
presence and
operation
will create jobs and commerce, and enhance the economic well-being of
the Port and Parish, such that what the Port does under this
Agreement is justified and necessary to attract the Project.”
Artist’s rendering of planned Plaquemines Liquids Terminal. Credit: LA 23 Development Co.
So here’s the deal of the – not exactly century – but 4/5 of a century (the lease on the property is for 40 years, with an option to renew for another 40 years):
The Port purchases and retains ownership of the property. They do so with $30.5-million cash donated by Plaquemines Liquid Terminals, LLC. (The sale is recorded November 6, 2018.) The Port then leases the property to PLT, for the company’s exclusive possession and use.
PLT can build on the land, drill on the land, sublease all or part of the land, all without prior approval from the Port. Though the Port will own anything that is built on the property, the Port can’t come on the property – even to inspect – without prior written notice at least five days in advance, and then it’s only during business hours.
If PLT goes out of business, or never gets to go into business, the Port can’t sell the property without PLT’s consent. And PLT gets the proceeds of any sale.
If it’s ruled that some of the land must be given up to the CPRA for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, whatever percentage of the total acreage that takes, the Port must refund to PLT that same percentage of the original $30.5 million cash donation, plus 12-percent interest. (Sounds more like a loan, now, doesn’t it?)
PLT gets to take depreciation on the land and buildings on its tax returns, even though the Port technically owns it all. After 15 years, PLT can purchase any and all things built on the property, for a single dollar. After 40 years, PLT can purchase the entire 630 acres, for the total sum of one other dollar.
Because the Port holds title to the property, it is not subject to parish property (ad valorem) taxes. And instead of paying a set rent amount monthly or annually for use of the property, PLT will annually pay the Port the amount of property taxes that would have been due, if the property were not tax exempt. In addition to the PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes), PLT will pay the Port an administrative fee, of $200,000 per year.
The lease states these moneys “shall be paid directly to the Port, in the same manner as, and in lieu of, ad valorem taxes.”
At this point, the deal has gone beyond seeming “hinky” to being blatantly illegal – unconstitutional – on at least one, and possibly more, of its premises.
Over the past several years, some parish governing bodies had negotiated CEAs with PILOTs for incoming industries; among them was Cameron Parish, which was seeing an influx of liquified natural gas terminal projects toward the end of Bobby Jindal’s terms as governor. At the time, ITEPs (participation in the Industrial Tax Exemption Program) were routinely granted by the state Commerce & Industry Board, and the local governmental bodies – which had to give up the property tax proceeds on these projects for a decade – had no say in the matter.
Cameron LNG Terminal, near Hackberry, in southwest Louisiana.
In order to have funds to build roads and bridges to and from the site for the Cameron LNG Terminal project, Cameron Parish negotiated a PILOT agreement with that company – to pay the property taxes for the first ten years, and then be exempted from paying the taxes during the second decade of operation. Challenged in state district court, PILOT agreements were ruled unconstitutional. Subsequent efforts to pass state legislation legalizing such arrangements have failed to win lawmakers’ approval.
Currently, there is a bill awaiting committee hearing in Louisiana’s House. HB 76 is in the form of a constitutional amendment, and so must get through House committees, win a 2/3 vote of approval from the full House, get through Senate committees and achieve 2/3 of the full Senate’s support before it could go to the voters in the statewide elections this coming October. The measure is authored by Rep. Mark Abraham (R-Lake Charles), rather than by any of the three senators or two House members representing parts of Plaquemines Parish. As of this week, Rep. Abraham still had no idea when or if the bill was coming up for its first discussion in committee. And unless that measure gets over all its hurdles and wins approval from voters statewide, the basis for the rent money the Plaquemines Port expects to collect – PILOT – remains illegal.
Yet with seemingly utter disregard for the hypocrisy of doing a deal based on an illegal type of payments, the CEA states in Section 10.2: “This Agreement is prepared and entered into with the intention that the laws of the State of Louisiana shall govern its construction.”
Part of the reason PILOT agreements have been ruled unconstitutional is that they are an end run around state’s ITEP program. The changes made to that program since Gov. John Bel Edwards’ June 2016 executive order, mandating input and approval by each of the local taxing bodies affected before the tax exemptions are granted, has alleviated some of the perceived unfairness of ITEP. Yet the terms of the lease between PLT and the Port exacerbate the inequities of this deal for the taxing bodies of Plaquemines Parish.
Remember, the lease states, “these moneys shall be paid directly to the Port, in the same manner as, and in lieu of, ad valorem taxes.”
To the Port.
Not to the sheriff, the parish’s official tax collector. Not to the assessor, or the parish as a whole – even though the same people, the Parish Council, govern the entire parish and make up the sole governing body of the Port.
And certainly not to the Plaquemines Parish School Board.
Under the ITEP rules, as they currently stand (and if the PLT deal was being done like a conventional economic development project) the school board would decide whether to forego 80% of its share of the property taxes for up to 8 years. Yet under this CEA/PILOT deal, the school board is giving up 100% of its share of the property taxes, for 40 – and potentially 80 – years. And they have no say, whatsoever, in any of it.
