Not since William Tecumseh Sherman has one person raised so much havoc in Atlanta as former Falcon quarterback Michael Vick has over the past year.
The latest came yesterday when head coach Bobby Petrino quit the team with three games left in the season to return to coaching at the college ranks.
On Monday, Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for running a dog fighting operation and lying to cover it up.
That came months after Vick was suspended upon his indictment on the charges.
That move came after the Falcons traded their backup quarterback Matt Schaub to the Houston Texans, expecting Vick to be around to lead the team.
The Falcons have completely fallen apart. It will take years for them to regain the ground Vick's legal woes have cost them.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Ike Turner is dead
Ike Turner — musician, songwriter, producer, inventor of the bitch slap — died today in San Diego at age 76.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Coming Soon: aL, La and the Magical Municipal Tour
This post originally appeared at Lafayette Pro Fiber: http://www.lafayetteprofiber.com/Blog/Blog.html
As we head to the end of this year, the pace of progress on the LUS fiber project is increasing. The electronics vendor has been selected; property for the head-end has been purchased; a building for that is not far off.
Some of the specifics of the network offerings have become public, the most notable of which is the fact that every LUS fiber customer will have 100 megabits per second of in-system connectivity. What that means is that Lafayette will have an intranet that will rival any corporate or academic campus in the world.
This will create the opportunity fundamentally change life in Lafayette. With that much in-system bandwidth available, it will be possible for a new, asynchronous Lafayette to emerge — asynchronous Lafayette, Louisiana (aL, La).
Lafayette and The Network
The power of networks to drive change is well documented. There is Metcalfe's Law. There is the fabulous, thought-provoking 2002 book by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, which explores the power of networks and what new, more powerful networks mean for science, business and everyday life. I'm sure you can find other examples and references.
Because of the design of the LUS network and the commitment to create an intranet for customers of that network, Lafayette is going to be a community where the impact of this meeting of network power and the various aspects of network connected life will be explored first. We will be pioneers on the great adventure that will not come to other communities in our country and the world for years — if not decades — to come.
All that bandwidth will mean that access to aspects of life Lafayette will no longer be tied to time. That is, large swaths of public life in Lafayette will migrate to a point where access to events will no longer depend on your ability to physically show up. Any public event in Lafayette will have the potential to be preserved for posterity.
The path to opportunity in Lafayette will run along the ability of government, companies, institutions, associations, clubs and individuals to push the transition from 'Lafayette in the now' to 'asynchronous Lafayette.'
The LUS fiber system and the intranet capability it will provide its customers will make it difficult to leave Lafayette. Life will be different from other places here. We will miss the amenities that the fat connection that the LUS network will afford us. But, if we work this right, we will not have to miss Lafayette in the sense that more of our civic and social life can and will be made available to us via the network in ways that will not require our physical presence at the event in order to observe it or, in some cases, participate in it.
We won't stop attending these events, but the LUS network will enable citizens here to experience more of Lafayette life because those events will be available to us at times that our hectic lives — family, work, and play — don't currently allow. For instance, I like good music, but I can't always find the time to say, go to a Louisiana Crossroads performance. Or, maybe I have to be out of town on the night that there's a PASA show that I'd otherwise like to catch.
In asynchronous Lafayette, those events could be captured, stored and be made accessible to folks who can't attend the live event — or who might want to experience the event from a different perspective.
This is one way that the network will set public life in Lafayette apart from life in other communities.
I think it's important that we focus on this opportunity in order to ensure that the changes resulting from our new distinctiveness enable Lafayette to capture and leverage those aspects of our community that make us unique; that we use our infrastructure to knock down the barriers between us, not to widen existing gaps.
Here are some ideas of how the LUS network might enable asynchronous Lafayette to emerge.
Government
This new infrastructure has the potential to improve the ability of citizens to participate in governmental processes with the result being that government becomes more responsive to them and their needs. In asynchronous Lafayette, public meetings will be recorded, stored and be able to be accessed by citizens who were not able to attend the meeting. Documents presented, discussed or distributed in the meeting will be available for viewing and downloading via the webcast (live and stored) of the session.
Those web-accessed meetings could also have links to allow citizen input on the process. It will mean a number of structural changes will need to take place. First, local government and agencies will need to put cameras and microphones in any room used for public meetings so that the sessions can be recorded. Second, they'll need to invest in the storage capacity to allow these meetings to be tagged and archived for later access. Third, they'll need to provided wider windows of opportunity for citizens to submit formal comment on proposals, issues and ordinances.
I'm not talking about the kind of Blog of the Banshees that the comment sections of The Daily Advertiser and other papers have become; but a formal channel for citizen comment and involvement that will become part of the permanent public record of the proceedings, even though the citizens might not have been present at the event when it actually occurred. Asynchronous access to government might actually lend itself to richer, more thoughtful citizen involvement by affording interested parties the opportunity to review the materials and sessions away from the heat of the moment.
Lafayette may need to come up with its own version of public meeting laws to ensure that our rich digital infrastructure is used to enhance citizen access to government and its decision-making processes.
Education
In asynchronous Lafayette, students will never miss another day of class. That is, classrooms could be equipped with cameras and microphones which would enable teachers to deliver their course content in a real-time session that could be available to students too ill to attend class that day. The course could be accessed from home either via a video stream or accessed later when the student was feeling better. When I made this case to my daughter a couple of years ago prior to the fiber election, I have to admit that she was not wild about this idea.
The network will also facilitate more collaborative learning, as students, teachers, even researchers will be able to interact in real time with voice, data and video on projects ranging from homework to science projects to specialized research projects.
Entertainment/Culture
We can use this infrastructure to improve and enrich Lafayette's cultural life and, in the process, bolster and sustain artists and the institutions that support them.
Asynchronous Lafayette will be a boon to businesses built around entertainment and culture. More specifically those places offering 'live' music are going to have a real opportunity to emerge as global purveyors of our musical culture. There's a hint of what is possible by what's transpired in Austin, Texas. Austin City Limits helped transform that city into a multi-media entertainment center, drawing musicians from around to world to a place that has no obvious other reason to attract them. The show now has its own music festival.
Big whoop.
Imagine asynchronous Lafayette, where we are capturing on video live performances at Grant Street Dancehall, the Blue Moon Saloon, Louisiana Crossroads, Festival International, Festival Acadiens, Downtown Alive, the Heymann Center, and other venues. We could establish our city as THE live music capital of the world by letting the world access all the great live music that we grow and bring here.
Put cameras in the venues, run a feed out of the sound boards and — voila! — shows could be streamed over the web and stored on servers here in Lafayette for later access. The webcast versions could be free or very inexpensive, serving to feed demand for the higher quality recordings of the sessions that could be produced from the archived digital files and sold at a premium.
I happened to catch T. Bone Burnett on The Charlie Rose show on LPB the other night. In that segment (he was on as the producer of the new Robert Plant and Allison Krause album Raising Sand), Burnett said that he believed the future of the music business would revolve around live performance. He added that he wanted to be involved with producing live shows and the recordings that resulted from them.
