How Do We Get a Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Anyway?

By

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October 1, 2020

Three weeks ago, on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2020, the Louisiana Democratic Party held its Reorganizational Meeting to elect party leadership — most notably the state party chair — for the next four years.

Normally, the Reorganizational Meeting to choose all the officers to the executive committee is held in the spring, soon after elections for the new members of the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC), the governing body of the state party. However, this meeting was delayed by several circumstances, setting up a dramatic series of events that played out in public in the days leading up to the vote.

First came multiple delays of the DSCC membership elections. Our party elections, held in conjunction with our Presidential Preference Primary, would normally take place in March. However, due to state law dictating when an election can be held in relation to a major holiday, like Mardi Gras or Easter, and Democratic National Committee (DNC) regulations governing the sequence of state primaries, a later date of April 4th was negotiated between the Louisiana Republican and Democratic Parties. After the coronavirus pandemic hit Louisiana, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin twice more postponed these elections. Finally, a vote was held on July 11th. But this year more people than usual chose to vote by mail, resulting in lengthy vote tabulations and certification. Once this process was concluded, the Reorganizational Meeting, which according to party bylaws must be held within 40 days of certification, was finally set for Saturday, August 29th (incidentally, the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina).

Like almost all Democratic meetings occuring now, in order to take public health into consideration, the Reorganizational Meeting was to be held by Zoom. Since party meetings are required to be open to all interested Democrats, by the rules of the DNC, it would also be broadcast live on Facebook. But once again 2020 weighed in, and days before the August 29th meeting, Hurricane Laura targeted Louisiana. Knowing that “unsurvivable storm surge” was predicted, and power outages were guaranteed, at the end of its extended term and three days before the vote was to be held, the previous state party executive committee came to an agreement that the elections for new leadership needed to be postponed one more time.

On the same day, with Hurricane Laura looming, one of the two candidates running for party chair, state Rep. Ted James of Baton Rouge, unexpectedly dropped out of the race. Without a new candidate throwing their hat in the ring, the next chair of the party would not be elected by the membership, but appointed by default. While the remaining candidate in the race, Katie Bernhardt of Lafayette, had been campaigning for approximately six months, and had strong support from a couple of different factions of the state party that had been organizing for almost a year, there were DSCC members and rank and file Democrats who wanted another option.

In response and after some reflection, I made the decision to run for state party chair. Although the two-week postponement of the Reorganizational Meeting existed only because of the threat and subsequent devastation of Hurricane Laura, I would have added my name to the ballot regardless. Current state bylaws, in fact, permit any Louisiana Democrat to show up as late as the day of the election and have a DSCC member enter their name for consideration from the floor.

Still, entering an election with such a short campaign window went against all my best judgment; I was fully aware it was a long shot. Yet, as someone who believes in the democratic process and the value of healthy debate about our party’s ideals, I felt strongly that the voters should have more than one choice. That said, if I had known that I was running for the state party chair seat, as a seasoned organizer and strategist, I would have started campaigning more than a year before the election.

Lynda Woolard (right) and James Carville (left). Photo credit: Cayman Clevenger

My reasoning follows.

The 12 main executive committee positions are voted on by members of the Louisiana DSCC. DSSC members are elected by registered Democrats every four years when we hold our Presidential Preference Primary. For every state house district, of which there are currently 105, one man and one woman are elected as party representatives. They qualify for these seats like any candidate would, at their parish Clerk of Court’s office, and show up on the same ballot as the Democratic presidential candidates. Qualifying dates are set by the Secretary of State, and can start anywhere from mid-December to early-January.

In many cases, members are elected to their spot without opposition, so they are automatically seated on the DSCC when the qualifying period closes. In reality, there are some seats that go unfilled for the full length of every term. Those vacancies tend to exist in Republican strongholds, where the party has not built out in many years. But, in parts of the state that are heavily Democratic, contests can be quite competitive. Someone wanting to run for state party chair should start by recruiting folks who support them to run for as many of these 210 seats as possible.

Because the votes needed to win the chair’s race equal 50% + 1, the more allies you can get on the DSCC, the better your odds are, and the fewer number of members you have to lobby for their votes. So, ideally, a candidate would begin this effort to recruit local Democratic or community leaders to run several months before the qualifying period, and work to help them win their campaigns for DSCC.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. Photo credit: Lynda Woolard.

While I did not initiate a plan to run in a time frame that made sense to me, I did nonetheless, have a few conversations with party leadership, elected officials, previous party staff, and most importantly in my mind, our governor, in January of 2020, about the future of the party. On the heels of his reelection, I thought it was important that the highest ranking Democrat in our state have input in the next iteration of leadership, and my highest hope for our future was that we could work to get consensus on a candidate from all our top elected Democrats. I spent some time researching what running the party should look like, as well as investigating whether or not there were leaders already interested in the chair position. Having volunteered and worked statewide for candidates and the party for 14 years, I felt I had a firm grasp of where our state’s Democratic efforts needed to head. Regardless, I was clear that, if the sitting chair chose not to run, I wanted to support whomever the governor backed, and we kept a line of communication open throughout the year, when emergencies were not crowding the headlines.

By mid-summer, I felt confident that I would not be running a campaign for the state party chair seat. I do believe this might have played out differently had there not been a pandemic. Still, the organizer in me knew the window to run a legitimate race, and acquire the requisite political blessings, was all but closed. When former Chair Karen Carter Peterson announced in mid-July that she would not seek reelection, Rep. Ted James jumped in the race, and I was encouraged by several women to run for first vice chair. This had not been on my radar at all, but my recruiters’ logic made sense to me. I felt I could run a pretty good little race for this position in six weeks, and I believed my experience could add some value to the role.

I had completed the bulk of the campaigning I estimated I needed to do for the first vice chair seat by the day Ted James dropped out of his race. I was in the home stretch when the dual stories of the meeting’s postponement and the candidate’s exit broke. It would have been difficult for almost anyone else to step into the vacancy in that moment. The fact that I had already talked to almost every one of the DSCC members, and they had already received information on my qualifications, put me in about as strong a position as you can get to run a two-week campaign. Because I had already done the research and had the conversations about the party early in the year, I had a decent idea what the job entailed. And since I had spent a good bit of time doing party building work over the last decade, I felt confident that I would be able to take on the position.

However, none of that is what convinced me that I should recast my candidacy. As news spread about the seismic shift in the chair’s race, I received steady phone calls for nine solid hours. While a few did come from elected officials, most of the calls – and certainly the ones that moved me most – were emotional ones from young Democrats and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who were concerned there might not be a place for them in the party, given the changes that were being proposed by some of the forces working to orchestrate the reorganization.

I can credit one person, in particular, with convincing me to run for chair. Peyton Michelle is the first openly transgender person elected to the DSCC. We had only just met by one five-minute phone conversation a mere two weeks before. She called me in the midst of those nine hours in what seemed like a very difficult call for her to make. She was hesitant, given that we didn’t really know each other. Having already been on the phone for hours, I encouraged her to “spit it out,” that she couldn’t possibly be telling me anything I hadn’t already heard that day. But her bravery in making that open and honest call to someone she didn’t know, explaining to me the worries that she had, impressed upon me that this was a serious moment. I had, then and there, an opportunity to show up, to say to someone “I have your back,” and even if I had to walk through some kind of political fire, there were people in our state who deserved to have a champion in their corner.

As most will know by now, I did not win the election, but I believe running was the right thing to do. And I would do it again.

I ran on a few assertions that I still hold true. I suspect the new party leadership will not be as right leaning as their campaign implied, but as I said in my speech to the DSCC before the votes were cast, I believe it’s the job of the incoming chair to unite the party. There is a lot of healing work to be done there.

I also ran on increased transparency and demystifying how the party operates. I intend to continue to share information like this, so that I can contribute to that goal.

One of the reasons I believe it’s so important to make the party more accessible and comprehensible was actually well exemplified in the final days of this chair’s race. There was a lot of engagement online by grassroots Democrats, who didn’t know that only elected party officials got to vote for chair, or who didn’t understand how we ended up with the candidate dynamics we did, or who had strong feelings about the women running for the position. I was challenged multiple times to reel in the comments of folks who had quite visceral reactions to information about the race as it was made public. As I was running in an already very abbreviated time frame, there was little opportunity for me to try to monitor the actions of people who were neither surrogates nor volunteers for my campaign.