If I were on the school board, I’d say we should sue. If I were a stockholder of PLT’s partners, considering that the Port – and its sole governing body, the Plaquemines Parish Council – engaged in this entire PILOT scheme knowing it to be unconstitutional and illegal, I’d sue.
But then again, as a player in PLT, I’ve got everything my way. I don’t technically own the land, but I have unfettered control over it. I get all the tax benefits of ownership, plus all the profits from running my business. And I get the gratitude of the rubes in the parish, who see me as a golden goose, when they’re the ones I induced to lay me a nestful of eggs.
And
if anybody sues, I’ve got some boilerplate language that completely
protects me:
“Sec. 10.5 Severability. In the event any provision of this Agreement shall be held invalid or unenforceable by any court of competent jurisdiction, such holding shall not invalidate or render unenforceable any other provision hereof.”
St. Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-Stricken of Palermo, by Anthony Van Dyck, 1624. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
St. Rosalie, for whom this particular tract of land in Plaquemines Parish was named, is the patron saint of Palermo, Sicily. Though she died around 1160, the discovery of her bones in 1624, along with prayers for her intercession, are credited with halting an outbreak of the plague.
Perhaps there’s a synchronous omen here – that residents of deep southeast Louisiana should look to this discovery of doings at St. Rosalie as a way to halt this latest outbreak of Plaquemines Parish officials’ scheming.
Most drivers do not realize that their credit history might be the cause of their high auto insurance premiums. But a new study of premium quotes provided by Louisiana Farm Bureau Insurance – the state’s fifth largest insurer – found that premiums jumped dramatically for anyone with less than perfect credit. According to insurance expert, Douglas Heller, who conducted the research, the vast majority of Louisiana insurance companies factor credit history in setting the premiums they charge, though few are as transparent about it as Farm Bureau.
As state lawmakers debate the best way to reduce auto insurance rates, the most glaring reason behind Louisiana’s high prices has been largely overlooked. While the state Commissioner of Insurance, Jim Donelon, and his chief actuary, Richard Piazza, have acknowledged that auto insurers use credit scores as a factor in determining premiums, they both attempted to downplay its significance. Yesterday, state Rep. Kirk Talbot, the author of a bill that markets itself as a “premium reduction” initiative, was evasive after being specifically asked whether a person’s credit score impacts the rates they are charged.
It is critical to note that consumers are not asking auto insurance companies for a loan; they are merely purchasing a product, as they are mandated to do under state law, for coverage in the future. In other states, the industry has attempted to justify this practice by claiming a self-selected survey they conducted asserts there is a correlation between credit scores and risk of loss. In other words, poor people pay more on the basis that poor people are more at-risk for injuries. Experts, like Heller, reject the industry’s analysis.
Consumer Reports has previously reported that several major auto insurers in Louisiana use a customer’s credit history, and nationally, they’ve revealed staggering differences in the premiums paid by people with bad credit and those with good credit, even if they have a DWI on their driving record.
Source: Consumer Reports
While Heller based his research on publicly disclosed data about Louisiana from Farm Bureau, The Zebra, which claims to be “the nation’s most comprehensive comparison website for car insurance,” offers detailed analysis on four of the state’s six largest car insurance companies, and the differences are astonishing.
“Louisiana drivers face an average penalty of $2,026 per year for having a credit score in the ‘worst’ tier,” reports The Zebra.“Drivers in the ‘poor’ or ‘below fair to poor’ credit tiers will also pay above-average rates for a car insurance policy.”
WalletHub also revealed in its own study that drivers in Louisiana pay an average of 60% more and as much as 135% more if they have poor credit scores.
For consumers of Louisiana Farm Bureau, Heller found that premiums went up a whopping 133% for drivers with a perfect driving record but a very low credit score compared with drivers who have excellent credit. On average, low credit score drivers throughout the state are charged $1,193 more annually for basic coverage and $2,938 more for a full coverage policy, according to the research.
Even drivers with good credit see a 19% premium hike, while drivers with moderate credit scores face a 43% credit penalty despite their perfect driving history. Figure 1 shows average premiums for the basic, minimum limits coverage for a 35 year old male drivers with perfect records living in Shreveport, Alexandria, and New Orleans.
“If you drive safely, you should pay the same price as anyone else who drives safely, regardless of your credit score,” said Heller. “Insurance is not like a loan that you have to pay back. If you miss a payment, the insurance companies cancel you and stop providing coverage. Your credit history should not matter.”
The cost of a low credit score hit New Orleans drivers the hardest with annual premiums for basic, liability-only insurance jumping by $111 for people with only good credit, $256 for having moderate credit, and $794 for having the lowest credit score.
Three states – Massachusetts, California, and Hawaii – prohibit auto insurance companies from considering a driver’s credit history when setting premiums. In 2015, Consumer Reports Magazine placed Louisiana among the top third of states where credit history has the most impact and noted that a Louisiana good driver with Poor Credit pays $905 more on average than a driver with Excellent Credit who was convicted of drunk driving.