Asynchronous Lafayette will be ideally positioned to lead this transition by using our wired infrastructure to enable the capture of high-definition, high-quality recordings of all that great music that is some what wasted when it is only captured by the ears that are in the room.
It'll take some server capacity (hey, Google and Sun both offer 'Data Centers in a Box' that bring huge storage capacity in a modular unit that looks like a shipping container), but opportunities like this are going to abound in the arts in the new, wired, asynchronous Lafayette.
Business
The strictly business crowd (you know, the folks who buy Dell and HP computers) won't be shut out either. In fact, businesses in Lafayette are going to have a strategic advantage due to the bandwidth that the LUS intranet affords them. For starters, it will be possible for businesses in Lafayette to work in a more distributed way. That is, people here will really be able to telecommute (i.e., work from home) in ways that are just not possible now. Massive bandwidth will make information sharing easier so things like white board sharing over multiple locations will be able to take place seamlessly. This could be a key to our traffic problems since no one seems to want to pay for roads.
WebEx and similar services should be recruited to conduct pilots here because the kind of network capacity we have here is going to be a while in reaching the rest of the country. Imagine the possibilities that engineering firms located here will have to look at problems via a network, fashion solutions and get them to the fabrication floor in a much shorter cycle.
Healthcare and Public Health
Healthcare in Lafayette can be fundamentally different than it is in any other place in the country. Home monitoring of patients will be able to rival that currently available only in ICUs. Any kind of telemetry that can be captured from a patient in a hospital will soon be able to be captured from home via the network. This could reduce hospital stays and with that the cost of care — without adversely affecting the quality of care.
A few months ago, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals conducted a series of drills across the state to test preparedness for a potential flu pandemic. I happened to attend a meeting in a community where the results of one such drill were discussed. One aspect of the outbreak that the providers did not mention was the impact of an outbreak on the telecommunications system. In the event of an outbreak, there will likely be a good bit of what people near chemical plants know as "evacuation in place." That is, people will be advised to stay home in order to avoid exposure to the virus that would be causing the flu outbreak.
With the robust telecommunications infrastructure that will be in place in Lafayette, we can diminish the extent of the outbreak by ordering children to stay home from school (with a wired community, teachers could teach from home to students at home). Some companies could have their workers stay home, using the network to conduct their work from there. All of this could have the effect of limiting the extent of the outbreak and, perhaps equally important, limiting the disruption on community life that such an outbreak would otherwise inflict.
Sports
People in Lafayette love sports and they particularly love watching their kids play sports. In asynchronous Lafayette, soccer, baseball, basketball and football games could be recorded, as well as swim meets, track meets, and other events could be recorded and shared. Sports leagues could use the network to produce highlights of games/tournaments, post stats, show standings, schedules and other key information.
Again, what will be needed are cameras, servers and the people to operate them.
Religious, Social & Civic Organizations
Churches, community organizations, civic groups will be able to record their meetings and make the content available to those unable to attend the live event.
Scratching At The Surface
Beginning sometime in late 2008 or so, LUS will begin offering services. At that point, the transformation of Lafayette and the potential it offers will move from the dream state to reality. The possibilities mentioned above are a wholly inadequate and incomplete list that doesn't really even scratch the surface of the potential that awaits us.
Think about your current life in Lafayette. Think of how big bandwidth, affordable network technology can be used to enable you to to connect (or re-connect) to those aspects of life here that interest or intrigue you, but that your schedule will just not allow you to get to.
Thinking this way is how citizens are going to be able to transform life here. It will be a bottom-up process that will be built on the foundation of the Lafayette intranet afforded to us by the LUS fiber network. Digital technology has unleashed revolutions in video, audio, and communications in general. With the bandwidth available to each of us and the institutions we align ourselves with, we can — and will — define new ways of joining, belonging to and participating in these institutions and, through this process, change Lafayette.
This will be an opportunity unique to Lafayette in North America because we will be the largest, most diverse community with access to the fattest network pipes. We can pioneer new and unique approaches to civic, social, cultural and community life using the network, just as our geography shaped those aspects of our life here in the centuries leading up to this point.
As the network builds out and as we begin to capture the potential that our fiber infrastructure will offer us, asynchronous Lafayette can come to embody the notion that you never really have to miss Lafayette at all — at least, not any public event.
The time to think about how to turn that potential into reality is now, just as the LUS network itself is moving from the engineering tables to the streets.
This great adventure of asynchronous Lafayette is coming sooner than you think right down your street. The time has come to start preparing to take advantage of the opportunities that will abound. You're only limit will be your imagination.
Step right this way!
As we head to the end of this year, the pace of progress on the LUS fiber project is increasing. The electronics vendor has been selected; property for the head-end has been purchased; a building for that is not far off.
Some of the specifics of the network offerings have become public, the most notable of which is the fact that every LUS fiber customer will have 100 megabits per second of in-system connectivity. What that means is that Lafayette will have an intranet that will rival any corporate or academic campus in the world.
This will create the opportunity fundamentally change life in Lafayette. With that much in-system bandwidth available, it will be possible for a new, asynchronous Lafayette to emerge — asynchronous Lafayette, Louisiana (aL, La).
Lafayette and The Network
The power of networks to drive change is well documented. There is Metcalfe's Law. There is the fabulous, thought-provoking 2002 book by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, which explores the power of networks and what new, more powerful networks mean for science, business and everyday life. I'm sure you can find other examples and references.
Because of the design of the LUS network and the commitment to create an intranet for customers of that network, Lafayette is going to be a community where the impact of this meeting of network power and the various aspects of network connected life will be explored first. We will be pioneers on the great adventure that will not come to other communities in our country and the world for years — if not decades — to come.
All that bandwidth will mean that access to aspects of life Lafayette will no longer be tied to time. That is, large swaths of public life in Lafayette will migrate to a point where access to events will no longer depend on your ability to physically show up. Any public event in Lafayette will have the potential to be preserved for posterity.
The path to opportunity in Lafayette will run along the ability of government, companies, institutions, associations, clubs and individuals to push the transition from 'Lafayette in the now' to 'asynchronous Lafayette.'
The LUS fiber system and the intranet capability it will provide its customers will make it difficult to leave Lafayette. Life will be different from other places here. We will miss the amenities that the fat connection that the LUS network will afford us. But, if we work this right, we will not have to miss Lafayette in the sense that more of our civic and social life can and will be made available to us via the network in ways that will not require our physical presence at the event in order to observe it or, in some cases, participate in it.
We won't stop attending these events, but the LUS network will enable citizens here to experience more of Lafayette life because those events will be available to us at times that our hectic lives — family, work, and play — don't currently allow. For instance, I like good music, but I can't always find the time to say, go to a Louisiana Crossroads performance. Or, maybe I have to be out of town on the night that there's a PASA show that I'd otherwise like to catch.
In asynchronous Lafayette, those events could be captured, stored and be made accessible to folks who can't attend the live event — or who might want to experience the event from a different perspective.
This is one way that the network will set public life in Lafayette apart from life in other communities.