Similarly, I did not expect my opponent in those final weeks to correct the falsehoods spread about me by those who were unofficially whipping votes for her. As I don’t know Katie Bernhardt, and she doesn’t know me, she could frankly be forgiven if she believed those tall tales. But some of the people who most feverishly propagated those rumors were well aware they weren’t true. The fault rests solely with them.

What struck me as very real about all the outcry, was that it reflected a microcosm of what is happening at a national level with the Democratic Party. It is not unique to Louisiana that Democratic voters want more say about what is happening with their party. They want less backroom dealing and insider gaming. There is a desire for more pathways to engage with the party. And that’s really good news for us. It should represent to us a chance for growth, for bringing more people into the fold, and for having more boots on the ground working to be a part of everything we are building. Still, any period of growth brings growing pains, and we will inherently experience some awkwardness and discomfort as people learn how the system works. They will take time to learn what parts of it they want to change, what actions are required to accomplish those goals, and who they can trust in that mission.

This, to me, is the greatest illustrator of why folks who may not be happy with the outcome of this particular election, or any one election, should avoid the trap of changing their party affiliation. The only way to change the party is to be a member of the party. The only way to vote on the presidential nominee, the members to the DSCC, or the members to the local ruling bodies called Democratic Parish Executive Committees (DPECs) is to be a registered Democrat. And certainly the only way to run for any of these state and local positions is to be a Louisiana Democrat.

There are vacancies across the state today on the DSCC and some of the DPECs. Congressional district caucuses are yet another level of party organization that few people know about, and their leadership elections just occurred last weekend without much fanfare. There are many opportunities to engage at a deeper level, and I would argue that if you want to change the way the party operates, increasing your involvement is where that starts.

Louisiana High School Democrats. Author Lynda Woolard far right.

Specifically, if you are a progressive, and want to see progressive values held up by our state Democratic party, the least helpful thing is for us to have a smaller and weaker caucus.

The reality is, the pendulum swings. We all know this. But like John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, our calling is to stay in the fight. Think about the changes they saw in their lifetime — the progress forward and the slips backwards. But they never stopped working towards what is right. Both left messages of determination and hope in their final words.

There is work to do towards progress. Some of that will happen within the party, and some of it will happen outside that official infrastructure. It has always been that way. All those efforts are important, and there is a place for each of us.

I remain a proud Democrat, because this is still the party that believes everyone should have access to affordable healthcare, that every child should have the opportunity for a quality education, that anyone who works full time should make a living wage, that women’s rights are human rights, and love is love. We believe we must protect and expand voting rights. We believe that we should leave a better planet for future generations. And we believe that Black Lives Matter.

Democrats know that to achieve that promised more perfect union, we must get up and fight for it every day. That is what I am counting on us all to keep doing.

***

Are you interested in getting involved in party leadership? There are folks who would love to help you find out if there is an open seat where you live now, or alternately to help you plan to run when the next opportunity arises. I can connect you with them if you reach out to me through Lamar at lamar@bayoubrief.com.

Lynda Woolard

2020 Fatigue

By

Peter Athas

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September 29, 2020

It has become commonplace on social media for the response to any lousy event to be “2020” even when it’s the passing of a famous elderly person. Octogenarians have a way of dying, y’all. Until recently, I looked askance at the practice, but I’ve finally given in upon realizing that we all have 2020 fatigue. Who among us isn’t sick and tired of being sick and tired?

There have been many rotten years in American history: 1861, 1918, 1963, and 1968 come to mind. 2020 has topped them all because of its toxic combination of political instability, racial unrest, and a pandemic overseen and needlessly worsened by a crazy, corrupt, and racist president*. Everyday life has been flipped on its head. We’re all living in Topsy Turvy Town, which is the title of a children’s song that I used as a metaphor for post-Katrina New Orleans. Haven’t heard it? That’s what your friendly neighborhood columnist is here for:

In the Gret Stet of Louisiana, the year 2005 comes to mind but 2020 is nipping at its heels like a cartoon dog chasing a fire truck. (I’m not sure if they do that in real life but I like the image, so it stays in.) Hurricane Laura has wreaked devastation in Lake Charles, which is being ignored by the MSM because so much else is going on. The only national coverage I’ve seen recently was an interview Esquire’s Charlie Pierce conducted with Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter. The title says it all: When The Wind Stops Blowing, The Cameras Go Away. Read it and weep. Literally.

One reason this column is called the 13th Ward Rambler is that I tend to digress. Let’s put this train back on the track and focus on 2020 Fatigue, Gret Stet of Louisiana-style. I could also call this “things that bug me,” but I have a larger vocabulary than the Impeached Insult Comedian and I like to use it. Isn’t that tremendously beautiful? Stop me before I degenerate into what the late Philip Roth called Jerkish.

Speaking of Trump, the New Orleans MSM is milking his Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for all it’s worth. She grew up in Metry and attended St. Mary’s Dominican High School. (Where you went to high school is a big deal in some circles in the metro area.) She hasn’t lived here since graduating high school in 1990 but the local media is still couching it as a “local woman makes good” story. It’s what they do.

I recall being gobsmacked upon moving here to learn that if there was any local angle to a story, the New Orleans MSM would find it. It’s something of a talent albeit a minor one. I made this prediction on the Tweeter Tube:

How long until the local MSM tells us that Amy Coney Barrett is good for Louisiana?
— Shecky (@Adrastosno) September 26, 2020

It happened on Sunday. The Picvocate published an editorial praising Barrett to the skies. It was no surprise. They think Steve Scalise is good for Louisiana so why not a Judge who hasn’t lived here in 30 years.

The real story of Judge Amy Coney Barrett of Metry, Washington DC, South Bend, and Chicago is of religious and ideological zealotry. She’s one of those Catholics who seems fixated on abortion and overturning Roe v. Wade. My First Draft colleague Allison Hantschel wrote a great piece the other day about why it doesn’t matter that the Democratic nominee and Speaker of the House are Catholic. They’re the wrong kind of Catholics as far as the right-to-lifers are concerned. I’m tired of this too.

I’m also tired of headline grubbing Gret Stet Attorney General Jeff Landry who tweeted this out after LSU lost to Mississippi State:

Hey @LouisianaGov this is what happens when you don’t fill LSU stadium!
— Jeff Landry (@JeffLandry) September 26, 2020

What the hell is LSU Stadium? It’s Tiger Stadium you addle-pated ninny. Landry brings to mind something Earl Long said about one of Landry’s less than illustrious predecessors: “If you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion, put it in a law book.”

In Landry’s case, hide the law book in LSU Stadium, which does not exist except in his feeble imagination. Hopefully, the Trumpist fever will have broken and this red-faced bozo won’t be our next Governor.

Another thing that bugs me on social media is the Gret Stet Senate race. For no good reason other than party affiliation, Double Bill Cassidy is the prohibitive favorite to win re-election. His appeal escapes me but I’m a Republican-phobe nowadays.

Cassidy’s lead annoys me but almost as bad is the whining of supporters of Democratic candidate Antoine Pierce. He’s the darling of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) set and has been campaigning for two years. He seems like a good guy, but his campaign has not caught on except on Twitter. Pierce’s supporters are outraged that Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins has not only entered the race but has garnered some heavyweight endorsements including former President Barack Obama. Here’s the difference between Pierce and Perkins: the latter has won elected office whereas the former has won the hearts of the Twitter left. That’s not enough, y’all.

Another thing that has given me 2020 Fatigue is the endless wrangling in New Orleans over go-cups. They’re sacred to some people including the Krewe du Vieux sub-krewe of Mishigas:

It always comes back to Krewe du Vieux with me.

A huge social media controversy arose when Tracey’s Bar on Magazine Street posted this on their Twitter and Facebook feeds:

Touchdown SAINTS!! 🏈🍻#whodat⚜️ pic.twitter.com/28TPdxmFg4
— Tracey's Bar (@TraceysNola) September 22, 2020

They claimed not to be in violation of the city’s COVID regulations but were called on the carpet by the Mayor. They’re back in business after working something out with the city.

I’m tired of these disputes even though I’m a hardliner on COVID restrictions. Tracey’s is allowed to be open because it qualifies as a restaurant as far as the city is concerned. The city also lifted its restrictions on the sale of go-cups but only for restaurants and those bars that qualify as restaurants. I call bullshit on that.