Louisiana Farm Bureau Insurance allows a driver to estimate his or her credit history before retrieving a quote, which at least gives a prospective customer the opportunity understand how much they are being punished for their credit history, according to Heller. Most companies require that customers provide a social security number and then obtain their credit score before providing a quote, but it’s not clear how much the credit history impacts rates. This means most people don’t appreciate that their credit can make the difference between affordable auto insurance and staggeringly high premiums.
According to the analysis conducted and published by The Zebra, Farm Bureau is not nearly the most expensive provider for those with customers with bad credit; that title belongs to Progressive, which charges, on average, $4,872 a year for comprehensive coverage for a driver with bad credit, over $1,100 that Farm Bureau Charges.
The Zebra’s findings in Louisiana.
“In other states, where I’ve been able to see the algorithms insurance companies use, insurers like State Farm and Allstate sometimes charge an even higher penalty than I found testing Farm Bureau’s rates,” said Heller. “The fact that it can, because of their credit history, cost a good driver an extra $66 every month to purchase the most bare bones coverage available is not just obviously unfair and wrong, it also contributes to level of uninsured motorists in the state, which raises rates for everyone.”
In testing premiums for full coverage, in which a driver seeks higher liability protection, uninsured motorist coverage, and comprehensive and collision coverages, Heller found penalties that were in the thousands of dollars. Figure 2 shows that good drivers who fall from excellent to good credit see average premiums across the state rise by $411; moderate credit drivers pay $948 more than those with excellent credit; and safe drivers with the worst credit pay $2,938 more per year than their excellent credit counterparts.
“Louisiana lawmakers who want to make a difference in the premiums facing drivers who have had some bad luck financially but don’t cause accidents should eliminate the use of credit history in auto insurance pricing. Make insurance companies rate drivers on how they drive, not their personal financial situation,” said Heller.
There are multiple reasons the industry charges poor Louisianians more than wealthy drivers, regardless of driving record. While the industry points to a questionable set of internal surveys that attempt to make an actuarial justification, the truth, say many who have studied the industry, is that the high prices paid by the poor allow the industry to subsidize the rates the wealth pay, and unlike those with bad credit, the wealthy are much more likely to purchase additional products, such as life insurance and homeowner’s insurance, which have higher profit margins and are more expensive. The poor, in others words, are effectively subsidizing low rates for the wealthy, so that companies can better attract additional business.
Contrary to statements made recently by state legislators, a state’s “legal climate” is not a factor used by auto insurers in determining the premiums they charge.
Some argue these practices amount to the criminalization of poverty and auto insurers are allowed to judge people on the color of their collar.
But in a state with a population that is approximately 32% African American, the racial disparities are impossible to ignore. A recent study by ProPublicarevealed that African Americans are often charged 30% more than whites for their car insurance; other studies assert the number could be as much as 70% higher, according to the Consumer Federation of America.
For more than a dozen years, lawmakers, regulators, and policymakers have understood that these disparities are being driven by the industry’s reliance on “credit-based insurance.”
“Insurance companies insist that credit scores are a reliable predictor of future claims and yet they have no idea whether the credit information they are using is accurate,” said Norma Garcia, then the Senior Staff Attorney with Consumers Union, in 2007. Garcia was responding to a report from the Federal Trade Commission confirming racial disparities.
“The use of credit scoring in insurance is unnecessary because insurers have a variety of remedies available to protect themselves against consumers who file too many claims. Insurers can raise premiums for those who file too many claims or even terminate claims-prone consumers,” Garcia argued.
While far-right Louisiana state legislators have parroted the false talking points offered by the industry and their lobbyists- at one point yesterday, state Rep. Ray Garofalo proudly acknowledged his belief that reforms should be based on what the auto insurance industry has demanded- the truth is that Louisiana isn’t ranked as one of the most expensive states in the country for auto liability due to any inequities in the state’s civil law system, and the proposals offered thus far will almost certainly increase consumer costs.
Louisiana’s costs are high, because the state mandates all drivers purchase auto liability coverage. And, in a state struggling with disproportionate poverty, the Insurance Commissioner has failed to ensure the marketplace isn’t allowed to be exponentially more expensive for those who can pay the least.
“It’s not just that insurance companies are overcharging Louisianians with low credit scores,” Douglas Heller notes. “It’s that the state Department of Insurance hasn’t done anything to stop companies from these egregious premium hikes on good drivers.”
“They have the authority to arrest,
but they’re not really trained to do so, since they’re licensed
through the Department of Insurance!”
State
Sen. Dan Claitor (R-Baton Rouge) is concerned the state lacks
requirements for bounty hunters – also known as bail enforcement
agents – to take the same firearms training as law enforcement.
He’s authored SB 215 to require them to become POST certified
(Police Officer Standards Training) and licensed via the Attorney
General’s Office.