I think it's important that we focus on this opportunity in order to ensure that the changes resulting from our new distinctiveness enable Lafayette to capture and leverage those aspects of our community that make us unique; that we use our infrastructure to knock down the barriers between us, not to widen existing gaps.
Here are some ideas of how the LUS network might enable asynchronous Lafayette to emerge.
Government
This new infrastructure has the potential to improve the ability of citizens to participate in governmental processes with the result being that government becomes more responsive to them and their needs. In asynchronous Lafayette, public meetings will be recorded, stored and be able to be accessed by citizens who were not able to attend the meeting. Documents presented, discussed or distributed in the meeting will be available for viewing and downloading via the webcast (live and stored) of the session.
Those web-accessed meetings could also have links to allow citizen input on the process. It will mean a number of structural changes will need to take place. First, local government and agencies will need to put cameras and microphones in any room used for public meetings so that the sessions can be recorded. Second, they'll need to invest in the storage capacity to allow these meetings to be tagged and archived for later access. Third, they'll need to provided wider windows of opportunity for citizens to submit formal comment on proposals, issues and ordinances.
I'm not talking about the kind of Blog of the Banshees that the comment sections of The Daily Advertiser and other papers have become; but a formal channel for citizen comment and involvement that will become part of the permanent public record of the proceedings, even though the citizens might not have been present at the event when it actually occurred. Asynchronous access to government might actually lend itself to richer, more thoughtful citizen involvement by affording interested parties the opportunity to review the materials and sessions away from the heat of the moment.
Lafayette may need to come up with its own version of public meeting laws to ensure that our rich digital infrastructure is used to enhance citizen access to government and its decision-making processes.
Education
In asynchronous Lafayette, students will never miss another day of class. That is, classrooms could be equipped with cameras and microphones which would enable teachers to deliver their course content in a real-time session that could be available to students too ill to attend class that day. The course could be accessed from home either via a video stream or accessed later when the student was feeling better. When I made this case to my daughter a couple of years ago prior to the fiber election, I have to admit that she was not wild about this idea.
The network will also facilitate more collaborative learning, as students, teachers, even researchers will be able to interact in real time with voice, data and video on projects ranging from homework to science projects to specialized research projects.
Entertainment/Culture
We can use this infrastructure to improve and enrich Lafayette's cultural life and, in the process, bolster and sustain artists and the institutions that support them.
Asynchronous Lafayette will be a boon to businesses built around entertainment and culture. More specifically those places offering 'live' music are going to have a real opportunity to emerge as global purveyors of our musical culture. There's a hint of what is possible by what's transpired in Austin, Texas. Austin City Limits helped transform that city into a multi-media entertainment center, drawing musicians from around to world to a place that has no obvious other reason to attract them. The show now has its own music festival.
Big whoop.
Imagine asynchronous Lafayette, where we are capturing on video live performances at Grant Street Dancehall, the Blue Moon Saloon, Louisiana Crossroads, Festival International, Festival Acadiens, Downtown Alive, the Heymann Center, and other venues. We could establish our city as THE live music capital of the world by letting the world access all the great live music that we grow and bring here.
Put cameras in the venues, run a feed out of the sound boards and — voila! — shows could be streamed over the web and stored on servers here in Lafayette for later access. The webcast versions could be free or very inexpensive, serving to feed demand for the higher quality recordings of the sessions that could be produced from the archived digital files and sold at a premium.
I happened to catch T. Bone Burnett on The Charlie Rose show on LPB the other night. In that segment (he was on as the producer of the new Robert Plant and Allison Krause album Raising Sand), Burnett said that he believed the future of the music business would revolve around live performance. He added that he wanted to be involved with producing live shows and the recordings that resulted from them.
Asynchronous Lafayette will be ideally positioned to lead this transition by using our wired infrastructure to enable the capture of high-definition, high-quality recordings of all that great music that is some what wasted when it is only captured by the ears that are in the room.
It'll take some server capacity (hey, Google and Sun both offer 'Data Centers in a Box' that bring huge storage capacity in a modular unit that looks like a shipping container), but opportunities like this are going to abound in the arts in the new, wired, asynchronous Lafayette.
Business
The strictly business crowd (you know, the folks who buy Dell and HP computers) won't be shut out either. In fact, businesses in Lafayette are going to have a strategic advantage due to the bandwidth that the LUS intranet affords them. For starters, it will be possible for businesses in Lafayette to work in a more distributed way. That is, people here will really be able to telecommute (i.e., work from home) in ways that are just not possible now. Massive bandwidth will make information sharing easier so things like white board sharing over multiple locations will be able to take place seamlessly. This could be a key to our traffic problems since no one seems to want to pay for roads.
WebEx and similar services should be recruited to conduct pilots here because the kind of network capacity we have here is going to be a while in reaching the rest of the country. Imagine the possibilities that engineering firms located here will have to look at problems via a network, fashion solutions and get them to the fabrication floor in a much shorter cycle.
Healthcare and Public Health
Healthcare in Lafayette can be fundamentally different than it is in any other place in the country. Home monitoring of patients will be able to rival that currently available only in ICUs. Any kind of telemetry that can be captured from a patient in a hospital will soon be able to be captured from home via the network. This could reduce hospital stays and with that the cost of care — without adversely affecting the quality of care.
A few months ago, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals conducted a series of drills across the state to test preparedness for a potential flu pandemic. I happened to attend a meeting in a community where the results of one such drill were discussed. One aspect of the outbreak that the providers did not mention was the impact of an outbreak on the telecommunications system. In the event of an outbreak, there will likely be a good bit of what people near chemical plants know as "evacuation in place." That is, people will be advised to stay home in order to avoid exposure to the virus that would be causing the flu outbreak.
With the robust telecommunications infrastructure that will be in place in Lafayette, we can diminish the extent of the outbreak by ordering children to stay home from school (with a wired community, teachers could teach from home to students at home). Some companies could have their workers stay home, using the network to conduct their work from there. All of this could have the effect of limiting the extent of the outbreak and, perhaps equally important, limiting the disruption on community life that such an outbreak would otherwise inflict.
Sports
People in Lafayette love sports and they particularly love watching their kids play sports. In asynchronous Lafayette, soccer, baseball, basketball and football games could be recorded, as well as swim meets, track meets, and other events could be recorded and shared. Sports leagues could use the network to produce highlights of games/tournaments, post stats, show standings, schedules and other key information.
Again, what will be needed are cameras, servers and the people to operate them.
Religious, Social & Civic Organizations
Churches, community organizations, civic groups will be able to record their meetings and make the content available to those unable to attend the live event.
Scratching At The Surface
Beginning sometime in late 2008 or so, LUS will begin offering services. At that point, the transformation of Lafayette and the potential it offers will move from the dream state to reality. The possibilities mentioned above are a wholly inadequate and incomplete list that doesn't really even scratch the surface of the potential that awaits us.
Think about your current life in Lafayette. Think of how big bandwidth, affordable network technology can be used to enable you to to connect (or re-connect) to those aspects of life here that interest or intrigue you, but that your schedule will just not allow you to get to.
