K+10...What It Means To Remember Katrina

And by Remember, I mean remembering the sociopolitical circumstances that led to so much tragedy and loss...and not repeating them. People didn't suffer and die for us to forget, declare everything "OK," and merely move on and recreate the same conditions. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Mayor Landrieu.)

Budgeting for Little Outcomes

The little things in life really are important, probably because those little things -- a child's smile or embrace, a joke told in passing by a friend that lifts your spirits on a shitty day -- eventually end up playing a big role in the quality of your life.

The same holds true for the little things that bring not joy but irritation, and eventually, high blood pressure if you're not careful.  Take light bulbs and dollar-store paint, for example. 

At 4:36PM yesterday during school zone hours, the school zone lights in front of KIPP Believe on S. Carrollton were not flashing, but I saw the speed camera flash on at least 5 different drivers who couldn't have been driving more than the regular posted speed limit of 30mph due to the volume of traffic at the time.  As was the case THREE MONTHS AGO when I reported this issue to my Councilwoman whose office then notified 311 and Dept. of Public Works Traffic Engineer Allen Yrle of the issue, the school zone lights were flashing on the opposite (lakebound) side of S. Carrollton, but not on the riverbound side.   New school year, same problem.  

Another little thing that bothers me in New Orleans are parking tickets, especially the ones for parking within however many feet ordained by city law from an intersection or crosswalk.  Now maybe it's just me hating on the meter maids for their amazing ability to eyeball distances with such pinpoint accuracy, but folks like me who were not blessed with that talent would appreciate a visible demarcation of the forbidden parking zones.  Every other city I've lived in has accomplished this through the modern miracle of painting white, sometimes yellow, lines on the pavement.  Yes, we are New Orleanians, and we pride ourselves on marching to the beat of a different drum; but maybe doing this one thing the way other modernized Western civilizations do it isn't so bad.  Just this once.  I SWEAR, just this ONE THING, and that's it.  And only temporarily, just until we come up with parking stripes more representative of our unique culture that have something to do with Mardi Gras Indians, or second lines, or the Saints or something.

It just so happens that we are once again upon that most wonderful time of year <*cue Johnny Mathis*> when the mayor requests citizen input regarding the next year's budget.   "Budgeting for outcomes," I believe he likes to call it.  Well, here's my advice, Mayor Landrieu: How about we start with budgeting for easily achievable, even cheap, outcomes like replacement bulbs for school zone signs and heavily discounted gallons of paint?  Nothing says RE-ELECT ME like a list of accomplishments!  Yes, even if it's just a list full of the little accomplishments. 

Did Mayor Landrieu Just Say Chief Serpas Knows Jack About Reducing Murders?

The title of this CBS piece, "New Orleans Mayor Fights to End Culture of Violence," is the exact opposite of what I heard Mayor Landrieu say in this interview, which was that no one IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE COUNTRY knows how to stem the epidemic of young black males killing each other here in New Orleans.   

Based upon my grasp of the English language, population statistics, Venn diagrams, and if not A then not B logic, "Nobody in the Country" includes Landrieu's Police Chief Ronal Serpas.  So why did he hire this guy?

Other cities have brought down their black-on-black murder rates, so SOMEBODY SOMEwhere must know SOMEthing about how to do this.  Right?

UPDATED 8/14/12:

This seems like a far cry from nobody knowing what to do: http://publicspherenola.blogspot.com/2012/08/crime-prevention-in-new-orleans-value.html 

The Real Story Behind Unpaid Sanitation Fees

UPDATED 8/28/2011: Through checking my phone bill and a little internet sleuthing (this nola.com story from April 2011), I'm pretty sure the collection agency that hit me up for "unpaid" sanitation fees that I already paid is Alpat Company, Inc. in Slidell.

Fox 8 ran this story tonight about Councilwoman Hedge-Morrell owing more than a couple of thousand dollars in sanitation fees.



