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?

You Can't Do That to a White Man!

I guess this counts as my inaugural contribution to the Hostilidays.

Merry Christmas! dammit.

From weather.com, 12-14-10: "A bus driver in Champaign-Urbana, IL resigned after officials with the transit agency saw this video of his bus running over a snowman in the middle of a street. Another vehicle steered around the snowman just before the bus hit it."

Proving yet again that the primary purpose of our American systems and institutions is still to ensure the protection and privileges of white men. *ba doom, rimshot*

Olbermann Tired of News, Wants to Star on SNL

I was so disgusted when I saw this horseshit on a "news" network tonight. Following the clip is the email I had to write to MSNBC just to get this crap off my chest.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maybe your skit of Keith being the voice speaking to Glenn Beck was supposed to be a lighthearted aside from the news, but it seemed like a new low to me. It's symptomatic of what's wrong with cable news. Correcting the lies on Fox & conservative radio is one thing, but do it like a respectable journalist would. And do it with actual NEWS, not childish skits. MSNBC has become a total joke.

Faith in Haiti

These don't look like the devil-deal making type of folks Pat Robertson made them out to be. Over the course of history, many Protestants have looked askance at the Catholic religion and our "idolatry"; and I wonder if that sort of thinking is also the source of Pat Robertson's ridiculous statements since Haiti is 80% Roman Catholic. But I tell you this, I and most people I know, regardless of our religions, would choose to have the faith displayed in this video by the people of Haiti any day of the week over that of Pat Robertson's.

Also, as a Katrina survivor, I want people to know that then, just as now and despite the media focus on a "breakdown of society," most people pull together and do not descend into chaos. Please don't mistake anguished pleas for help, whether to God or to the cameraman, as a sign of impending chaos -- especially if you've never found yourself in such a situation. Just hush your mouth, show some compassion, and do something to help even if it's just a prayer or sending a check to get relief on the ground.

Just Shut Up, Chief Riley

"Riley said the recent release of a poll - showing that only 33 percent of citizens are satisfied with the NOPD - was timed to dissuade him from entering politics. The poll was unveiled by business leaders shortly before the political qualifying period. Riley also alleged The Times-Picayune chose that week to release several negative stories about him." [T-P, 1/10/2010]

Chief Riley,
You can bitch and moan all you want, which you're exceptionally good at by the way, but I would like to say to you from one black man to another that you're so missing the boat if you think the timing of that poll and those news stories were to dissuade you from running for office. Besides, we all know you're aware that the local media runs negative stories about you year-round because you're constantly complaining about it year-round.

What should have dissuaded you from entering politics is the fact nobody, including the scores of black citizens who have lost their children to murder and crime and/or who have been harassed, hassled, and unjustifiably arrested by NOPD, wants to vote for your ass. Period.

The Tebo on CNN. Gotta Lurve the TEBO!!

Wrap It Up, People!

I realize it's been a busy news day, but I would hope news this important is picked up by the local media SOON.

The HIV/AIDS Atlas found that 80 percent of U.S. cases are clustered in 20 percent of counties...

A random sampling of the 20 percent of counties with the highest HIV rates include: Marin and San Francisco counties, Calif; Miami-Dade county, Fla; Bronx, Queens and New York (Manhattan) counties, New York City; Richland (Columbia), S.C.; Orleans (New Orleans), La; Butts, Clayton and Dekalb counties (Atlanta), Ga; New Haven and Hartford counties, Conn; Multnomah (Portland) Ore; and Denver (Denver) Colo.

Can You Explain This Cartoon?

According to the National Action Network this cartoon ran in today's New York Post newspaper.

Extra, Extra!! White Lady Plays Race Card!

I'll tell you what; white folks is mad!! The Republican ones are, that is. Monday morning, the day after Gen. Colin Powell endorsed Obama for President, I was listening to Castner & Walensky on "Rush Radio" 99.5fm when Walensky went off. She emphatically insisted that there is NO WAY that Powell's endorsement had nothing to do with race, because both men are black. They then went on to bash Powell as never having been a "real" Republican anyway, despite his putting his own reputation on the line with his United Nations speech about Iraq having WMDs. Even after conceeding that yes, Powell was the odd man out in this Bush administration and pushed to the side, Walensky insisted race played a major part in his decision.

AS IF race has nothing to do with her support of McCain-Palin, or that of the other white people who constitute perhaps 80% of their supporters -- and that's a conservative estimate (no pun intended). As if they are above being influenced by the dynamics of race. As if SHE wasn't playing "the race card."