Thinking this way is how citizens are going to be able to transform life here. It will be a bottom-up process that will be built on the foundation of the Lafayette intranet afforded to us by the LUS fiber network. Digital technology has unleashed revolutions in video, audio, and communications in general. With the bandwidth available to each of us and the institutions we align ourselves with, we can — and will — define new ways of joining, belonging to and participating in these institutions and, through this process, change Lafayette.
This will be an opportunity unique to Lafayette in North America because we will be the largest, most diverse community with access to the fattest network pipes. We can pioneer new and unique approaches to civic, social, cultural and community life using the network, just as our geography shaped those aspects of our life here in the centuries leading up to this point.
As the network builds out and as we begin to capture the potential that our fiber infrastructure will offer us, asynchronous Lafayette can come to embody the notion that you never really have to miss Lafayette at all — at least, not any public event.
The time to think about how to turn that potential into reality is now, just as the LUS network itself is moving from the engineering tables to the streets.
This great adventure of asynchronous Lafayette is coming sooner than you think right down your street. The time has come to start preparing to take advantage of the opportunities that will abound. You're only limit will be your imagination.
Step right this way!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Joey Durel and Lafayette Complacency
It appears that City/Parish President Joey Durel will be handed a second term without a contested election. Using his first term as a guide, even his supporters are going to regret this.
Durel's first term has been characterized by cronyism, war on first responders, a failure to provide community leadership, and isolating Lafayette in the Legislature by repeatedly selling out the long-term interests of other communities for what were falsely believed to be Lafayette's short-term interests.
The tacit approval that the leadership of the community gives Durel despite these lapses indicates a sense of smugness that is not conducive to the continued progress of the community.
Here are examples of each of Durel's failures:
Cronyism: Early in his term, Durel worked hard to convince the Parish Council to change the rules for the hiring of police chiefs in the City of Lafayette. At Durel's insistence, the rules were changed to drop a series of requirements that would otherwise have prevented a lifelong friend from being named chief. The council waived the rules; Durel's pal Randy Hundley was named chief. That sad saga is still playing itself out in the criminal courts.
Had Durel worked as hard to get a proposed parish road tax passed in 2006 as he did to get Hundley named chief, we might actually have a chance for better traffic conditions in the parish. Given the opportunity, Durel worked hard for his friend, but was a slacker when it came to acting on behalf of the public good in the form of the road tax.
Making government work for his friends has been the hallmark of Durel's first term. Nowhere is that more pronounced than the 'welfare for developers' approach to public resources that Durel espouses and defends.
According to public information, Consolidated Government invests more than $3,000 in infrastructure for every lot in every subdivision that developers produce. Despite embracing the warm and fuzzy "smart growth" mantra, Durel staunchly refuses to make his developer friends pick up the tab for the public works that make their ventures so lucrative.
Development impact fees have proven to be effective tools to defray the infrastructure costs imposed by new developments in other communities. Durel will have none of it. Instead, Durel prefers to have Consolidated Government (i.e., the rest of us) absorb those costs and cut other services as a means to protect the bankbooks of his developer friends.
Durel is rewarded in full for his loyalty with campaign contributions (and other amenities) but the community as a whole pays the price through diminished infrastructure investments in other segments of the parish.
War on First Responders: Durel used his 2007 "State of the Parish" dog and pony show to talk about the importance of law enforcement in his administration. Yes, this is after the Hundley matter had come to light! Still, there stood Durel laying down the law and order gauntlet for anyone willing to spend $25 to hear him.
Funny thing is that while Durel was delivering those comments, his administration was continuing to stiff Lafayette police and firefighters over millions in back pay they are owed for money illegally withheld from them. The suit has been hanging out there for eight years, half of those years on Durel's watch.
So, Durel manipulates the hiring process to get a crony appointed police chief while stiffing policemen (and firefighters) on money the Louisiana Supreme Court says they are owed. Meanwhile, out of the other side of his mouth, Durel is championing his commitment to law and order. Sweet.
No doubt the money needed to pay the police and firefighters is a significant chunk of change, but how much is city/parish government subsidizing developers each year? Maybe police and firefighters would have a better shot at getting paid if they called themselves 'developers' instead of 'public servants'?
Failure to Lead: The top elected official represents everyone in the district, whether they like it or not — including those who didn't support the election of that official.
Durel as city/parish president has never gotten this. He won election in 2003 by about 4 percent of the vote. He was elected by the Southside. He has governed as though he is president of the Southside, not the entire parish. Nowhere is that more evident than on the matter of race relations. Durel's greatest failure as city/parish president has been in the area of race relations.
Durel fiddled while the Martin Luther King street naming fiasco burned through the council and, in the process, the community. He let it smolder and consume what precious little good will existed between whites and blacks in Lafayette until that issue arose. In a startling lack of leadership, Durel spent no political capital among council members trying to get them to move (for the good of the community) beyond the petty grudges they held against each other.
This episode demonstrated that Durel has not grown into the office; instead, he's proven that you can take the boy out of the Southside, but you can't take the Southside out of the boy.
The reason this matters is that Lafayette has put its dollars where Richard Florida's words have been. Florida is the author of "The Rise of the Creative Class," which holds that communities that will flourish in this century are those that can attract the innovators who are driving the new economy. In Florida's formula, in order to succeed communities will have to have what he calls "the three Ts": talent, technology and tolerance.
Lafayette has invested a great deal developing talent and our technology but, as the King street-naming episode illustrated, tolerance here is in short supply. So, too, was Durel's leadership. A true leader would not have allowed the King thing to spiral out of control before getting involved. Lafayette paid a heavy price for the damage that episode did to our image as a progressive community. As a one-time event it's an aberration; but without a concerted effort to heal the rifts exposed and deepened by that episode long-term damage to our prospects to result.
Isolating Lafayette in the Legislature: The LUS fiber project is Durel's claim to fame. It's important to remember that the plan was waiting for him when he took office. To his credit he embraced the idea and his championing of that project is a big reason that the measure ultimately won voter approval and will be built.
However, Durel has cost Lafayette a considerable amount of money as well as good will across the state through his administration's mishandling of the attempts by BellSouth and Cox to kill this project.
The initial attempt to kill the project came in Baton Rouge where BellSouth and Cox worked to pass a law that would have banned municipalities from getting into the bandwidth business. A delegation from Lafayette supporting the LUS project met with Governor Blanco. She reportedly told them that she would veto any bill that Lafayette felt it could not live with.
The problem came when Durel and his advisors accepted a bill (now law as the "Municipal Fair Competition Act") that not only provided a platform for a series of lawsuits against Lafayette, but also erected barriers that will prevent other Louisiana cities with municipally owned utility systems from launching ventures similar to the LUS fiber project.
Durel and his team decided the terms of the bill were not onerous enough to stop their project. They accepted the terms, in effect burning the bandwidth bridge behind them, leaving other municipalities stranded on the far side of the digital divide.