New Orleans is known for its neighborhood bars. It’s part of our culture that has become collateral damage of the pandemic. Since no level of government is willing to help bail them out, bars should be allowed to sell go-cups in order to survive. The go-cup cult is eager to help keep them afloat. The City is not unless and until we’re in Phase III. Cut them some slack, give them some relief or they won’t survive. Let my people go-cup.

Repeat after me, TFC: This Fucking City.

I’m tired of the moralizing and posturing adopted by both sides of the mask wars. Pandemic related restrictions are about public health, not about making anyone feel morally superior. Put your ego aside, mask up, and save lives. A reminder that, as of this writing, nearly 5,500 Louisianans are pandemic related casualties. I’m tired of that too.

To paraphrase Jimi Hendrix, 2020 Fatigue is a frustrating mess.

The last word goes to The Beatles:

“What’s In A Name?”

By

Sue Lincoln

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September 22, 2020

The question famously asked by Shakespeare’s Juliet goes on to declare, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Yet when it comes to company names, a business by any other name could succeed – or fail.

A couple of decades ago, I’d gone back to California for a family funeral, and was traveling through a part of Orange County that had attracted a large Asian population. Developers were breaking ground for a new subdivision of homes, and the signs proudly proclaimed it as “Morning Wood.”

Faux pas duly noted, within the week the signs had been changed to read “Morning Sunwood.” (And, it should be noted, homes in that subdivision currently sell for between $750,000 and $1.5 million.)

Louisiana has its fair share of risque’ business names, and here are some signs to prove it (and, hopefully, give you a few naughty giggles.)

This Baton Rouge eatery, located near the LSU campus, has done well for the past several years. It has a solid clientele base, even with the present restrictions due to COVID-19.

This restaurant in Metairie has now closed.

Barbeque joints always seem ripe for spicy titles.

This Vidalia feedery, closed in accordance with the COVID-19 stay home order this past spring, announced the end of April that the suspension of business would be permanent.

This BBQ diner, located in Leesville, has also closed recently.

A big part of what prompted this piece — in addition to the need for few chuckles in the midst of hurricane destruction and pandemic deaths — were this trio of signs, all located within a mile of each other, in and around the town of Elton. The Jeff Davis Parish municipality, located along US 190 in southwest Louisiana, is home to the Coushatta Nation Tribal Headquarters, and hosts one of the many traditional Cajun Courir de Mardi Gras celebrations for Fat Tuesday each year.

At the corner of US 190 and LA 26, there’s a trio of grain storage silos with signs that seem to be a name pronounceable just one way, as “suck up.”

In town, there is this nightclub…

Across the street is a building that formerly served as the post office, and – apparently – as an interestingly-named saloon.

One might now opine that success or failure of concerns bearing punny or off-color names depends as much on either the sense of humor of the community or its cluelessness, as it does on the quality of good or services being offered.

Vagabond Views: Hating After the Hurricane

By

Sue Lincoln

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September 15, 2020

Having completed a bit of remodeling and a whole lot of redecorating of my travel trailer, I put my possessions on an extreme weight loss program, and, on the ides of August, moved full-time and permanently into my 224-square-foot tiny home.

Since I had not yet found quite the right vehicle to tow the Snuggery around, the grand plan had been for my daughter and son-in-love to come with their pick’em’up and, over Labor Day weekend, move my life-in-a-box from the capital area to an RV campground near them, just outside Kinder.

The threatened arrivals of both Marco and Laura altered the timing of that plan.

As of Saturday, August 22, the predictions showed the paths of the back-to-back storms crisscrossing over Baton Rouge. The Snuggery was next door, in Denham Springs, less than a half mile from the Amite River. My daughter and her husband, who had lived a mile from that river in August 2016 and lost everything in the flood, feared I would face the same this time. Hence the decision was made to make the move to Kinder on Sunday the 23^rd.

It seemed the wisest course of action at the time.

Unfortunately, Laura had other ideas. Marco fizzled out, but Laura became a raging, wet, blustering inferno of tropical detestation and devastation. In a duel between an aluminum sided, 7500-pound total weight travel trailer and a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds in the eyewall of 150 miles per hour, it was fairly certain that the hurricane would win. I locked down and locked up everything I could, then got in my SUV and went bye-bye to Baton Rouge. I took the title to my trailer and the insurance policy on it with me, fully expecting I would ultimately be calling the 1-800-CLAIMS number to report the total loss of my mini-mansion.

Imagine my relief to get this picture, along with a text message and a video late Friday afternoon, the 28^th, saying both travel trailers had survived, undamaged! Water was restored Tuesday, September 1, and on Thursday the 3^rd, armed with a 4000-watt generator and multiple jugs of fuel for same, I returned to my tiny home. Electricity was restored to the RV park on the 9^th.

The day before the power returned, I found the trailer-towing truck I’d been seeking, so the next time evacuation becomes appropriate, I can take my Snuggery full of stuff with me. (Considering the Mardi Gras parade of disturbances, storms, and hurricanes that has lined up across the Atlantic this week, doesn’t it look like the gods of the tropics may have taken my preparations for “the next time” as a challenge?)

Laura swiped the signs that marked the road into the RV park where we stay, but she left us an alternative landmark so we’ll know where to turn. Still, we were immeasurably fortunate. The same can not be said for oh so many others.

Family and friends in Lake Charles and Sulphur are still struggling through brutal heat – with no power to run even a fan – to remove trees and limbs, try to tarp what’s left of their home and business structures, and salvage whatever they can until they can rebuild. My son is one of those. He took a live oak to his roof.

Yet, two blocks down the street from his home, this graffiti on a warehouse wall shouts defiance and the commitment to come back.

A couple of days after my return to the RV park, I listened in as the park owner was chatting with a couple of other campers, hoping to get an update on electricity restoration. We were all commiserating with the one trailer owner who was there to meet his insurance adjuster and try to rescue what he could, after Laura laid a pine tree with a 4-foot diameter trunk down on his trailer and pickup. One of the good ol’ boys – who had moved away several months previously and “just stopped by to see how things was” – launched a barrage of invective, blaming everything from the hurricane to the heat, from COVID-19 to the cost of living on “that idiot governor.” (That’s the only polite and printable term this man used, when referring to Gov. John Bel Edwards.)

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but having spent the previous twenty-plus years doing news in the state capital where there’s a custom of civility, the level of loathing being expressed toward the governor was stunning.

Yet as I looked around, past the storm damage, I saw vivid reminders that many, many of the white rural residents of the Cajun prairie are ardent Trump supporters, so displeasure with any of Gov. Edwards’ actions or inactions should have been expected. And as I listened to more voices, I found that even my own family members were upset with the governor.

Their anger revolved around the oft-repeated headlines quoting “We dodged a bullet.”

They did acknowledge this was technically true, since Hurricane Laura’s predicted “unsurviveable” storm surge did not coincide with high tide, but still felt, in view of the massive amounts of damage Laura left behind, the phrasing lacked empathy for all those facing loss of their possessions and homes.

The author’s son’s home in Lake Charles.

“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely,” is what Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards actually said. “But we we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage.”

Unplanned, unwanted skylight at house in Lake Charles.

You see, it was NOT Louisiana’s Democratic governor who said, “We dodged a bullet.” That statement was made by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican.

With power out, the southwest Louisiana radio and TV stations weren’t able to broadcast, but southeast Texas was still up and running. And the “unsympathetic” governor southwest Louisianans heard in the immediate aftermath of Laura was not their own, although they were ready to believe the worst from him.

How should – how could – Gov. John Bel Edwards repair the inadvertent damage to his reputation and soften some of the animosity this has created for him in southwest Louisiana?

Grab your people – your staff and your full cabinet (heck, bring along the entire Unified Command Group) – and come spend the weekend working beside us under the hot sun, sweating in the humidity and swarmed by bugs. Help us – in person – pick up the pieces of our homes and lives. Call me, Gov. I can hook you up.

And you can give some of the people here the opportunity to see past the “D” to the genuinely caring human being who wears the title of “Governor.”

Stuck On Stupid

By

Peter Athas

-

September 14, 2020

Lt. General Russell Honoré became a folk hero after Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. He provided perhaps the most memorable quote of that period, “Don’t Get Stuck On Stupid.” It was in response to a media question about the feeble early federal response to the storm to which he was the antidote. There was a whole lotta stupid going on in 2005 and just as much in 2020. It inspired me to steal General Honoré’s signature line. I only steal from the best.