“Bounty
hunters enter homes, put people in handcuffs, use tasers and use
guns. When we grant arrest powers to anyone else in this state, we
require them to be POST certified,” he told the Senate’s
Judiciary C Committee.
“I
haven’t heard any complaints of bounty hunters running amuck,”
said Sen. Yvonne Colomb (D-Baton Rouge). “What’s the real reason
you’re bringing this bill?”
“I
admit, there have been no major incidents I’ve heard about here
since 2011, but we need to get ahead of the situation before
something bad happens again,” Claitor replied. And honestly, I
don’t have faith in the state Insurance Department to do law
enforcement.”
“I
don’t have faith in this Attorney General,” Colomb came back.
“How
long has the Department of Insurance been regulating bail bondsmen?”
asked Sen. Troy Carter (D-New Orleans).
‘Since
1999,” Claitor answered.
“And
how many incidents have there been since 1999 where that system
‘failed’?” Carter pressed.
“I
don’t know of any, for certain,” Claitor replied. “Only that
the regulations came to be because of something that originally took
place in Caddo Parish.”
“So
this isn’t an epidemic?” Carter concluded. “Why not do a study
to see if a change is needed?”
Several dozen bail bond firms indicated opposition to shifting oversight for their industry away from the Department of Insurance, since they actually are insurance agents, representing insurance firms in a surety product. Sen. Fred Mills (R-Parks) asked those opposed if there was any parts of the bill they could work with.
“I
would say no,” Guy Ruggiero, past president of Louisiana Bail
Underwriters, said.
Bill
Stiles, chief deputy Attorney General, also spoke in opposition,
reminding the committee the Attorney General’s Office is not a
regulatory agency, and therefore they don’t believe they are the
appropriate agency to have this responsibility.
Ultimately,
Sen. Claitor voluntarily deferred the bill “for another week, to
rework it.”
“Blake Miguez from History Channel’s #TopShot All-Stars. World/US National Champion Shooter. Constitutional Scholar. Small Business Owner. Millennial Legislator.” Banner photo and description from his Twitter account.
Not
long after, across the building in the House Commerce Committee, Rep.
Blake Miguez (R-New Iberia) presented the topic that has him “up in
arms.” Miguez’s HB 413
also involving firearms and the AGs Office.
“This
aims to prohibit a financial institution from refusing services to
those involved in firearms commerce,” Miguez said. “Recently,
some big national banks told their clients to halt their sales of
certain firearms, certain large-capacity magazines, certain types of
ammo, or else they would be kicked out of services through the bank.
Under this bill, if they discriminate, a complaint can be filed with
the Attorney General, which would kick off an investigation, and
could ultimately be taken to court.”
“To
be clear, some institutions have mission statements, codes of ethics.
Are you trying to prohibit that?” asked Rep. Cedric Glover
(D-Shreveport).
“This
is protecting small businesses from big financial institutions that
make social policies that are discriminatory against Second Amendment
Rights,” Miguez responded. “It’s a constitutional right, and
they can’t get between you and those rights solely
because you’re involved in the legal commerce of firearms.”
“What
are some reasons that banks can
refuse to do business with customers?” Rep. Edmond Jordan (R-Baton
Rouge) asked.
“They
can halt services as a legitimate business reason, due
to financial or credit
worthiness, or regulatory reasons. But they can’t tell a small
business client no, just because the people that run the bank don’t
like guns!” Miguez was
adamant.
“This
reminds
of a
bill
brought here
a few years ago because a gentleman didn’t want to bake cake for
gay couple,” observed
Rep. Patrick Connick (R-Marrero). “Isn’t this the same sort of
thing?”
Connick
was referring to then-Rep. (now Congressman) Mike Johnson’s HB 707
of the 2015 legislative session. Titled “The Marriage and
Conscience Act”, it would
have protected “the right of conscience, and the free exercise of
religious beliefs and moral convictions.” It would have prohibited
the state or any of its agencies from taking adverse action against
those who asserted their moral convictions by denying services
regarding marriages not between one man and one woman. That bill
failed to get out of committee, and so, later in that same day,
then-Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order implementing the
provisions anyway. Executive
Order
BJ
15-8
was rescinded with
the April 2016 issuance of Gov. John Bel Edwards’ “Equal
Opportunity and Non-Discrimination” order.
Miguez
insisted the bills have
more differences than similarities.
“That
one
was
small business not wanting a
particular
client. This is about
banks
– highly regulated financial institutions
– denying financial services to business for social issues. They
are different issues,” Miguez asserted. “That
was normal
small
businesses
versus what
we have here: the big
banking industry deciding our entire social policy because they have
leverage and
power
– because they have so much money.
“Don’t
we, as people, have the right to chose not to do business with those
whose policies we disapprove? asked
Rep.Glover.
“Consider
the worldwide concern over blood diamonds, or our concerns here in
Louisiana about catfish from Vietnam. With this bill, are
we denying a conscientious business from establishing their
own policies?”
“Where
and by whom lettuce is harvested is not
protected by constitutional right. Firearms
are
the
purpose of the Second Amendment constitutional rights,” Miguez
maintained.