BellSouth, Cox and their allies then used the provisions in the law accepted by Durel and Company to file a series of lawsuits against the LUS project that ended up costing Lafayette tax payers about $2 million in legal fees.
But, Durel was not finished selling out other communities in the state on bandwidth issues.
In 2006, BellSouth/AT&T was pushing for a statewide video franchise agreement, which would have taken control of rights of way away from municipalities and property owners and handed it to the phone company. While the Louisiana Municipal Association, the Police Jury Association of Louisiana and property owner groups tried to fight this bill, Lafayette sat on the sidelines. Why? Because Durel believed he had reached an agreement with BellSouth/AT&T where Lafayette would not to fight the proposed law in exchange for the phone giant not bringing further lawsuits against the LUS project.
To the surprise of no one outside of the Durel administration, the lawsuits continued, but Lafayette succeeded in earning a fair amount of ill will because of its continued willingness under Durel to sell out other communities in the hope of short-term advantage.
Flash forward to the 2007 session of the Legislature when Durel touted an idea to stimulate road building in fast-growing communities by allowing sales taxes from auto sales to remain in the possession of local governments, rather than going to Baton Rouge.
The legislation ties together key elements of the worst aspects of Durel's first term. On the one hand, Lafayette legislators and Durel say they don't want to play the dirty money games in Baton Rouge; on the other hand, they make a grab for state money to build roads. Even after that defeat, Durel seems no more inclined to do the sales job of winning support for local financing for our own road projects here through either taxes or development fees. Who's going to pay for these roads? Santa Claus is booked through December and I hear the Easter Bunny lost a bundle in sub-prime mortgages.
The failure of the road legislation demonstrated the extent to which Lafayette under Durel has become isolated in the workings of the Legislature. Despite the fact that Lafayette had a resident as the sitting governor and with another resident serving as Commissioner of Administration local government has virtually nothing to show for four years of what should have been an ideal political situation.
It's really pretty astounding that the city/parish president couldn't find a way to work with this governor. Just about every other local government leader has figured out how to get local projects funded in Baton Rouge. Not Durel. A better opportunity for progress will not likely present itself for this community anytime soon.
So, cronyism, government for the benefit of the few, war on first responders, failure to lead the community on issues that go to the heart of our ability to advance, and pursuing a strategy that has squandered political advantage in state government are what Durel has given us in his first term.
That Durel's record is considered 'good enough for Lafayette' and its business community indicates a lack of imagination that does not bode well for the future of the parish. Progress comes from not being willing to settle for 'good enough,' from not being willing to accept the status quo. Smug self-satisfaction is not the hallmark of a community on the rise.
If this parish does, in fact, believe that we can't do any better than we are now, then we won't. Is this as good as it gets? We had better hope not.
Durel's first term has been characterized by cronyism, war on first responders, a failure to provide community leadership, and isolating Lafayette in the Legislature by repeatedly selling out the long-term interests of other communities for what were falsely believed to be Lafayette's short-term interests.
The tacit approval that the leadership of the community gives Durel despite these lapses indicates a sense of smugness that is not conducive to the continued progress of the community.
Here are examples of each of Durel's failures:
Cronyism: Early in his term, Durel worked hard to convince the Parish Council to change the rules for the hiring of police chiefs in the City of Lafayette. At Durel's insistence, the rules were changed to drop a series of requirements that would otherwise have prevented a lifelong friend from being named chief. The council waived the rules; Durel's pal Randy Hundley was named chief. That sad saga is still playing itself out in the criminal courts.
Had Durel worked as hard to get a proposed parish road tax passed in 2006 as he did to get Hundley named chief, we might actually have a chance for better traffic conditions in the parish. Given the opportunity, Durel worked hard for his friend, but was a slacker when it came to acting on behalf of the public good in the form of the road tax.
Making government work for his friends has been the hallmark of Durel's first term. Nowhere is that more pronounced than the 'welfare for developers' approach to public resources that Durel espouses and defends.
According to public information, Consolidated Government invests more than $3,000 in infrastructure for every lot in every subdivision that developers produce. Despite embracing the warm and fuzzy "smart growth" mantra, Durel staunchly refuses to make his developer friends pick up the tab for the public works that make their ventures so lucrative.
Development impact fees have proven to be effective tools to defray the infrastructure costs imposed by new developments in other communities. Durel will have none of it. Instead, Durel prefers to have Consolidated Government (i.e., the rest of us) absorb those costs and cut other services as a means to protect the bankbooks of his developer friends.
Durel is rewarded in full for his loyalty with campaign contributions (and other amenities) but the community as a whole pays the price through diminished infrastructure investments in other segments of the parish.
War on First Responders: Durel used his 2007 "State of the Parish" dog and pony show to talk about the importance of law enforcement in his administration. Yes, this is after the Hundley matter had come to light! Still, there stood Durel laying down the law and order gauntlet for anyone willing to spend $25 to hear him.
Funny thing is that while Durel was delivering those comments, his administration was continuing to stiff Lafayette police and firefighters over millions in back pay they are owed for money illegally withheld from them. The suit has been hanging out there for eight years, half of those years on Durel's watch.
So, Durel manipulates the hiring process to get a crony appointed police chief while stiffing policemen (and firefighters) on money the Louisiana Supreme Court says they are owed. Meanwhile, out of the other side of his mouth, Durel is championing his commitment to law and order. Sweet.
No doubt the money needed to pay the police and firefighters is a significant chunk of change, but how much is city/parish government subsidizing developers each year? Maybe police and firefighters would have a better shot at getting paid if they called themselves 'developers' instead of 'public servants'?
Failure to Lead: The top elected official represents everyone in the district, whether they like it or not — including those who didn't support the election of that official.
Durel as city/parish president has never gotten this. He won election in 2003 by about 4 percent of the vote. He was elected by the Southside. He has governed as though he is president of the Southside, not the entire parish. Nowhere is that more evident than on the matter of race relations. Durel's greatest failure as city/parish president has been in the area of race relations.
Durel fiddled while the Martin Luther King street naming fiasco burned through the council and, in the process, the community. He let it smolder and consume what precious little good will existed between whites and blacks in Lafayette until that issue arose. In a startling lack of leadership, Durel spent no political capital among council members trying to get them to move (for the good of the community) beyond the petty grudges they held against each other.
This episode demonstrated that Durel has not grown into the office; instead, he's proven that you can take the boy out of the Southside, but you can't take the Southside out of the boy.
The reason this matters is that Lafayette has put its dollars where Richard Florida's words have been. Florida is the author of "The Rise of the Creative Class," which holds that communities that will flourish in this century are those that can attract the innovators who are driving the new economy. In Florida's formula, in order to succeed communities will have to have what he calls "the three Ts": talent, technology and tolerance.
Lafayette has invested a great deal developing talent and our technology but, as the King street-naming episode illustrated, tolerance here is in short supply. So, too, was Durel's leadership. A true leader would not have allowed the King thing to spiral out of control before getting involved. Lafayette paid a heavy price for the damage that episode did to our image as a progressive community. As a one-time event it's an aberration; but without a concerted effort to heal the rifts exposed and deepened by that episode long-term damage to our prospects to result.