I decided to appropriate Stuck on Stupid after reading the Twitter response to the election of Katie Bernhardt as the Chair of the Louisiana Democratic party. I, too, was disappointed that Lynda Woolard lost to a right-leaning oil heiress. I was not, however, surprised. New Orleans is a deep blue spot in a deep red state. Some keyboard warriors don’t seem to get that. Making matters worse was how many on the performative left decided to “honor” Lynda by switching their registration from Democratic to Independent. I don’t know Lynda well, but I doubt that she feels honored by these declarations of purity.

I moved to the Gret Stet of Louisiana in the 1980’s. I had no illusions about the nature of the state party. I am now and have always been a national Democrat. I identify with Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama, not Huey Long and Edwin Edwards. The Louisiana Democratic party has been terrible since I moved here and blew a golden opportunity to improve by picking Bernhardt, not Woolard. The choice was mischaracterized as one between moderates/conservatives and progressives/liberals. Instead it was a choice between a fundraiser and an organizer. And it was driven more by power than ideology. Unfortunately, insularity, family connections, and fear and loathing of New Orleans seem to have triumphed. None of this is surprising. The state party has been stuck on stupid since time immemorial. That’s why I’m a national Democrat, not a Louisiana Democrat.

Also stuck on either stupid or arrogant is New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. I’ve tried my best to support the Mayor, but she makes it hard. She has a knack of making ill-considered and intemperate remarks. Her pre-pandemic performance verged on the disastrous, especially her erratic handling of the Hard Rock Hotel fiasco. There was a lot of talk and little action.

The pandemic threw Cantrell a tenuous political lifeline. Initially, her performance drew rave reviews, but as pandemic fatigue set in, her grip on the pulse of the electorate weakened. Frustrated by reports of non-compliance with the city’s COVID restrictions, the Mayor reverted to making ill-considered comments as captured by Picvocate reporters Jeff Adleson and Emma Discher:

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she’s looking into ways to strip people of unemployment benefits if they violate city rules against large gatherings.

Cantrell, responding to a question about large gatherings on Bourbon Street over the weekend, said on Thursday she has asked city officials to issue citations and research whether the penalties could include revoking the payments that many have relied on as a wave of layoffs and business closures have rocked the city during the pandemic.

“It’s my opinion you can’t receive public resources but at the same time violate public mandates to keep people safe,” Cantrell said.

It was not immediately clear whether such punishment would be possible.

A reminder that Cantrell ran as a progressive in 2017. This sounds like something a right-wing politician would say about the “undeserving poor.” Since the majority of the maskless scofflaws were on Bourbon Street, it made the Mayor sound ignorant about the city she governs. The majority of New Orleanians wouldn’t be caught dead on a restaurant-less Bourbon Street on a Saturday night. Most of the scofflaws were tourists drawn to our city by the dubious allure of Bourbon Street. And no one should be threatened with loss of their livelihood during the Second Great Depression even if they’re stuck on stupid.

Mayor Cantrell needs to get a grip and think before speaking. Former Gambit editor Kevin Allman nailed it:

Why stop there? 37 in a 35 MPH zone, you lose your unemployment. Park 15 feet from a hydrant, get your unemployment check garnished. Play your trombone on the front porch – there goes your check, playboy. https://t.co/IZCBsjqoOY
— Kevin Allman (@KevinAllman) September 10, 2020

I can’t top that, y’all.

Someone else who is stuck on stupid is former Picvocate pundit Dan Fagan. I wrote about Fagan with an A in July; declaring him a mask warrior. Fagan quit the Picvocate a few weeks back. Since his return to The Hayride, he’s done a lot of moaning, whining, and griping much like the man he so admires, the Impeached Insult Comedian. Ain’t nothing worse than a fake tough guy.

In his first Hayride column after three years as the Advocate’s house wingnut, Fagan struck a heroic pose and commenced whining:

On Wednesday, I sent Peter Kovacs, editor of The Advocate/Times-Picayune, an email resigning my position as a columnist for the paper. I had written for it for three years.

I told Kovacs it had become clear in recent weeks that my worldview was so drastically different from the one the editorial page promotes; I no longer believe our relationship was plausible.

It seems that Fagan doesn’t understand the difference between the editorial page and the op-ed page. One can write columns for a newspaper and disagree with their editorial policies. The New York Times has a stable of conservative pundits as does the Washington Post. They are not required to tow the party line, instead their role is to provide diversity of opinion. Here’s how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Op-ed: “a page of special features usually opposite the editorial page of a newspaper also : a feature on such a page.”

Fagan blames his Picvocate exit on leftist editors and staffers. He even blasted its readership:

The readership of The Advocate/Times-Picayune tilts decidedly left. Leftists typically don’t like dissent. They are not free-speech advocates and they hate anyone who offers views opposite of the ones to which they are emotionally attached. Leftists don’t rely on logic or reason when forming opinions. They arrive at their conclusions based on what makes them feel good, superior, and virtuous.

I’m a subscriber who is a liberal, not a leftist. The Picvocate has many conservative readers. I guess Fagan has never read the comments on one of Stephanie Grace’s columns. Those comments tilt right, not left but that doesn’t fit Fagan’s narrative. Besides, all you have to do is replace leftist with conservative and you have a description of Fagan himself. Trumpers are big on projection.

One reason many Picvocate readers hated Dan Fagan is that he cannot write. He’s only marginally more literate than his hero President* Pennywise. He’s no George Will or William Safire. They were never stuck on stupid. Dan Fagan is. He’s back where he belongs: in the echo chamber that is The Hayride.

I write this as Sally bears down on the Gret Stet of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The last thing we needed was a storm in SELA after Laura smacked SWLA upside the head and devastated Lake Charles. Here’s hoping that the trend toward Tater Tot state continues, but wherever it lands it’s going to be wet. Be careful out there and whatever you do, don’t get stuck on stupid.

The last word is dedicated to Dan Fagan’s return to the friendly confines of The Hayride. He’s in a safe place and can once again be Stupidly Happy.

This Never-Before-Seen Scrapbook Chronicles the News of the Kingfish’s Death

By

J.S. Makkos

-

September 10, 2020

Publisher’s Note: 85 years ago today, at precisely 4:10 a.m., U.S. Sen. Huey Pierce Long, Jr.—a politician once considered the closest thing to a dictator to ever emerge in the United States, a country boy from the forgotten hinterlands of north Louisiana who brought his home state into the modern era, a populist who preached about making every man a king and sharing our wealth, a man that President Franklin Roosevelt thought to be one of the most dangerous in the country and that former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft considered “the most brilliant lawyer who ever practiced before the United States Supreme Court,” the Kingfish—died in a Baton Rouge hospital.

For 43 hours, Long fought for his life, and it had appeared, at least initially, to be a battle he’d easily win. After being struck by a single bullet during the pandemonium that erupted between his bodyguards and an irritating young physician in the new state Capitol, his new state Capitol, Huey had been able to walk right out, saunter down the steps, and hail himself a cab to take him to the hospital. He’d been lucid right up until the end, sharing his thoughts about a recent spat between a group of legislators and the governor he’d gotten to hold his seat, O.K. Allen, and about the new book he’d written, My First Days in the White House.

But after the fifth blood transfusion, he weakly asked someone to please bring his children to him and then muttered what would be his final words, a plea to the Almighty. “God, don’t let me die,” he begged. “I have so much to do.”

Huey P. Long was 42.

On this, the 85th anniversary of his death, we are pleased to publish a relic from that tragic and pivotal moment of Louisiana history, thanks to J.S. Makkos, who also tells the story of how he discovered this treasured old scrapbook. – Lamar
.

Several years ago, while researching the vestiges of the New Orleans print industry, I decided to look beyond the French Quarter and venture into the oldest part of downtown New Orleans.

I knew that every thriving business district had its local print shops, and I was determined to find out when and where the nexus was.

Already head-over-heels into a particular history of technology vis-à-vis printmaking, I discovered I had bibliophilic leanings, as my interests in saving Victorian-era printing presses and vintage lead-type, some would say, bordered on obsession. I didn’t necessarily have an expensive hobby; I just had a heavy one.

I found myself intent on saving these artifacts of printing history, not because I felt they had a lot of monetary value, more so with the understanding that, along with the wave of gentrification, came the writing on the wall: Real estate was worth more, and the contents of old buildings were just as endangered as the buildings were. I knew this may have been the last chance I had to find these types of old print shops anywhere in the city.