“Free
speech is a
constitutional
right, too,” Glover
observed, gently. “Doesn’t this deny those rights?”
“This
is different. It’s the Second Amendment, and it’s banks,”
Miguez said. “This is tightly tailored to financial institutions
which are already highly regulated.”
“So,
under your bill, a gun dealer gets the right to decide who he or she
will do business with – that is, sell weapons to – but the
financial institution does not get the same right to decide?”
Glover asked.
“They
shouldn’t have higher power than the law. Louisiana made your
Second Amendment rights absolute, and a financial institution cannot
restrict that with their own policy,” Miguez said.
Throughout
the discussion, Louisiana’s junior U.S. Senator John Kennedy, was
tweeting commentary lambasting the banks. Kennedy has co-authored a
similar federal bill, SB 821, the Freedom Financing Act, filed one
month ago.
And
without opposition Miguez’s HB 413 was advanced to the full House
floor.
Last time, we looked at some Saints draft options on offense, based on roster needs, picks available, and what I think the braintrust might think about the team’s current construction. Let’s do the same for the other side of the ball– where the Saints have been much-improved the last two years, and with the right additions and growth could push into an elite unit.
Defensive line
Now, in theory, the Saints are loaded at defensive tackle, with Sheldon Rankins, Malcom Brown, and David Onyemata comprising a formidable top three (and good depth like Taylor Stallworth, and possibly Mario Edwards Jr. depending on where he lines up). But a little closer look reveals some troubles. Rankins is still coming off his Achilles tear in the playoff game against the Eagles and likely won’t be at full strength to start the season– and may need until 2020 to get his old form back. Onyemata was arrested in January on charges of marijuana possession and may be suspended to start the year. The depth starts looking a lot thinner once one considers those factors. The Saints might try to flesh out the position with a pick this year.
The best players at the position won’t be anywhere near available when the Saints pick. Quinnen Williams and Ed Oliver are both expected to be top-10 picks at the minimum.
One of Clemson’s duo of Christian Wilkins and Dexter Lawrence could slide to 62. They play different positions– Lawrence is a 340+-pound nose tackle; Wilkins is more of an attacker at 315 pounds– and so whether the Saints take one depends on what needs they decide they have at the position. One interesting name is Notre Dame’s Jerry Tillery (pictured in the header): He might not be available at 62 anymore as buzz builds around him, but he’s a highly athletic pocket-pusher who, while being slightly (but only slightly) undersized for a defensive tackle, has the kind of physical gifts of burst, length, and strength that made him a standout interior pass rusher, leading Notre Dame in sacks last season. If teams continue to overlook him, he might be the kind of player the Saints move up for. (They did host him on a pre-draft visit.) Tillery’s athleticism would make a great substitute for Rankins or Onyemata if they miss time, and if Rankins never gets his old form back, Tillery could be the long-term replacement.
The draft is pretty deep at defensive end, too, although it’s deep with first-round talent– the wave of players ranked highly will probably have been picked clean by the time the Saints select. (You might see six or seven edge rushers in the first round.) That’s not too big a deal, though, considering the Saints’ heavy investment in Cameron Jordan and Marcus Davenport as the starters. Trey Hendrickson is currently slotted as the third end (again, depending on where they play Mario Edwards). They may want to still add a rotational guy; don’t be surprised if they take another look at a free agent like Ezekiel Ansah if they can’t fill out the rotation in the draft.
Linebacker
It’s unlikely the Saints will look for a starter here; they seem pretty set with Demario Davis as the every-down backer and A.J. Klein and Alex Anzalone playing alongside him. Still, with a fifth-, two sixth-, and two seventh-round picks, the Saints might take a chance on someone who could be a valuable special teamer and potentially a starter one day. Washington’s Ben Burr-Kirven is an intriguing name; he’s undersized for a linebacker, but he was a tackling machine at Washington. Boards are split on him, but if teams continue to pass on him because of his size, the Saints could get a real steal on day three.
Defensive Back
While a lot of mocks like to give the Saints a cornerback here, it’s tougher for me to see. They’re returning their top six cornerbacks from last year, from star of the unit Marshon Lattimore to special-teams ace Justin Hardee. Given that the rotation is pretty well set with Lattimore and Eli Apple starting outside, Patrick Robinson at the slot corner, P.J. Williams next man up (or if Robinson hasn’t properly recovered from his broken ankle), and Ken Crawley the emergency fifth man, there just doesn’t seem to be much room on the roster for another addition. (Something further suggested by the fact that the Saints cut last year’s picks Natrell Jamerson and Kamrin Moore at the 53-man deadline, and they were both claimed by other teams.) If the Saints love someone in the second round who can challenge Apple or Robinson for a starting job, that might change matters, but I don’t know who that would be, as there aren’t any real standouts in this cornerback class besides LSU’s Greedy Williams and Washington’s Byron Murphy– who should both be gone before the end of day 1, never mind when the Saints finally select.