Isolating Lafayette in the Legislature: The LUS fiber project is Durel's claim to fame. It's important to remember that the plan was waiting for him when he took office. To his credit he embraced the idea and his championing of that project is a big reason that the measure ultimately won voter approval and will be built.
However, Durel has cost Lafayette a considerable amount of money as well as good will across the state through his administration's mishandling of the attempts by BellSouth and Cox to kill this project.
The initial attempt to kill the project came in Baton Rouge where BellSouth and Cox worked to pass a law that would have banned municipalities from getting into the bandwidth business. A delegation from Lafayette supporting the LUS project met with Governor Blanco. She reportedly told them that she would veto any bill that Lafayette felt it could not live with.
The problem came when Durel and his advisors accepted a bill (now law as the "Municipal Fair Competition Act") that not only provided a platform for a series of lawsuits against Lafayette, but also erected barriers that will prevent other Louisiana cities with municipally owned utility systems from launching ventures similar to the LUS fiber project.
Durel and his team decided the terms of the bill were not onerous enough to stop their project. They accepted the terms, in effect burning the bandwidth bridge behind them, leaving other municipalities stranded on the far side of the digital divide.
BellSouth, Cox and their allies then used the provisions in the law accepted by Durel and Company to file a series of lawsuits against the LUS project that ended up costing Lafayette tax payers about $2 million in legal fees.
But, Durel was not finished selling out other communities in the state on bandwidth issues.
In 2006, BellSouth/AT&T was pushing for a statewide video franchise agreement, which would have taken control of rights of way away from municipalities and property owners and handed it to the phone company. While the Louisiana Municipal Association, the Police Jury Association of Louisiana and property owner groups tried to fight this bill, Lafayette sat on the sidelines. Why? Because Durel believed he had reached an agreement with BellSouth/AT&T where Lafayette would not to fight the proposed law in exchange for the phone giant not bringing further lawsuits against the LUS project.
To the surprise of no one outside of the Durel administration, the lawsuits continued, but Lafayette succeeded in earning a fair amount of ill will because of its continued willingness under Durel to sell out other communities in the hope of short-term advantage.
Flash forward to the 2007 session of the Legislature when Durel touted an idea to stimulate road building in fast-growing communities by allowing sales taxes from auto sales to remain in the possession of local governments, rather than going to Baton Rouge.
The legislation ties together key elements of the worst aspects of Durel's first term. On the one hand, Lafayette legislators and Durel say they don't want to play the dirty money games in Baton Rouge; on the other hand, they make a grab for state money to build roads. Even after that defeat, Durel seems no more inclined to do the sales job of winning support for local financing for our own road projects here through either taxes or development fees. Who's going to pay for these roads? Santa Claus is booked through December and I hear the Easter Bunny lost a bundle in sub-prime mortgages.
The failure of the road legislation demonstrated the extent to which Lafayette under Durel has become isolated in the workings of the Legislature. Despite the fact that Lafayette had a resident as the sitting governor and with another resident serving as Commissioner of Administration local government has virtually nothing to show for four years of what should have been an ideal political situation.
It's really pretty astounding that the city/parish president couldn't find a way to work with this governor. Just about every other local government leader has figured out how to get local projects funded in Baton Rouge. Not Durel. A better opportunity for progress will not likely present itself for this community anytime soon.
So, cronyism, government for the benefit of the few, war on first responders, failure to lead the community on issues that go to the heart of our ability to advance, and pursuing a strategy that has squandered political advantage in state government are what Durel has given us in his first term.
That Durel's record is considered 'good enough for Lafayette' and its business community indicates a lack of imagination that does not bode well for the future of the parish. Progress comes from not being willing to settle for 'good enough,' from not being willing to accept the status quo. Smug self-satisfaction is not the hallmark of a community on the rise.
If this parish does, in fact, believe that we can't do any better than we are now, then we won't. Is this as good as it gets? We had better hope not.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Florida heads to Canada; Who will head ULL?
"Creative Class" author and economist Richard Florida is doing a reverse snow bird and heading north to the University of Toronto's up-and-coming Rotman School of Management.
The Washington Post story on Florida's decision to leave George Mason University in Virgninia provides this information:
One possibility that has opened up with the announced retirement of ULL President Ray Authement is that the new president (whoever he or she may be) will have the opportunity to energize faculty recruitment (hell, energizing anything on campus would be an improvement).
The horse farm fiasco is not what tarnished Authement's legacy at the university. That episode was symptomatic of the larger problem which was the loss of his ability to distinguish the interests of the university from his own interests and those of his circle of friends.
After 30-plus years of the same management, my hope is that the next president of ULL will be someone young and out to make a name for themselves (much like Authement was when he first took the post). Rather than looking to build an empire here, the university would really be best served if the next president is some energetic person who comes here looking to shake the place up; someone seeking create some a buzz about the university that matches the growing buzz about Lafayette in business and technology circles around the country, and then used their good work here to move on to something else.
There's some serious plaque in the academic and operational arteries of ULL. What this university needs is the anti-Authement: someone with no ties to the status quo and with an eye to letting their great work here serve as a spring board to something bigger and better down the road.
ULL won't thrive if the job of president comes to be viewed as the last stop before retirement for someone who made their reputation back in the day. And, if ULL doesn't thrive, it will be a brake on Lafayette and the region at a time when our community needs ULL to be contributing to the forward thrust.
The Washington Post story on Florida's decision to leave George Mason University in Virgninia provides this information:
Florida, who joined GMU in 2004, has theorized that smart, innovative thinkers -- such as engineers, writers, entertainers and artists -- are crucial to the success of U.S. cities. He expounded those theories in two top-selling books: "The Rise of the Creative Class," published in 2002, and "The Flight of the Creative Class," published in 2005.So, Florida, who spoke in Lafayette a couple of years ago as part of The Independent/IberiaBank speaker series, will still be looking at issues that have significance for those of us in Lafayette who are committed to driving change and growth using technology and innovation.
His departure comes just a few months after GMU featured him in a Business Week advertisement touting the Washington region's blend of cultural, sports, academic and service amenities as being a magnet for the best and brightest young people.
At Rotman, Florida will be a professor of business economics and academic director of the school's newly established Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage and Prosperity, a $120 million project to study how localities make themselves more attractive to companies and top-flight talent.
One possibility that has opened up with the announced retirement of ULL President Ray Authement is that the new president (whoever he or she may be) will have the opportunity to energize faculty recruitment (hell, energizing anything on campus would be an improvement).
The horse farm fiasco is not what tarnished Authement's legacy at the university. That episode was symptomatic of the larger problem which was the loss of his ability to distinguish the interests of the university from his own interests and those of his circle of friends.
After 30-plus years of the same management, my hope is that the next president of ULL will be someone young and out to make a name for themselves (much like Authement was when he first took the post). Rather than looking to build an empire here, the university would really be best served if the next president is some energetic person who comes here looking to shake the place up; someone seeking create some a buzz about the university that matches the growing buzz about Lafayette in business and technology circles around the country, and then used their good work here to move on to something else.