What I didn’t expect, at least at first, was that I’d become equally keen and interested in learning about the people who ran these shops and the customers who kept them in business. What were their print histories? Never mind the writers for a moment, I wanted to know: Who actually made the news? And who was the news made for?

During my research process, I coined a term for the area of downtown New Orleans flanked by what used to be the old Newspaper Row on Camp Street and a number of print shops that had run along Gravier: The “print blocks.”

Part of my work, both as a documentarian and also as a doctoral candidate at Louisiana State University, is to seek ways to archive material culture and then recreate it through Digital Humanities practice.

This work often falls somewhere between history, journalism, and technology, and it flirts heavily with media archeology.

The Kingfish Compendium

One day that summer, I decided to hit the pavement and do a little street orienteering with some old listings for print businesses I found; geography, after all, was one of the best ways to learn about the historic built environment and business infrastructure. I’d been conducting a street survey of downtown New Orleans when I spotted a three-story building at 720 Union Street with a red “Barnard Printing Co.” logo on the front window.

“Do you have a pricing list?” I asked the woman sitting at the front desk.

“We do not,” she said politely. In hindsight, I should have realized that. This was a real printshop, not a Kinko’s. In some ways, it was like stepping back in time a few decades.

“What about any old, unused printing equipment? Do you have any of that for sale?” I asked.

“Wait right there. Just a sec,” she said. She walked into an adjacent office, and I could hear her telling another woman that someone up front would like to talk with her.

Her name was Jane Barnard Bland, and as I quickly understood, she was the owner of Barnard Printing Company. I explained that I was researching chromolithography and historic offset printing, and I showed her some historic newspaper archives, which I happened to be carrying with me that day.

She graciously took me on a tour of the shop, even bringing me upstairs so I could see the second floor filled with paper and the third floor with thermographic and small offset presses on it.

Barnard Printing had been in business since 1930, and they’re perhaps best known for designing and printing some of the special carnival invitations for the city’s most elite Mardi Gras krewes. Jane’s father had once been the Mimeograph representative for the region, she said. Before she took over the family business in the late 1980s, her mother had been in charge. “A woman-owned shop for over 50 years,” she told me.

At one point, to my awe, she opened a tiny closet door at the bottom of the staircase and teased me with an original mimeograph machine, unopened, still in its original packaging.

My jaw dropped. “Maybe someday I sell it,” she teased.

She appreciated my interest in history and print and seemed delighted to meet a stranger so enamored by all of the dusty machines and curiosities in her family’s old shop.

“I think I have something you might like,” Jane said as she walked back into her office.

She turned her chair backwards and then stepped up on it so that she could reach for something sitting on the very top shelf. When she climbed back down, she set the object on her desk for a second, held it up, looked at it for a bit, and then blew the dust off.

“This was my father’s,” Jane told me. “He was always so interested in Huey Long and his brother Earl. I think he’d want someone like you to have it.”

Jane’s father, Francis Roland Barnard. Courtesy: Barnard family collection.

She handed me a beat-up, faded red scrapbook with these words on the cover: “CAREER OF US SENATOR LONG.”

I was honored that she entrusted to me an heirloom of some sort. I’ve kept her father’s book safe ever since, together with other archives and materials related to Huey P. Long and his legacy.

What I present here, in part, is a glimpse into the very scrapbook assembled by Mr. Francis Roland Barnard, some 85 years ago. Sure, it is brittle and deteriorating, but I’ve documented it digitally to preserve it.

For this is not just a material artifact, but also a concentrated collection of newsworthy content—a truly unique and one-of-a-kind document, now made free here for you, on the 85th anniversary of Huey P. Long’s passing.

The American Saga of Carlos Marcello

By

Lamar White, Jr.

-

September 5, 2020

“People take one little piece of true information, twist it around, add a lot of bullshit, and come up with some charges that don’t even resemble the truth.”
Carlos Marcello

Fifty years ago, in April of 1970, a bomb exploded inside of the Louisiana state Capitol in Baton Rouge. Fortunately, the device, which was planted in the Senate chambers, didn’t injure anyone, but the damage wasn’t exactly insignificant. Windows shattered. Marble slabs fell from the walls. The dais was split into pieces. Today, there’s still at least one visible reminder of the explosion: A pencil that hangs like a stalactite from the room’s ceiling.

Two weeks earlier, the Capitol—the House that Huey Built—had been rattled by a different kind of bomb. Life magazine published a staggering, sensational story, a story so explosive that it threatened to end the careers of dozens of people who worked in that building, including the man who was supposed to be in charge, Gov. John J. McKeithen, also known as Big John.

The story was actually a follow-up on a trilogy of reports Life published nearly three years before. Big John had been so indignant over those stories that he flew to New York City, alongside his heavy-hitter lawyer Camille Gravel, with the intention of telling the bigshots at Time-Life that they didn’t have a damn clue. Instead, it quickly became clear to the governor that they had better intel than he did. He’d been so impressed (and frankly, stunned) that he offered to become a confidential source for their stringer down in New Orleans, a freelance writer named Dave Chandler.

So when Chandler’s follow-up appeared in the pages of Life‘s April 10th edition underneath the headline “The Little Man is Bigger Than Ever,” there was perhaps no one more shocked by the report than Big John. He was completely blindsided.

According to Chandler, the governor wasn’t really running things down in Louisiana. Carlos Marcello was.

Chandler alleged that Marcello, the “reputed” boss of the New Orleans Mafia, had effectively infiltrated state government and, as a consequence, was now amassing a personal fortune, all courtesy of the taxpayers of the great state of Louisiana. Marcello, he claimed, had his tentacles everywhere, and poor John McKeithen was totally clueless.

Three years earlier, McKeithen had hastily assembled an investigation into Life‘s original stories about Marcello, the most significant of which involved an elaborate and ultimately unsuccessful scheme to bribe Edward Grady Partin, a local union boss, to recant his testimony against Jimmy Hoffa, with the hope that it would help spring Hoffa from prison.

Chandler’s name didn’t appear in the byline, but his authorship was an open secret.

It was a wild story. Apparently, Marcello had been surreptitiously communicating with one of Gov. McKeithen’s staffers, Aubrey Young, through a secret phone line installed in the governor’s office (later, it was revealed that the phone was actually located in the Speaker’s office). Young was to help broker a deal between Partin and some unnamed mobster from New York.

Despite his title in the governor’s office, Young was never in any real position of power. He’d been a down-on-his-luck family friend that McKeithen brought with him from Caldwell Parish. Gus Weill, the public relations guru who had served as McKeithen’s executive secretary, once described him as a “glorified gopher.” Young was also a severe alcoholic, and all of this allegedly had occurred during an epic bender. (He would later become a founder of Louisiana’s chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. He also would later be indicted with Marcello in the Brilab sting, though unlike Marcello, he was ultimately acquitted).

McKeithen had asked Camille Gravel to lead the investigation, but after only a few months, Gravel resigned in protest, presumably over a disagreement about who he was allowed to question, though Gravel vowed to never disclose the details (and according to his family, he never did). Suffice it to say, the investigation never amounted to much.

This time, things would be different. The legislature would be in charge.

Carlos Marcello on the phone at his office in the Town and Country Motel in Metairie, Louisiana. Original black and white photograph by Life Magazine, 1967. Colorized image by the Bayou Brief.

When Carlos Marcello arrived at the state Capitol on the morning of March 18, 1971, people were genuinely surprised by how good he looked. He’d only recently returned home, after spending five months in prison for assaulting an FBI agent. (That’s another story). He’d shed more than a few pounds at Club Fed, likely because, at least in part, the federal government didn’t have spaghetti and clams on the menu.

A decade earlier, when he frustrated a 34-year-old Bobby Kennedy by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights nearly 70 times during the McClellan Hearings, the press (heck, even the Times-Picayune) managed to pay him at least one compliment: He showed up in style. On that day, he wore a neatly-tailored gray suit, a slim black tie, a beautiful pair of alligator boots, and most importantly, some sleek tortoise shell wayfarers.