Liebermann broke ranks to endorse McCain, but apparently only white people can do that without race coming into play. Nobody questioned whether Liebermann's decision had to do with race. I'd be curious to know if Walensky and those who think like her have questioned whether the slew of Obama endorsements from white Republicans has to do with race. After all, Obama is as white as he is black.

Now, honestly tell me whites and blacks are not judged by different standards, so I can tell you to go sit your ass down somewhere.

Wassup 2008

I Move That the Corps Hire a New PR Consultant

Here's today's hysterical laugh...Last night on the news, the Corps said that they are willing to have outside experts analyze the situation (how nice of them); however, they are not alarmed because "seepage" is normal. They said if the floodwall were "leaking," they'd be alarmed. There's a big difference, they said, between "seepage" and "leaking."

You got to see this
http://www.wwltv.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=250060


(A bit of history: Several months before Katrina, residents along this floodwall where it failed, reported water in their backyards coming from underneath the floodwall; but the levee board failed to respond.)

UPDATE
A bit of perspective from my wise Uncle Phil: "Let’s put this in human terms. If some part of your anatomy was seeping vs leaking – would there be a difference to you? I think not..."

What? Westbank, what?

I'm doing my part to make up for the local media's shitty coverage of the massive flooding that occurred on the Westbank yesterday. Terrytown*** seems to have gotten whacked hardest. These are shots taken on my parents' street in Terrytown.***





(Above) From my parents' front door. Moms really stepped up to fill the void left by all the news crews "on location" at the Jazz Fest (beer tent).






umm, NO, I'm not cheating and re-posting from an old blog. You're probably just thinking of this.


***(To answer thousands of eastbankers: Terrytown is basically Gretna, but legally part of unincorporated Jeffersion Parish. It borders Algiers and is closer to the CBD than most of eastbank. Please, take as much time as you need to for the shock to subside, especially the ones who've ever waited until the cheaper night long distance rates kicked in before calling someone on the Westbank).

Tell the Whole Story FOX! Barack Obama's pastor Wright

California-Louisiana Contrasts: More "Hot Air" from the Right

On the appropriately named conservative blog Hot Air, they are doing an excellent job following the Bush administration's lead of blowing smoke up our asses in times of crisis. However, they get much props for admitting the Right's long-known (but only recently to them, I think) technique of responding to obvious fact with "hot air" (Blog Founder: "We fight hot air with Hot Air." [Notice how their brilliant use of capitalization establishes once and for all that their Hot Air supersedes all other hot air. Plus, I'm pretty sure God said so in the Bible somewheres.)

Unfortunately, I don't think Californians need more hot air right now, and I know that those of us sweating to rebuild the Gulf Coast without much help from conservatives at the federal level don't need more of it.

It makes me ill to even give attention to their efforts to -- yet again -- politicize the destruction and death of fellow human beings. Nevertheless, I feel it my patriotic duty to point out -- yet again -- that the feds fucked up. Funny how the party of personal responsibility can't seem to own up to its own responsibilities. Louisiana's state and local officials could have supplied every survivor with handheld electric fans, frozen daiquiris and daily meals from Antoine's whilst they, our fellow Americans, waited for Lords Bush and Chertoff to decide whether the levees had been breached or merely overtopped before sending help (FYI: It makes no fucking difference!!!). REGARDLESS OF THE (IN)COMPETENCY OF BLANCO, NAGIN, JUNIOR RODRIGUEZ, WALTER MAESTRI, and even AARON "WOLFMAN" BROUSSARD, the simple fact remains that THE FEDS DROPPED THE BALL, THEN DRAGGED THEIR FEET PICKING IT UP WHEN IT CAME TO FULFILLING THE ROLE THEY HAD SET FORTH FOR THEMSELVES in the aftermath of Katrina... (that bitch, I might add).

It so happens that I am finishing a disturbingly eye-opening book called Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security (by Christopher Cooper & Robert Block)*, which highlights that Louisiana officials "excelled" in the areas of the FEMA-coordinated emergency plan that had been completed pre-Katrina. My friends at Hot Breath or whatever marvel at the wonder of a state enormously larger than Louisiana evacuating 250,000 people...over the course of a few days. Contrary to popular misbelief, you don't always get DAYS of warning that a hurricane will strike. About 1.2 million people left Greater New Orleans in less than 40 hours (less than 2 days in non-fuzzy math terms), without a fraction of the problems Texas had with evacuations only weeks later before Rita struck, AND there are really only 3 or 4 routes off this island commonly known as New Orleans.
*recently purchased copy at local Barnes&Noble for $5.98*

It took FEMA 5 days to get a communications truck to N.O. from Baton Rouge when the roads were clear heading into New Orleans, and 2 days to transport ice that was sitting only 40 miles away to Biloxi. The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama literally picked up the feds' slack and orchestrated their own disaster plans, not because us po' Suh-thunahs cain't do fo' us-selves, but because the feds said for years had told them "Oh, don't worry about that. FEMA will do that," etc., etc.