There's some serious plaque in the academic and operational arteries of ULL. What this university needs is the anti-Authement: someone with no ties to the status quo and with an eye to letting their great work here serve as a spring board to something bigger and better down the road.
ULL won't thrive if the job of president comes to be viewed as the last stop before retirement for someone who made their reputation back in the day. And, if ULL doesn't thrive, it will be a brake on Lafayette and the region at a time when our community needs ULL to be contributing to the forward thrust.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Acadiana Counters the Filibuster
Lafayette and Acadiana joined with MoveOn.org members at about 130 sites on Tuesday evening to calling on Republicans in the U.S. Senate to end their obstruction to changes in U.S. policy in Iraq. The event was held in front of the John Shaw Federal Courthouse in downtown Lafayette. It drew about 20 participants including Republicans, veterans, members of Pax Christi, and, of course, members of MoveOn.org.
We also drew three counter-counter-filibusterers (people who support the war). As the event progressed, they ended up being badly outnumbered.
It was a very moving event and one that drew significant media attention. Here's the story from The Advocate. Here's the story from The Daily Advertiser.
Our target was disgraced Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Vitter pretended to work in Washington on Tuesday, being hounded by the media for answers to questions he refuses to take.
If this man is serious about redeeming his political soul, one possible path would be to demonstrate that he is willing to put the good of the country ahead the good of his party and stop defending a failed policy in Iraq that has destabilized South Asia and the Middle East, turned Iraq in to a recruiting weapon for Al Queida, and imperiling the viability of the Army and Marines, as well as the safety of the country.
Other Republicans are listening. Vitter has yet to demonstrate that he cares for anything but saving his own skin.
We also drew three counter-counter-filibusterers (people who support the war). As the event progressed, they ended up being badly outnumbered.
It was a very moving event and one that drew significant media attention. Here's the story from The Advocate. Here's the story from The Daily Advertiser.
Our target was disgraced Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Vitter pretended to work in Washington on Tuesday, being hounded by the media for answers to questions he refuses to take.
If this man is serious about redeeming his political soul, one possible path would be to demonstrate that he is willing to put the good of the country ahead the good of his party and stop defending a failed policy in Iraq that has destabilized South Asia and the Middle East, turned Iraq in to a recruiting weapon for Al Queida, and imperiling the viability of the Army and Marines, as well as the safety of the country.
Other Republicans are listening. Vitter has yet to demonstrate that he cares for anything but saving his own skin.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Blanco Reaffirms Louisiana Commitment to Sanctity of Sperm
Governor Kathleen Blanco signed yet another act of the Louisiana Legislature that reaffirms the second class status of women under Louisiana law.
You can read about the current law here.
As you may recall, last year the Legislature passed and Blanco signed a law that apes a South Dakota law that bans abortions — even when the life of the mother is at stake — without exceptions for rape and incest victims.
Let's see. Among the worst states in quality of education. Among the highest states with the percentage of people not covered by health insurance. The state with the highest rate of incarceration. Among the highest rates of poverty. And the toughest abortion laws in the country.
Looks like that last one is a good fit with the rest of that list.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Bas Clas "Fireworks" at the Blue Moon Saloon
For about as long as I can remember I've been friends with one or more of the Picous, beginning with Skip Picou whom I met at age 5.
His cousins, Donnie and Steve, have played music all of their lives. For the past 30 years or so, they've been the core of the band Bas Clas (that's French for "low class").
Although the band hasn't played much over the past decade, they managed to meet in Lafayette last December and play a gig at the Blue Moon Saloon. I managed to video a good portion of that event.
This is the first of what could be a series videos from that event.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Musical Treats: Re-issues from Traveling Wilburys and Elvis Costello & The Attractions
The past two months have literally brought music to my ears in the form of re-issues of music from the Traveling Wilburys and from Elvis Costello & The Attractions. What treats!!!
The Traveling Wilburys – George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn and Bob Dylan (along with drummer Jim Keltner) recorded a couple of albums in the mid to late 1980s. The fact that they worked under assumed names and just sort of fell together by accident gave the venture a casualness that readily translated to the music. They weren't out to impress anyone; they just wanted to make some music together. And it was great!
Just after the first album was released, Roy Orbison died. The group put out a second album (called Volume 3), then went dormant. The music went out of print.
George Harrison died in 2001 and, according to accounts, he had led the group by handling the business end of the operation (which was pretty complicated since all the musicians were on different record labels).
For some reason, I'd been looking for their music in recent months — though, it wasn't exactly a quest. I check on iTunes periodically, to no avail. Occasional trips to the music section at Barnes & Noble were equally unproductive. Until, I saw this story on CNN.com a couple of days ago!
Rhino Music put together the CD version of the release of the two Wilbury albums as well as DVD versions that include videos of a few of the band's songs.
What a great company Rhino is!!! It was their re-issue of Get Happy!! (which included 30 — count 'em, 30! — bonus tracks) that a few months ago renewed my appreciation for just how great Elvis Costello & The Attractions were (when he plays with The Imposters these days, it's The Attractions with a different bassist).
That release, purchased at Barnes & Noble, sent me on a quest for a digital version of one of the great rock recordings of all time: Elvis Costello & The Attractions' version of Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding. Again, this was not available in its original version on iTunes or any other (legal) online service. Until last month, when digital versions of remastered early recordings from the band were re-issued by Hip-O/Universal Music Enterprises.
Well, it's all there now!
Costello's lyrics and word-play have always been his strength, regardless of the style of music he's produced. But, what comes crashing through these recordings is just how powerful a band The Attractions were. With Costello playing guitar, it's a four-piece band. The Thomas brothers provide the rhythm section. Pete Thomas is, in Costello's estimation, the best rock drummer of all time. The band's induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame revealed that Costello and bassist Bruce Thomas didn't get along well. Bruce Thomas, in fact, did not play during the live set that was part of their induction into the Hall.
But, for my money, the most distinctive player in the band is keyboardist Steve Nieve (pronounced Ny-eve). His mastery of the keyboards gives those early albums their distinctive sound. His work on the Hammond B3 with Costello and Allen Toussaint on The River In Reverse demonstrates a versatility and a feel for New Orleans music that is rare even among locals. The way Nieve's playing complements and blends with Toussaint's piano work is what makes that album so moving — in every sense of the word! He's got a website, which includes a blog.
How can anyone listen to "Tears, Tears and More Tears" and not dance? That song is part of three successive cuts on the album that constitute the irresistible core of the album. "Tears" is a Toussaint original. It is followed by Costello's "The Sharpest Thorn" which is followed by Toussaint's "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further" in which Toussaint makes his first vocal appearance on the album.
Back to the Costello re-issues: I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. I once owned the vinyl versions of most of these re-issues. "Imperial Bedroom" is a lush recording where Nieve's piano work gives the album a polish not common in recordings of any kind. "Armed Forces" has the same sonic qualities, although the lyrics focus on more topical subjects. There's a "Best Of — The First 10 Years" that provides a decent (though too small) sampling of the first decade of Costello's work.