By 1971, however, he had no interest in looking like a sharply-dressed wise guy, and he knew better than to wear sunglasses during his testimony in front of the boys in Baton Rouge. He’d just turned 61, ancient for a gangster. No one called him “the Little Man” any more, at least not to his face. He was Mr. Marcello, or if you were from down on da bayou, “Uncle Carlos.” He was still dapper, but his sartorial choices now projected distinction and respectability instead of cool and contempt.

That morning, in a stuffy committee room in the basement of the state Capitol, Carlos Marcello, flanked by a pair of attorneys, politely answered questions from members of the awkwardly-named Louisiana Legislative Mafia Probe Committee. He only mentioned the Fifth Amendment a few times, and when he did, no one was disagreeable about it. The room was packed with Louisiana lawyers. There was a good chance at least a handful of them knew that Carlos Marcello had once forced the courts to affirm the broad Fifth Amendment rights of anyone compelled to testify in front of a legislative committee.

Because Dave Chandler’s report was entirely constructed around the premise that Carlos Marcello was secretly in charge of state government, there was really only one question the committee wanted answered: Who exactly did Marcello know in the government?

It took more than three hours for him to get through the list, but ultimately, the only thing Carlos Marcello proved was that he was a 61-year-old multi-millionaire from New Orleans. There were no bombshells. Sure, he knew a whole bunch of prominent politicians and public officials—judges, governors, legislators, district attorneys, sheriffs, and most of the people in the room that day. What did that prove?

Only a couple of years back, it wasn’t much of a secret that he had been trying to convince the powers-that-be to build the Superdome on Churchill Farms, his land in Jefferson Parish, and despite what Chandler had insinuated in his report, it also wasn’t much of a secret that the state had purchased some of his land to build a pumping station.

Similarly, everyone had been keenly aware that Churchill Farms happened to be smack-dab in the middle of where the state had hoped to entice the federal government to build an interstate connector, a project that was being marketed as the new “Dixie Highway.” (It never got built).

Chandler had told the readers of Life magazine that Marcello had purchased the property, which was close to 6,000 acres, a dozen years before for around $1 million. Now, thanks to the new pumping station (which Chandler claimed had only benefitted Marcello), it was valued at a staggering $60 million.

It was a ludicrous exaggeration.

For one, Marcello hadn’t spent $1 million to buy the property; he acquired it from someone who owed him around $60,000 in gambling debt, and even then, it wasn’t entirely clear whether he’d made a good deal. You couldn’t build much of anything there. It was just an expanse of uninhabitable swamp.

But even with the new pumping station, the land wasn’t worth anywhere close to $60 million. And while there were some legitimate questions about how the station got fast-tracked for construction in the waning days of Gov. Jimmie Davis’ second term, Marcello wasn’t the main beneficiary; the station opened up an additional 8,000 acres for development. Together, the 14,000 acres comprised the last undeveloped part of the New Orleans metro area that was within the flood protection zone.

Eventually, it became clear to the members of the Louisiana Legislative Mafia Probe Committee that while Dave Chandler may have written a dazzling story, it was just that: A story. He’d stitched the whole thing together with innuendo, half-truths, and outright slander. Two people who were named in his report sued him for defamation, and they both won. When the committee issued its final report, it vindicated Gov. McKeithen—and by extension, Carlos Marcello—almost entirely, though it hardly mattered. The damage had already been done to Big John, and Marcello may have preferred to have been found to be secretly in control of state government. “How about dat?”

Instead, the committee directed its ire at Chandler and his editors at Life magazine. The report was scathing, but at least one advisory member of the committee, Paul Hebert, the highly-respected dean of LSU Law School who had once served as a judge in the Nuremberg Trials, thought they hadn’t gone far enough. He wrote separately to emphasize that, in his opinion, Chandler had been reckless and defamatory. (Chandler didn’t exactly help out his own cause. During the committee’s investigation, he launched a vanity campaign for governor, which he said he’d undertaken as a way of collecting material for a book he intended on writing. He never wrote the book, and he only mustered a few hundred votes).

There was at least one moment of levity during the committee hearings. At one point, while Marcello was rattling through the names of all of the people he knew, he was asked if he was acquainted with a man named Joseph “Zip” Chimento of the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office.

“Sure, I know him. I christened his child,” Marcello said. “I’m his godfather.”

Carlos Marcello. Image credit: Bayou Brief.

“If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.”
Jane Addams

Nearly six months ago, I published the first of what I intended to be a three-part series on the life of Carlos Marcello. Part Two came out in early May, and unless you follow me on social media, you may be wondering what happened to Part Three.

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that Part Three isn’t likely to be published any time soon, but the good news, at least to those of you who enjoyed the series, is that I decided instead to write a book. In fact, it’s about all I’ve been doing during the past few months.

There are other books about Carlos Marcello, most notably John H. Davis’ 1989 page-turner, Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Davis’ book, which is now out-of-print, is a gripping read, and even today, it continues to inform practically everything else that has been written about Marcello, which would be great except for one minor problem: John H. Davis, much like Dave Chandler before him, didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. To put it more bluntly, Mafia Kingfish isn’t a biography of Carlos Marcello. It’s a novel about a character named Carlos Marcello.

I’ve spent the better part of the year researching Marcello’s life, a task that has been made both considerably easier thanks to the digitization of newspaper archives and public records and also considerably more challenging because there are now hundreds of thousands of pages to comb through. But the more I’ve read, the more convinced I’ve become of what I had attempted to articulate in the first two stories: At some point, probably when he was in his early forties, Carlos Marcello had the disorienting experience of being turned into a celebrity villain, a creation of the press, the police, and the politics of his time. Even after his death in 1993, that’s largely how he’s still defined.

With the exception of Buddy Lemman’s book Hail to the Dragon Slayer and Mike Fawer’s From the Bronx to the Bayou, the only account of his life that actually humanized him (at least the only one I’ve discovered so far) was a three-part series by Dean Baquet and Jim Amoss that appeared in the Times-Picayune in 1982. Everything else, I’m afraid, is either pulp fiction or a variation on the conspiracy theory that casts Marcello as the mastermind of JFK’s assassination (and/or RFK’s assassination and/or MLK’s assassination and/or Jimmy Hoffa’s murder/disappearance and/or a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro). To be sure, conspiracies are a part of his story. How could they not be? But in many ways, they obscure a truly remarkable and definitively American saga.

Marcello arrived in this country when he was only eight months old, and 42 years later, he was at the center of the longest and the most expensive deportation case in American history. At one point, he was “extralegally” deported to Guatemala; he used the word “kidnapped,” on the basis of a birth certificate that the United States government knew to be fraudulent. Somehow, he snuck back into the country, and although the federal government kept trying, they were never able to get rid of him.

He got his big break as a partner in Frank Costello’s slot machine and gambling rackets, though he was largely an obscure underworld figure until Sen. Estes Kefauver introduced him to the country as one of the nation’s most dastardly criminals. (Before his debut in the Kefauver Hearings in 1951, Marcello’s name had appeared in the pages of the Times-Picayune less than a dozen times. One of the stories was about how he became the first person ever to be taxed under a new federal law, the Marihuana Tax Act).

You can buy his FBI file, along with the Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, on the internet for $12.99. It’s more than 4,000 pages long. For $29.99, you can also buy a book of all of the petitions he filed with the United States Supreme Court.

Some believed he was the most powerful mafioso in the country and that he sat atop a multi-billion dollar empire. Some have speculated that he was a monster responsible for the most horrific public murder in American history: Assassinating our young, handsome president by blowing his head off in the middle of a Texas parade. (Others claimed he secretly ran the Louisiana state government).

What’s the truth?

Well, that’s why I decided to write this book. (To be clear, I’m still in the process of writing. If you have something you think that needs to be included, feel free to send me an email at lamar@bayoubrief.com. If you’re in the publishing industry, yes, I do have a book proposal I can send your way).

As I mentioned up top, there is at least one critical difference between the book I’ve been writing and every other biography about Marcello. For the first time ever, members of Carlos’ tightly-knit family, including his son Joe, have agreed to share their side of the story.

In addition, I’ve been able to obtain a copy of something that had previously been known only to Marcello’s family and closest friends. Three days after Marcello’s death, his longest-serving attorney and confidante, Mike Maroun of Shreveport, began dictating notes for a book he had planned to write about his friend’s life.