There are tons more reasons you can't compare Katrina with the CA wildfires, as nicely laid out in Sunday's T-P feature, par exemple:

Katrina's scale of devastation and its impact on humanity, however, was far greater. The number of homes destroyed or still threatened in California is about 10 percent of the roughly 200,000 left uninhabitable by Katrina and the often overlooked Hurricane Rita, which struck three weeks later.

In New Orleans alone, 140 of 180 square miles flooded, -- rendering uninhabitable a residential zone seven times the size of Manhattan. Across the region, its winds and rains wreaked havoc to a 90,000-square-mile swath of the Gulf Coast, an area twice the size of the entire state of New York.

Katrina forced the evacuation of 1.2 million people -- 500,000 remained displaced after four months. Almost 2,000 people died in Katrina.

The death toll from the fires stood at seven as of Saturday.

But hey, facts schmacts -- the folks at Hot Ass Breath got some GREAT talking points out there, and what's more important and American than that?

'Member What We Got Last Time We Voted for the Guy Promising to Restore Honor to a Public Office?

Just give conservative Republicans some value laden words that invoke a sense of morality and self-righteousness, and poof...you got a vote. Don't bother with the truth or anything important.

Responding to a Boasso ad on Jindal's record as Secretary of Health and Hospitals, Jindal's narrator alleges that "Walter Boasso and the corrupt crowd are desperate to keep power. First they attack Bobby Jindal for his Christianity. Now they're lying about Bobby's service to Louisiana." The narrator mentions the word corrupt twice more, and the ad ends with the written tag line: "The corrupt crowd. They won't stop until we stand up."

Yet another ad, which debuted late Friday, features a doctor lauding Jindal for cleaning up the department a decade ago. "The corruption crowd didn't like that much," he says. "That's why those guys are attacking Bobby Jindal right now." In just 30 seconds, the ad uses the word corruption four times.

Now, as far as I've heard, neither Campbell nor Boasso has been accused of pocketing illicit cash, unlike a previous gubernatorial candidate or two. Nor has anyone alleged that Boasso has done anything that Webster might consider corrupt. [Stephanie Grace, Times-Picayune]

K+2 Anniversary, NPR, and 15 Minutes of Fame

It was my pleasure and quite an honor to be invited to share my thoughts, as I do on my blog, on NPR's News & Notes roundtable bloggers segment with host Farai Chideya (of whom I am a long time fan and consider a rockstar, but thankfully the nervous anticipation of speaking to her subsided enough that I didn't throw up on air). And as if that weren't enough, I had a blast hanging out with the fellow local bloggers responsible for The G-Bitch Spot and Cliff's Crib who are just fantastic to kick it with, as anyone who is familiar with their work would assume.

Click on the title of this post for audio of the segment (which FLEW by way too fast!). But at least they didn't try to censor us, unlike our local lovable Chris Rose on Oprah's K+2 anniversary show.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but my day took an unexpected turn when I met Katina, one of those truly great Americans who see a problem and then get to fixing it using whatever raw talent and wherewithal God gave them. It seemed as good a way as any to spend the anniversary helping her help us by suggesting ideas for the documentary Katina is making to promote the ultimate goal of her New Orleans: A Labor of Love mission. Her goal is to not only recruit 5000 volunteers to continue coming here through 2008, but to also serve as a resource to help them navigate the Bizarro life of our Third World nation-state. I'll be posting more about my overall impressions from August 29, 2007.

City ABOVE the sea

Here's something I found interesting. Yet another refutation of all the simplified info that's fed to America by the national media, who are useless, by the way. I must say that even I didn't realize that as much as 1/2 the city is ABOVE sea level.

Here are a few of the most enlightening excerpts:
"Innumerable media reports following Hurricane Katrina described the topography of New Orleans as unconditionally below sea level," the study notes. "This oversimplification is inaccurate by half, and its frequent repetition does a great disservice to the city."