A more likely addition in my view is a third safety. The Kurt Coleman signing didn’t work out as he had lost a step; he continued to lose snaps to Vonn Bell over the course of the season, until he hardly saw the field in the playoffs. He was an early cut this offseason. Chris Banjo is currently the third safety, but he’s by and large a special teamer. The Saints don’t have a pressing need for a third safety because they usually go with three or four cornerbacks in a nickel or dime package, but some added versatility to the secondary could help them mix up coverage packages and plug weaknesses. There is a decent range of safeties with grades in the late-first-to-second range– Nasir Adderley (Delaware), Juan Thornhill (Virginia), and Deionte Thompson (Alabama) all immediately come to mind– and if the Saints like one of them as a fit, he could be the pick at 62.
Next time: Well, the draft is this week! So I’ll be reporting back after the Saints have finished selecting, with what we know about those players and what the picks tell us about the Saints’ roster thoughts.
In the summer of 1959, Abbott Joseph Liebling, a 54-year-old journalist at TheNew Yorker, took what would end up being the final assignment of his writing career. James Carville offers the most succinct description. “A.J. Liebling came down to Louisiana to report on our insane governor,” he once told me. “And what he discovered was that the governor was the only sane person in the entire damn state.”
A.J. Liebling.
Like his famous colleague Jerome David Salinger, Liebling wrote under his initials, A.J., a convention used by many other Jewish writers at the time. Before he came down to Louisiana and met the “insane governor,” Earl K. Long, Liebling had earned international acclaim as a war correspondent during the Second World War. France awarded him their highest honor, the Cross of the Légion d’honneur, for his coverage of the Normandy landings on D Day (J.D. Salinger had been there as well). After WWII, he became an outspoken opponent of both the House Un-American Affairs Committee and the media’s coverage of the committee.
At the time, there was no other journalist in the world more capable of chronicling the final hurrah of a man known as Uncle Earl than A.J. Liebling; his experience abroad provided him the context necessary to understand an American state whose culture and politics were dramatically different than anywhere else in the country and whose allegedly crazy governor resembled the personality type of an erratic, self-indulgent, but politically astute foreign dictator.
In 2014, Slate’s Jack Shaffer published “Worshipping at the Church of Liebling,” in which he discusses why the late New Yorker writer continued to be considered one of the nation’s most admired journalists, more than fifty years after his death. “Some great writers inspire other writers. Other great writers intimidate the ones who follow, causing them to suffer the ‘anxiety of influence,’ to borrow a phrase from literary critic Harold Bloom,” Shaffer wrote. “Liebling invented, almost from scratch, the journalistic genre of literary press critic, but because he wrote as well as he did, he seems to have closed the door on the way out. Liebling’s literary vision is too vivid to imitate, and it’s hard to imagine someone trumping it.”
The Perfect Book?
When I was in college, I enrolled in a summer creative writing workshop in upstate New York taught by Lee K. Abbott, a man widely considered to be one of the country’s finest craftsmen of the short story and, as a critic once described him, the “true heir to John Cheever.” It’s a testament to Lee’s extraordinary gifts as a professor that, even though the workshop only lasted two weeks, I can still recall, nearly twenty years later, much of the wisdom he imparted. It’s even more remarkable, I think, because when I was undergraduate at Rice (where, coincidentally, Lee had once taught as a visiting professor during the late 1980s), I set the school’s all-time record for most writing workshops ever taken by an undergraduate (If you’re a Rice student who aspires to oust me from the record books, the number to beat is eleven).
I learned under writing professors who believed in maximalism and professors who had never encountered an adverb they didn’t hate. Some, like Rick Moody, taught students to approach writing like music. Prose should sing! I imagine Lee would agree in the importance of lyricism, but he’d probably argue against my use of an exclamation point. He taught the mechanics of the craft, like a chef with three Michelin stars teaches cooking techniques.
Lee. K Abott.
According to him, there was only one work of fiction that had ever achieved perfection.
“The only perfect book ever written,” he told our workshop one afternoon, “is Chronicle of a Death Foretold byGabriel García Márquez.” I’m not sure if he still holds this opinion or even if he hadn’t intended to be purposefully hyperbolic, but it struck me then as a profound observation: The book was written in Spanish. If I wanted to read the only perfect book, I’d need to learn a new language. I settled, instead, for the English translation, which is still remarkable, though I have no way of knowing how it measures up to the original manuscript.
The Sub-Genre of Louisiana.
Ever since Lee’s class, I’ve thought about what I consider to be literary perfection, or at least, the book that is closest to public among a very select class. I’m a voracious reader, capable of consuming two or maybe even three books in a single day, and despite the ways in which the internet places a premium on grazing for the news instead of settling in with a quality newspaper written by talented reporters, I prefer to be stubborn about the need to read real books about real people.
Inspired by Peter Athas’ recent list of the Top Forty Films Set in Louisiana, I’ve put together my own list of a very particular sub-genre: Literary nonfiction about Louisiana. By “contemporary,” I am specifically referring to books written during the past 100 years, Apologies to the collected works of Walker Percy, Ann Rice, and John Grisham, all three of whom are predominately writers of fiction.