Without spoiling anything, I can promise at least one thing: Nearly 60 years later, the truth about how Carlos Marcello managed to slip back into the country from Guatemala will finally be revealed.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Writing My Katrinaversary Column

By

Peter Athas

-

September 2, 2020

I didn’t intend to take the month of August off from 13th Ward Rambling. I wish it were because I took a vacation, but life got in the way. I’m back, whether I’m better than ever is up to you. Please be charitable as I resume my regular publishing schedule: every other Wednesday at 11 AM sharp.

The fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood landed on a Saturday this year. It was overshadowed by two storms. One that was powerful, Hurricane Laura, and one that fizzled, Tropical Storm Marco. I, for one, am glad that Marco flopped like the 2016 Rubio for President campaign.

Laura was a different matter altogether. It made landfall as a powerful category-4 storm that wreaked havoc in Acadiana and along the Louisiana-Texas border. It arrived with a bang in Cameron Parish, then moved quickly north leaving thousands homeless. Since the impacted areas are deep red politically, they were treated to a visit from the Impeached Insult Comedian who dispensed some dubious wisdom:

President Trump in Louisiana: "Are the storms more frequent? Are they bigger? Now, in all fairness, you probably had your biggest storms, I think you said your biggest one was in the 1800s. But who knows. Who knows… There's no real way of understanding that or knowing that."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) August 29, 2020

There’s no real way of understanding that word salad. We’ll pour some dressing on it and move on.

Many of those who fled Laura came to New Orleans seeking shelter from the storm. We’re always glad to help but it triggered memories of August 29, 2005. They’re always there; lurking in the background.

Katrina was the defining moment of my life. Thinking of the storm, the flood, and years of rebuilding defines the phrase mixed emotions. I’m not going to quote the opening lines of Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities because you should already know them. But they fit. For good or ill, I had new experiences and met people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. It also began my life as an internet writer, blogger, whatever you want to call it. I write for the Bayou Brief because of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. I first met our publisher, Lamar White Jr, when he appeared on my politics panel at Rising Tide 4. All of this evokes the venerable saying, “you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.” Life is funny that way.

My own Katrina story is a typical and somewhat undramatic one. I’ve told it so often that I know it by heart. Dr. A and I had never evacuated for a storm before and never expected to be away from home for six weeks. We bounced around between the houses of friends and family in Bossier City, Dallas, and Baton Rouge. I’ve written about the most dramatic thing that happened to us, tracking down our friend Michel in Dallas. The story of his family’s exile from New Orleans was dramatic indeed.

In the early days of our Katrina exile, we were greeted with warmth and compassion. By the time we landed in Baton Rouge, compassion fatigue had set in. I learned to not tell people that we were from New Orleans. The last time I did, a local said: “When are you leaving?”

Before returning home for good, we snuck into the city to check on our house. I first wrote about it in an email to friends, family, and the neighborhood association of which I was then president. It eventually landed at my other home on the internet, First Draft. New Orleans remained closed until Hurricane Rita passed. Rita, of course, was the wicked big sister of Hurricane Laura. It pioneered Laura’s path and was for Southwestern Louisiana what Katrina was for the New Orleans area and Mississippi Gulf Coast.

In writing about the storm that changed my life, it’s impossible to separate the day it made landfall from the years following 8/29/2005. My wife and I were already civic activists, but we became more deeply involved despite our relative good fortune. Our house didn’t flood but we had $20,000 worth of damage, which our insurance company paid for. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the most traumatic thing for us was removing rotten food from our refrigerator. It was the first time I ever saw maggots. I hope to never see them again. We learned our lesson and empty our fridge whenever we evacuate for a storm. But we were much luckier than those who lost their homes and were forced to live in FEMA trailers. That’s why I have a lingering case of survivor’s guilt.

I attended many “rebuilding meetings.” I saw then Mayor C Ray Nagin primp in front of a mirror and several City Council members show up drunk. I’ll omit the names to protect the guilty. Those in the know will know who I’m talking about. They’re long out of office so there’s no point to outing them many years later. Besides, who could blame them? Those were stressful times.

The political impact of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent Federal Flood was swift and furious. The Bush administration went to war with then Governor Kathleen Blanco. Her sin was being a Democrat; so much for the notion that “polarization” began with the Trump regime. The Bushies fought our Governor every step of the way; seeking to pin the blame for the disaster on the Blanco administration. It’s what happens when you initially put a hatchet man like Karl Rove in charge of hurricane recovery. Heckuva job, W.

The Blanco-Bush-Rove face-off ultimately led to an erosion of her once sky-high popularity and the Governor’s decision not to seek re-election in 2007. Her replacement, Bobby Jindal, was as big a disaster for the Gret Stet of Louisiana as any of the storms we’ve experienced since 2005. As a pundit, I always called him PBJ. He was easily the most indigestible PBJ ever.

There were some Katrinaversary remembrances in the New Orleans metro area this year, but nothing like the circus staged upon the 10th anniversary in 2015. I wrote several scathing pieces about K-10 for First Draft. The title of one of them is self-explanatory, Killer Kitsch: The Hurricane Katrina Snowglobe. That’s right, people were hawking gee-gaws, doodads, and other tacky and tasteless items in “celebration” of our “resilience.” It got so bad that my friend Laura Bergerol came up with this rebuttal to the city-backed hype:

It’s time for a humble brag. My other major K-10 piece was one of the most read things I’ve written in my time as an internet writer, Katrinaversary Blues: Of Resilience Tours, Carpetbloggers, & Disaster Tourists. I stand by the opening paragraph:

“The hype behind the 10th anniversary of Katrina and the subsequent flood reminds me of a flock of turkey buzzards circling the city in search of carrion. I, for one, have no desire to be roadkill and plan to hide under the bed on Saturday 8/29. There are too many people with too many agendas who have seized that day, transforming it into a metaphor. All most of us have ever wanted is to get back to what passes for normality in New Orleans. I’d even take Gamaliel-style “normalcy” once I stop cringing…”

Returning to normal sounds good in these disaster laden times as well.

My best wishes to everyone impacted by Hurricane Laura. It’s a going to be a long hard slog until you regain a semblance of normality. It’s a goal shared by all Americans as we struggle with the pandemic and the grotesque incompetence of the Trump regime that made it infinitely worse. It’s time for them to go. Make it so, America, make it so.

Finally, let’s circle back to the Katrinaversary. Right before the storm, I bought a copy of Rodney Crowell’s then new album, The Outsider. It became the soundtrack of Dr. A and my Katrina exile. The last word goes to Rodney and Emmylou Harris with a brilliant cover of a Bob Dylan song:

A Trio of Trump Appointees Give Louisiana a Game-Changing Victory in Coastal Damages Suit Against Big Oil

By

Lamar White, Jr.

-

August 10, 2020

This report will be updated with additional reaction and analysis.

On Monday, in a dryly-worded, five-page opinion about procedure that went entirely unnoticed by the press, a three-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, all of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, gave Louisiana a game-changing victory in their years-long battle with Big Oil over the industry’s responsibility for the catastrophic environmental damage along the state’s vulnerable coast.

“This is the best day Louisiana has had in the 21st century,” cheered James Carville, who has made the issue of environmental justice and coastal restoration the centerpiece of his class on American politics at LSU.

It was a sentiment also expressed by two of the lawyers representing the group of Louisiana parishes at the center of the dispute.

John Carmouche of the Baton Rouge-based firm Talbot, Carmouche, and Marcello called the decision “an extraordinary victory for the people of Louisiana,” and Richard Broussard of Broussard and David in Lafayette hailed it “as a huge step forward for the citizens of Louisiana and all those who value the future of our environment.”

Ret. Lt. Gen Russel Honore, who has emerged as the state’s leading warrior for environmental justice after retiring from the military, where he had served as the Commanding General of the First Army, was similarly effusive. “Big Oil is no longer the sacred cow in Louisiana,” he said to the Bayou Brief. “They need to clean up the mess, abandon the wells and pits, and pay for the decades of pollution of our wetlands. Big Oil owns the (state) legislature, with their flag over the Capitol, but as courts proved in the BP case, these companies can and should be held accountable.”

Freeport McMoRan’s $100M Coastal Damage Settlement Proves Big Oil Isn’t the Victim.

Specifically, the court rejected a motion that would have removed the coastal lawsuits from state court, and placed them instead under the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. Consequently, all of the cases have now been remanded back into state court, and the victory on Monday means that the cases are likely now barreling towards trial, after more than seven years of delays and distractions.