Sadly, no one featured in this story -- not the outraged citizen, not Bureau of Governmental Research President Janet Howard, not Councilwoman Head, not the person who crafted the statement from Mayor Landrieu's office, and not even Councilwoman Hedge-Morrell -- seem to have a clue what's going on.

I think I do, and these folks should too. Have you ever directly paid your sanitation fee directly to the Sanitation Dept.? No. You pay it to the Sewerage and Water Board.

At the beginning of this year, I received a notice from a debt collection company hitting me up for about 3 months of unpaid sanitation fees. (Of course, the only thing I've thrown away in 25 years is the piece of paper with this company's name on it, but I do remember the company was in Slidell.) I spoke with a customer service rep at the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board who explained that when you pay your water bill late, they do not forward that month's fee for trash collection to the Sanitation Department. Thus, if you pay your bill even one day after the due date, SWB keeps your $24/month sanitation charge (+ your late fee, of course). You are still on the hook for the sanitation charge even though SWB has never informed us of this payment arrangement they have with the Sanitation Department and even though your next and subsequent bills don't show an unpaid sanitation fee balance.

The customer service rep, who was quite courteous and merely communicating SWB's policy, explained to me that, no, they do not show this on your bill. SWB, however, does keep track in your account file.

So, to sum it all up, because of a clandestine payment agreement between SWB and Sanitation:

So tell me, why don't any of the government officials featured in this story seem to know this? And why did Mayor Landrieu's office say they are working with SWB to improve collection efforts when the problem seems to largely be one of internal policies dictating how SWB applies payments it has already received -- not a problem of receiving the fees?

Landrieu & Vitter Silent on Taxes and Unemployment Benefits

I couldn't help but notice that LA's Senators are strangely quiet about the two biggest Congressional issues plastered all over the news this week: extending tax cuts for the wealthy and extending unemployment benefits. Neither Sen. Landrieu nor Sen. Vitter have even so much as a one-sentence press release regarding these issues on their websites.

A Message to the City of New Orleans

I found these tips on The Little Rules of Action on Zen Habits.net and have found them personally helpful to me. Thus, I would like to share the goodness, particularly with the incoming administration and the N.O. City Council. They can ignore the tip about not getting bogged down in perfectionism. They've long mastered that one. The following three, however, are relevant:

1. Meetings aren’t action . This is a common mistake in management. They hold meetings to get things done. Meetings, unfortunately, almost always get in the way of actual doing. Stop holding those meetings! [except for the ones required by law, of course].

2. Talking (usually) isn’t action. Well, unless the action you need to take is a presentation or speech or something. Or you’re a television broadcaster. But usually, talking is just talking. Communication is necessary, but don’t mistake it for actual action.

3. Planning isn’t action. Sure, you need to plan. Do it, so you’re clear about what you’re doing. Just do it quickly, and get to the actual action as quickly as you can.

Don't Lie, Jeff Crouere

This fetish that old school local white people have with blaming Moon Landrieu for the fall of New Orleans continues to fascinate me. It is both amusing and sad, and it lives on as displayed by a recent piece by Jeff Crouere.

"Since the beginning of the Moon Landrieu administration, the population of New Orleans has declined by approximately 300,000 people, going from over 600,000 in the early 70’s to just over 300,000 today."[Jeff Crouere, BayouBuzz.com, 1-22-2010]

A quick Google search yields numerous hits showing Census numbers which placed New Orleans' population at 627,525 in 1960 and 593,471 in 1970. The population began its decline before Moon Landrieu took office in 1970 and was already below 600,000 by then. Also, I wasn't even born yet, but I do know that urban decline was a national phenomenon during that time that can hardly be blamed on Moon Landrieu. In addition to New Orleans, a number of cities' populations peaked between 1950 and 1960 followed by a precipitous loss of people since then, among them: San Francisco, Oakland, Birmingham, Mobile, Hartford, New Haven, D.C., Augusta, Savannah, Chicago, Gary, Des Moines, Sioux City, Louisville, Baltimore, Boston...I think you get the point. Jeff Crouere, however, apparently does not.