Instead of publishing the list all at once, however, I will be writing a new review once every month (this month, we will actually feature two different books). My hope is to provide you with an informative and fascinating book recommendation that you can add to your list.
If you have a book you’d like for me to consider as a part of this series, email me at publisher@bayoubrief.com.
I am beginning at the top, with my all-time favorite, a book I consider to be the only perfect book ever written about Louisiana politics: The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling. Liebling’s book is the only one I intend on ranking, because it demands the distinction. Every other book will be treated equally (and therefore, in some way, inferior to Liebling’s book).
Uncle Earl.
Earl K. Long on the campaign stump in 1959.
A year after Liebling began following Earl K. Long around the state of Louisiana on what, ultimately would be the last ride for both men, he published a series of radiant, incisive, and memorable reports in The New Yorker about the time he spent with the bombastic, erratic, and brilliant younger brother of a man generally considered the state’s most consequential and legendary politician, Huey P. Long. His essays were then assembled into a book, 1961’s The Earl of Louisiana.
Liebling somehow captures vividly the voices and the vernacular of the irrepressible Earl K. Long and his contemporaries like no one else had ever done before, which is especially impressive considering he had never before been exposed to the Louisiana of the days of Uncle Earl.
Liebling tells a fascinating story of a man rushing to reassert his credibility, his legacy, and even his basic sanity after being committed to a mental institution in Texas for the crime of cursing out the legislature for their opposition to segregation, the type of performance that nowadays may have earned him a Profile in Courage Award. Because he was governor at the time, it wasn’t difficult for him to circumvent the system, get himself transferred back to Louisiana, and then fire the hospital director in order to grant himself freedom. By then, and for a whole host of other reasons, the state was done with Earl K. Long but Earl K. Long wasn’t done with the state. He contemplated a run for lieutenant governor before ultimately decided to pursue a campaign for Congress.
There is one moment in the book that stands out particularly for me. Uncle Earl was in my hometown of Alexandria campaigning for governor in downtown, in between the old City Hall and the Hotel Bentley. (He’d end up dying in Alexandria, only a few days after winning the election).
Downtown Alexandria circa 1950; City Hall is on the left and the Hotel Bentley is behind it.
In the crowd that day was 44-year-old lawyer and Democratic Party leader Camille Gravel. He’d once worked for Uncle Earl but had since become disillusioned. As Earl spoke, microphone glued to his hand, Camille began heckling him from the audience. It obviously got under the old man’s skin.
“I knew your daddy, Camille Gravel, and he was a fine man,” the former governor shouted. “But you trying to make yourself a big man, and you nothing but a little puissant.”
A few months later, Camille Gravel would become a key powerbroker at the 1960 Democratic National Convention, just as he was four years prior, and help ensure that a young man, around his age, named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, received the party’s nomination and went onto become President. He remained friends with the Kennedy family until his death in 2005.
Gravel wasn’t “nothing but a little puissant,” as it turns out. Perhaps Uncle Earl had been feigning ignorance or perhaps he had really been annoyed, but a few years before, when he was governor, Long supported Gravel for state attorney general over Jack Gremillion. Gravel decided not to run, and Gremillion prevailed, resulting in Long making one of his most memorable statements: “If you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion,” he said, “put it in a law book.”
Earl Kemp Long died only a few months after heckling his heckler, and Camille Gravel went on to write the Louisiana state Constitution, serving as the executive counsel during the Gov. Edwin Edwards’ first three terms (he didn’t stay long in the third term, transitioning into the role of private counsel and winning an acquittal for corruption charges against his boss).
The Earl of Louisiana is not merely a good story; it’s perfect writing, arguably the best book ever written about an American politician. It’s also, for some, a reminder of how small Louisiana still remains as a state. Camille Gravel’s grandson, Richard, works for another governor named Edwards; he is currently running John Bel Edwards’ reelection campaign.
Situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in Plaquemines Parish, the acreage was once known as St. Rosalie Plantation. Even in the early years of Louisiana statehood, the 600-acre tract was unusual – owned by a free man of color, Andrew Durnford, who used slave labor to raise sugarcane there from 1828 until his death in 1859. In the financial downturn that followed the Civil War, his heirs sold the land.
The plantation “next door” to St. Rosalie was acquired by emancipated slaves, eventually becoming the community of Ironton. In the early 1980s, Plaquemines Parish officials earned national notoriety when both Dan Rather with CBS’s 60 Minutes and Walter Isaacson with Time magazine exposed the continued institutionalized racism. From segregated public parks and hospital waiting rooms to being denied parish government jobs, African Americans in Plaquemines Parish continued to be overtly discriminated against. Notably, the parish council refused to provide Ironton with either a water or a sewer system until after the revelations hit newsstands and airwaves in 1981.