"After Katrina smacked the city, floodwaters soaked above- sea-level parts of the Holy Cross neighborhood, but did not inundate parts of Bywater at roughly the same elevation. The location and severity of levee failures determined which of those areas flooded. The same was true for below- sea-level areas on different sides of the 17th Street Canal. Floodwaters spewed into Lakeview from a collapsed section of the floodwall on the Orleans side while some low-lying parts of Metairie remained dry because they were behind the Jefferson Parish side of the floodwall, which held."

Show's Over, Folks! The Jig Is Up

Sunday's Times-Picayune top story, the "Long, Hard Road Home" (Jan. 28, 2007) was nearly an epic tome by newspaper standards (or maybe I just read slower than usual). The writer did an excellent and exhaustive job combining disparate sources of information into one coherent piece. So, I don't want to downplay his work when I ask: HOW MUCH LONGER ARE WE GOING TO LET THE STATE AND ICF FUCK US? (pardonnez mon francais).

Again we have the same list of state officials saying they have done all they can to prod ICF into acting more quickly, followed by another disgusting litany of ICF officials (especially that Michael Byrne) saying ICF had no idea they would need more staff. And his newest defense that he is just a poor public speaker? (The writer of the article did a nice job of letting the juxtaposition of Byrne's impeccable resume refute this sorry lame ass claim).

What I'd like to know is how long are we going to fall for this act? A June 30, 2006, ICF press release stated that the Road Home registry already "exceeded 90,000 applicants" and that they were expecting another 30,000 to apply. Another ICF press release from October 19, 2006, stated there were an estimated 123,000 eligible Road Home recipients.

Why is The Times-Picayune running around in circles with state officials and ICF when ICF's own website contains evidence that they are lying? Are things that bad for our esteemed institutions? Do we need a bake sale and a fish fry to raise money to buy internet access for Gov. Meemaw and the T-P so that they can say "BULLSHIT!" the next time ICF says they did not expect such a high demand of applicants? State officials like Suzie Elkins and Sam Jones should have called ICF on this a long time ago, which if you ask me, would have been much easier than trying to convince us they have done their jobs by sending strongly worded e-mails to ICF telling them to pick up the pace.

The only things I am left wondering are what do state officials have to gain by always stopping short of calling ICF to task and actually doing something to hold them accountable and when are we going to stop falling for this charade and tell our incompetent government leaders to take a hike?

Young Student's Documentary Leaving Audiences Stunned

A high school student recently filmed her replication of the Kenneth & Mamie Clark "doll studies," well known within psychology, or to anyone studying ethnic identity development.

As cynical as I usually am, I found myself surprised by what she found. I then asked myself what results did I expect.

My honest answer: I don't know.

This, by the way, is not one of the series of studies I referred to in my previous blog entry. I just found out about this study today. However, assuming it was done properly, this study is a thought-provoking example of how deep issues of race may be and how early associations about race are embedded in our psyches. There are other possible explanations, sure, but this is another reason why it is not so far flung to suspect that people are "subconsciously racist."

OK, How Abooouut...Now!

I've been sitting here the last few hours going back and forth on how angry I should be right now. Not because I'm a hateful prick, but because it was my involuntary reaction when I picked up today's Times-Picayune to see in Section B, Page 1, a mediocre article on the murder of a young man aged 24 years, 2 days. His name is Chivas Doyle, and he is a Black American and a New Orleanian.

You know where this is going, don't you? Here goes.

Why does Helen Hill get front page, more than once, but Mr. Doyle, whom the paper described as a well-liked and big-hearted Ninth Ward "community activist" get Section B? Granted, I'm not up on front page etiquette, but this sort of thing tends to stand out. Aren't they both innocent people known for helping others?

Over the past week or so, I've tried to temper my anger, by (unsuccessfully) convincing myself that the outcry against crime was not as much about the murder of an educated middle-class White woman as it was about...[hell, insert social ill of choice]. Maybe I should use my mental energy more wisely.

Since Katrina, there's been a lot of talk about facing our race problem and "talking about it," but I get the sense everyone's waiting for their invitation to a nice roundtable summit, one afternoon at the Convention Center, where we can engage in a dialogue about our feelings. That ain't gonna cut it. If we are serious about tackling this issue, and about not catching Shelly Midura off guard next time the council votes along racial lines, then we need to address these things as they happen.

But for the time being, I guess I'll just continue to watch in amusement at how long we can ignore the white elephant in the middle of the room (who will probably start shitting all over the new Berber carpet any minute now).