Would a Real Leader Please Report to the Principal's Office?

At this point, if we could just manage to smuggle a real leader into Louisiana, I'd be satisfied.

First, we've had nearly all of our state and Congressional politicians who themselves make their living off of "big government," say nothing to point out to the paranoid mobs trying to kill healthcare reform that the big scary "socialist" government is entirely run by fellow Americans and is not some strange other-worldly evil force trying to take away our rights. (When you get down to it, the government is run by the same people exerting their democratic right to bad mouth their democratic government. Otherwise, there would be no town hall meetings because what would be the point of trying to influence government policy if we had no control over it?)

Now we have school officials wasting their time -- and our money and our children's education -- trying to figure out how to accommodate parents who don't want the President to tell their children to stay in school and work hard. These are the very same parents, mind you, who send their children to school precisely so they can get an education and in doing so hopefully learn the value of hard work.

My 17-year-old son shared with me Thursday a letter distributed in school from Gayle Sloan, superintendent of St. Tammany Parish Schools. The letter explains that President Barack Obama will address schoolchildren nationwide next week, and that "he will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning."

The letter also adds the following: "If you prefer for your child not to participate, please contact the school principal so that an alternate assignment can be provided outside the classroom." (Times Picayune Letter to the Editor, 9-4-2009)

From Sen. Mary Landrieu, seemingly the last "Democrat" remaining in public office, to St. Tammany Parish Schools Superintendent Gayle Sloan, it seems like no one we've put in charge of looking after our best interests has the leadership ability to do so. They'd rather take the easy way out and kowtow to the ignorant screams of those hellbent on screwing themselves out of what is in their and in their children's own best interests.

When did REAL leadership stop including the very basic role of taking an unpopular stand every now and then? If our public officials aren't willing to point out foolishness, or at the very least, the holes in their constituents' logic, then there is no reason to believe that they possess the desire or even moral conviction to lead us in the right direction at all on any issue. These are not even hard stances to take. Saying there already are people (i.e., the insurances companies) standing between us and our doctors and that Republican presidents have given similar back-to-school addresses have nothing to do with whether you support the Democrats' and the President's policy agenda.

If our leaders cannot, or worse, are unwilling to bring reason and calm to chaos, why do we need them at all?

Too Disgusted to Even Think of a Title

See, this is the kind of shit that leads me to spend my days contemplating whether I should move to another state before I suffer a stroke secondary to the most bomb-ass conniption fit ever recorded in human history.

Posted: Friday, 01 August 2008 1:40PM

Poll: Kennedy leads Landrieu
Dave Cohen Reporting

A Zogby poll shows Republican John Kennedy has taken the lead in the U.S. Senate race against Democrat Mary Landrieu.

According to the Zogby International website, "Republican John Kennedy is among the GOP's best hopes to oust a Democratic incumbent. He leads Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, 47%-41%." The poll's margin of error is less than 5%.

I know it's still a bit early and only a poll, but I mean really, people. Do you know that getting rid of Landrieu would mean getting rid of our most senior Congressperson? Besides Charlie Melancon in the House, who has been a better, more effective advocate for us? Not to mention, if you (cuz it sure as hell won't be me) elect Kennedy, we'd have him and Vitter for Senators -- two Republicans in a Democrat controlled Congress, and possibly a Democrat president too. What the FUCK do you think a newbie and a man more concerned with trying to use his campaign money (i.e., the money you sent him) to pay off legal debts stemming from personal behavior he himself called wrong and sinful can accomplish for us?

And no, I'm not a Democrat. I'm a registered Independent, which is what Kennedy should run as, since he can't make up his damn mind. I used to like the straight-talking, sensible sounding Kennedy; but has anyone else noticed he's been damn quiet and useless since this talk of running for the Senate started.

And if you're part of the old New Orleans establishment who refuses to vote for ANY Landrieu because you think Moon "betrayed" you by being the first mayor to allow black people to work in City Hall, get over it or fucking DROP DEAD ALREADY! You're NOT helping!!!