Carmouche stated that the coastal parishes “will move immediately for a trial date.” Last September, Carmouche announced that Freeport McMoRan had agreed to a $100 million settlement with several of the affected parishes.

During this year’s legislative session, a Big Oil-backed effort to nullify the litigation ran out of time and never mustered enough support to ensure it could override an anticipated veto from Gov. John Bel Edwards.

This is the best day Louisiana has had in the 21st century.” – James Carville

All told, it marks the 85th time in which counsel for oil and gas companies have tried and failed to convince a federal court to wrest control away from the Louisiana state courts, but until now, the conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit had yet to weigh in.

“For our coastal parishes to have won in this court, the fact the vote was 3 to 0 in favor of the coastal parishes of Louisiana, and the fact that all three judges who voted to give our state courts the authority to determine the future of coastal Louisiana are appointees of President Trump demonstrates the restoration of Louisiana’s coast is not a partisan issue but an issue of law and equity,” Carmouche told the Bayou Brief.

While the companies are likely to request a rehearing in front of the full court, the decision is almost certain to stand, even if a rehearing is granted, according to legal experts familiar with the litigation.

“With the consent of oil companies more four decades ago, these matters were placed by congress in the hands of the states,” Broussard explained in a statement to the Bayou Brief. “Despite the clear language of the governing laws, the oil companies who wrought billions of dollars of damage including almost incalculable loss of rich coastal prairies and marine resources have played every conceivable stunt to delay their day of reckoning, all the while the erosion continues by the hour.”

Oil and gas companies are said to be directly liable for at least $25 billion in damages.

Read the opinion below:

View this document on Scribd

COVID-19 Has Already Killed More Than 163,000 Americans. We Can’t Allow It to Kill Local Governments.

By

Elizabeth Scott

-

August 10, 2020

Elizabeth Scott lives in New Iberia, Louisiana. She was an Advocacy Corps Organizer with the Friends Committee on National Legislation from 2016-2017 and is a University of Louisiana at Lafayette graduate (class of 2017) with a BA in Political Science. She is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree.

Earlier this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic was getting exponentially worse, Congress rushed to provide funding to keep businesses afloat. While important, it came at the expense of other priorities – especially state and local governments. Their stressed budgets are a focal point in the next COVID-19 bill. And the ongoing negotiations highlight just how bad Congress’s double standard is in funding the private over public sector.

Propping up businesses without oversight leads to small businesses being denied equal loan access. Wall Street investors, politically connected private businesses, and even Louisiana’s own Ruth’s Chris Steak House accessed funds designed for small businesses. Shamelessly, some publicly traded companies refused to return funding, even after the government tried to force the issue.

This raises troubling facts. While Congress leaves no stone unturned to help businesses with few strings attached, priorities like childcare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and state and local government funding get ignored.

Just imagine if people in Louisiana lost access to SNAP or saw their benefits decrease in value, which will likely happen without additional federal funding and guarantees. In the last year alone, roughly 810,000 of our citizens received some amount of SNAP benefits. That works out to 1 in 6 people, or 17 percent of the population. And more than 70 percent of those recipients are families with children. Between 2013 and 2016, SNAP kept an average of 160,000 Louisianans out of poverty each year, including 78,000 children. Tens of thousands of individuals and families across the state are at risk of being unable to put food on the table and this need has soared, especially among families of color.

As the Louisiana Budget Project recently noted, a temporary increase in SNAP benefits was one of the last items left out of the previous COVID-19 relief bill. It is calling to include them this time out in order to both keep everyone fed and boost the local economy. People spend their SNAP dollars quickly to buy food, and those dollars support our local merchants.

State and local governments are crucial for supporting and rebuilding our economy. They administer the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance – all of which reduce poverty and stimulate the economy. Failing to reimburse states for these costs makes the current recession both longer and deeper.

Right now, Louisiana is running up a $293 million budget shortfall for the recently completed fiscal year while staring down an alarming $970 million shortfall for our current fiscal year. Louisiana cities are faring no better. New Orleans is facing a $170 million budget shortfall. This is not sustainable.

Senator – and doctor – Bill Cassidy seems to understand just how serious this problem really is. He has made recent, positive statements on the plight of state and local government budgets. Louisiana has been hard hit by COVID-19 and who knows when the state will get back to normal. As Cassidy wrote in May:

As Congress drafts the next round of covid-19 spending, lawmakers are debating whether to give states money. We should. Without such funding, cities and municipalities will be forced to lay off workers and may therefore be unable to provide basic services to keep small and medium-size businesses running.

That still makes perfect sense. But then came Memorial Day weekend. COVID-19 infections have skyrocketed ever since, with no reasonable person believing they will slow (let alone stop) any time soon. Small and medium-size businesses need a lot of things right now just to stay open. But that list begins with paying customers. Laying off the workers that provide the basic services to keep businesses running would start an avalanche of economic calamity that would take years – if not decades – to claw back from. It must be a non-starter.

But Sen. Cassidy may have a difficult time making this case to the Senate once again. While we all know the situation has only gotten worse in the last couple of months, this has caused many to stick their heads even deeper in the sand. Cassidy’s colleague John Neely Kennedy was not in favor of what he calls “bailing out” the states. He said, “It’s not the federal government’s job to bail out local and state officials who spent recklessly,” even though very few, if any, states are spending that way.

Perhaps the cold hard budget math has begun to change Kennedy’s mind. Or maybe it is the staggering death toll that slowly grows in Louisiana and nationwide each and every day. Either way, however grudgingly, he has changed his tune a bit. Kennedy recently explained, “For months, state and local governments have been working under the weight of an incredible health crisis. Giving those governments the flexibility to help their communities weather this pandemic—by using money they already have—is a no-brainer.” Please Senator, convey that message to the rest of your caucus.

The fact is, many states created rainy-day funds in anticipation of an economic downturn – but the impact of COVID-19 far surpasses what they can cover. The public sector already lost over 1 million jobs since the crisis began, and states have shed approximately 25,000 jobs just last month. Over 700 cities stopped planned infrastructure upgrades due to holes in their budgets caused by COVID-19. In fact, Louisiana cities are projected to come up more than 32 percent shy of expected revenue in 2020.

Balanced budget amendments could force even harsher cuts. States rely on sales/income tax for approximately 70 percent of their revenues. When that disappears – combined with an increased demand for assistance programs – state governments are forced to increase taxes and dramatically slash funding. This forces hardship on millions who are already struggling. Hence the glaring problem: Congress has a double standard utilizing the power of the purse. In each COVID-19 response bill, they prioritized businesses over state and local governments. This shows they value uncertain economic benefit over state-supported assistance programs proven to reduce poverty and stabilize the economy.

But it also sets up a false choice of private business vs. local governments. We are all in this together, with no need to pit one side against another in an unnecessary zero-sum exercise. Private business could not exist as we currently know it without some form of appropriate government oversight and partnership. And government (federal, state, local, and everything in-between) could not survive without the revenue stream private business provide. Who would dispute that? No one. So let’s not make enemies of the two.

Now with state funding taking center stage, Congress has started “caring” about the debt and deficit. Senate Majority Leader McConnell said he’s “…not interested in borrowing money from future generations to help states solve problems that they created themselves.” Politicians don’t use this rhetoric talking about problems businesses have created for themselves. They would rather reward them with millions and virtually no strings attached.

Perhaps most troubling of all, recent reporting indicates the Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing. Additionally, they are trying to block billions that GOP senators were hoping to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on top of additional funding for the Defense and State Departments to address and mitigate the pandemic both at home and abroad. No, the Federal Treasury cannot be treated as a bottomless pit of money. But if we are not willing and able to spend what needs to be spent to defeat this virus, what else is there? What are we saving for if COVID-19 becomes the new norm? More bailouts? Three martini lunch write-offs?

No, local government is not and will never be sexy. Not when compared to the likes of Tesla, bigtime pro sports (Geaux Saints!), or Google. But let’s try going a day without our local water utility. How long will we last without trash pick-up? If public schools disappear tomorrow, what will we do? That’s a real concern. The NBA playing in an Orlando bubble is not.

The fact that funding for state governments is becoming increasingly politicized and turning into a bargaining chip for the next COVID-19 bill is catastrophic for our future. Congress cannot shirk its fundamental responsibilities to protect all citizens from enduring undue hardship. If we fail to fund our state and local governments, it will not only mark a new congressional low but hurt millions who are already struggling.