St. Rosalie ultimately wound up in the hands of Louisiana Power and Light – Entergy’s predecessor. Throughout the 20th century, much of the land for miles up and downriver, was planted in citrus groves. In the late 1960s, CHS, a grain and food co-operative originally founded in Minnesota in 1929, secured a 99-year lease for part of the St. Rosalie tract, built and started operating a shipping dock and grain elevator on the riverfront. At one point, another part of the tract was leased to a company that attempted to manufacture ethanol, a business that ultimately closed.
Then
came Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
And
in 2006, the election
of new parish council members and a new parish president brought
a new mindset to the parish’s rebuilding efforts.
Parish President Billy Nungesser now serves as Lt. Gov.
Billy Nungesser knew how his home parish had been treated during the 1927 Mississippi River Flood – sacrificed to more flooding by blowing the levee to protect New Orleans. (And thanks to John Barry’s Rising Tide, first published in 1997, which became a bestseller in the fall of 2005, post-Katrina, readers worldwide knew the ignominious tale, too. It wasn’t looking much better downriver in the aftermath of Katrina’s devastation, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to upgrade and strengthen the levees excluded lower Plaquemines entirely.
Parish President Nungesser began implementing a different plan– to turn lower Plaquemines into an “industrial corridor.” With the right types of industry in place, he and the rest of the parish’s power brokers reasoned, the feds would have no choice but to build better flood protection for them.
It
wasn’t long before the Phillips-66
Alliance refinery
in Belle Chasse had cousins move in
along the river’s southern banks, including
a tank farm and
coal transfer facilities. In
2012, following the attention the entire area received in the
aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill, the Corps announced new plans to
quadruple the height of the levees below
New Orleans,
through Plaquemines Parish.
Stewart’s Oakville landfill. Photo from court records.
In 2007, Kennett Stewart, the CEO of Industrial Pipe, found himself flush with cash – a windfall, literally. He had “performed a public service” (as his testimony in later court cases would state) by disposing of Katrina debris in his (unpermitted) landfill in the Plaquemines Parish community of Oakville. (Oakville, like Ironton, was founded by former slaves and retains an exclusively African-American population.)
Stewart decided to use his debris disposal profits to get in on the ethanol craze, forming South Louisiana Ethanol, LLC. In 2007, SLE bought the St. Rosalie plantation land from Entergy for $5.625 million, announcing plans to bring the defunct ethanol facility on that tract back into production.
Funding
for the ethanol venture fell through, SLE declared bankruptcy, and
through some…shall we say?
“questioned” (at least according to court
records) maneuvers, TKS Ventures,
LLC (a company formed by Kennett Stewart and his wife), acquired
title to the property when it was auctioned off, as required by the
bankruptcy court.
Stewart
was in and out of court, however – in lawsuits with the Plaquemines
Parish Council over their denial of a permit to operate and expand
his previously unpermitted landfill, but also with the food co-op CHS
over their lease for the land. At
the height of all this legal wrangling in 2011, while most in the
region focused on the aftermath of the BP oil spill, Stewart sold the
St. Rosalie land to Colorado-based
RAM Terminals for $25-million. That’s
nearly four-and-a-half times what Stewart paid for the property just
four years previously.
What
made this tract of land, with a maximum five foot elevation above sea
level, and which the U.S. Geological Survey designates a “flood
plain” so very valuable?
It
certainly wasn’t because of the
way RAM planned to used the property
– as a transfer station for coal shipped by rail and barge from the
Powder River Basin of Colorado, and thence sent via freighters to
other countries. Although local
business interests supported the
RAM Terminal project,
it ran into opposition from
environmental advocates and residents of
the nearby communities of Ironton and Myrtle Grove. Ultimately
the RAM project ran into permit delays and denials, as the powerful
statewide coalitions of coastal restoration interests voiced their
disapproval.
You see, what made the former St. Rosalie plantation, occupied primarily by citrus trees as it languished for more than a century alongside the mighty Mississippi River, worth $42,000 per acre, when it had sold for just over $9000 per acre four years previously, was that it is the site selected for a key component of the largest planned coastal rebuilding project to date: the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion.
Finally, in 2018, the Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal District bought the land from RAM Terminals – for $30.5 million. Yet the port wasn’t acquiring the land to assist the CPRA (Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority) with the sediment diversion project. Instead, the port is up to its neck in a murky and thus far constitutionally-prohibited deal to block the diversion project with a 20-million-barrel oil terminal in its place.
If
you think the history of the St. Rosalie plantation property is a
convoluted tale – just
wait till we reveal the details of
this latest deal. This scheme
includes
proposed pipelines, pawned permits, and promised payments in lieu of
taxes. Its success is dependent on
lawmakers and voters approving a
Constitutional Amendment that would
legalize
the terms of the deal. It
is also contingent on federal Corps of Engineers and Clean Water
permits and state Coastal Use permits being granted.
And, for the current year, the Plaquemines Parish Assessor assessed the land involved at just $2.1 million, or 15% of its true value, which would mean the land is worth approximately $14 million, less than half of its purchase price.