It's instances like this, though, that the ability to buy singles that iTunes provides really comes in handy. Go ahead! Roam around the catalog; sample the singles from Costello & The Attractions as well as The Traveling Wilburys. Bet you can't buy just one!
The Traveling Wilburys – George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn and Bob Dylan (along with drummer Jim Keltner) recorded a couple of albums in the mid to late 1980s. The fact that they worked under assumed names and just sort of fell together by accident gave the venture a casualness that readily translated to the music. They weren't out to impress anyone; they just wanted to make some music together. And it was great!
Just after the first album was released, Roy Orbison died. The group put out a second album (called Volume 3), then went dormant. The music went out of print.
George Harrison died in 2001 and, according to accounts, he had led the group by handling the business end of the operation (which was pretty complicated since all the musicians were on different record labels).
For some reason, I'd been looking for their music in recent months — though, it wasn't exactly a quest. I check on iTunes periodically, to no avail. Occasional trips to the music section at Barnes & Noble were equally unproductive. Until, I saw this story on CNN.com a couple of days ago!
Rhino Music put together the CD version of the release of the two Wilbury albums as well as DVD versions that include videos of a few of the band's songs.
What a great company Rhino is!!! It was their re-issue of Get Happy!! (which included 30 — count 'em, 30! — bonus tracks) that a few months ago renewed my appreciation for just how great Elvis Costello & The Attractions were (when he plays with The Imposters these days, it's The Attractions with a different bassist).
That release, purchased at Barnes & Noble, sent me on a quest for a digital version of one of the great rock recordings of all time: Elvis Costello & The Attractions' version of Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding. Again, this was not available in its original version on iTunes or any other (legal) online service. Until last month, when digital versions of remastered early recordings from the band were re-issued by Hip-O/Universal Music Enterprises.
Well, it's all there now!
Costello's lyrics and word-play have always been his strength, regardless of the style of music he's produced. But, what comes crashing through these recordings is just how powerful a band The Attractions were. With Costello playing guitar, it's a four-piece band. The Thomas brothers provide the rhythm section. Pete Thomas is, in Costello's estimation, the best rock drummer of all time. The band's induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame revealed that Costello and bassist Bruce Thomas didn't get along well. Bruce Thomas, in fact, did not play during the live set that was part of their induction into the Hall.
But, for my money, the most distinctive player in the band is keyboardist Steve Nieve (pronounced Ny-eve). His mastery of the keyboards gives those early albums their distinctive sound. His work on the Hammond B3 with Costello and Allen Toussaint on The River In Reverse demonstrates a versatility and a feel for New Orleans music that is rare even among locals. The way Nieve's playing complements and blends with Toussaint's piano work is what makes that album so moving — in every sense of the word! He's got a website, which includes a blog.
How can anyone listen to "Tears, Tears and More Tears" and not dance? That song is part of three successive cuts on the album that constitute the irresistible core of the album. "Tears" is a Toussaint original. It is followed by Costello's "The Sharpest Thorn" which is followed by Toussaint's "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further" in which Toussaint makes his first vocal appearance on the album.
Back to the Costello re-issues: I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. I once owned the vinyl versions of most of these re-issues. "Imperial Bedroom" is a lush recording where Nieve's piano work gives the album a polish not common in recordings of any kind. "Armed Forces" has the same sonic qualities, although the lyrics focus on more topical subjects. There's a "Best Of — The First 10 Years" that provides a decent (though too small) sampling of the first decade of Costello's work.
It's instances like this, though, that the ability to buy singles that iTunes provides really comes in handy. Go ahead! Roam around the catalog; sample the singles from Costello & The Attractions as well as The Traveling Wilburys. Bet you can't buy just one!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Senate Republicans Defend Corruption of the Justice Department
Senate Republicans, including Louisiana's David Vitter, blocked an attempt by 53 other senators to vote that they had lost confidence that the disgraced, incompetent, law-breaking rule of the U.S. Department of Justice by political hack Alberto Gonzales.
I called the offices of Senator Vitter and Senator Landrieu today to express my support for the no confidence measure.
The call to Landrieu's office was first. Starting with my name and the city in which I live, I explained to the person who took the call, that I was calling to urge Senator Landrieu to vote in favor of the no confidence measure. When I finished talking, the person taking the call thanked me and hung up.
The call to Vitter's office was pretty similar, with the exception that after I stated my intentions, the person on the phone asked for my address.
Vitter's office gets points for their handling of the call, but Landrieu wins on the merits of her vote.
Vitter is supposed to be a smart guy (Rhodes Scholar and all that), but he's been swimming close to the Republican corruption since he first became a member of Congress (I'd like to know more about his dealings with Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff).
This vote indicates that Vitter puts partisanship above the rule of law and the Constitution. Still, he tries to get away with positioning himself as a conservative. This is a sure indication that he thinks we're all idiots.
I called the offices of Senator Vitter and Senator Landrieu today to express my support for the no confidence measure.
The call to Landrieu's office was first. Starting with my name and the city in which I live, I explained to the person who took the call, that I was calling to urge Senator Landrieu to vote in favor of the no confidence measure. When I finished talking, the person taking the call thanked me and hung up.
The call to Vitter's office was pretty similar, with the exception that after I stated my intentions, the person on the phone asked for my address.
Vitter's office gets points for their handling of the call, but Landrieu wins on the merits of her vote.
Vitter is supposed to be a smart guy (Rhodes Scholar and all that), but he's been swimming close to the Republican corruption since he first became a member of Congress (I'd like to know more about his dealings with Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff).
This vote indicates that Vitter puts partisanship above the rule of law and the Constitution. Still, he tries to get away with positioning himself as a conservative. This is a sure indication that he thinks we're all idiots.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Warner Music Group attacks Apple's DRM-free music?
A couple of months ago, I found AOL's webcast of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies at their site. More importantly (to me, anyway) I also found archives of earlier inductions — including Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
Included in the list of archived footage was a clip of Costello and the Attractions playing Nick Lowe's "What's so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding."
I'd periodically returned to that page to view the clip since then.
I went back tonight, clicked on the link and the page loaded, but included this message: "We're sorry, content protected by Digital Rights Management is not available on the Macintosh."
Could this be the Warner Music Group's revenge against Apple's DRM-Free music?
Any word of other sites engaging in this kind of behavior?
Included in the list of archived footage was a clip of Costello and the Attractions playing Nick Lowe's "What's so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding."
I'd periodically returned to that page to view the clip since then.
I went back tonight, clicked on the link and the page loaded, but included this message: "We're sorry, content protected by Digital Rights Management is not available on the Macintosh."
Could this be the Warner Music Group's revenge against Apple's DRM-Free music?
Any word of other sites engaging in this kind of behavior?
Monday, May 28, 2007
Louisiana Marines Heading to Iraq Civil War
The Baton Rouge Advocate reported on Monday that 100 Marine Reservists from the Baton Rouge area shipped out for four months of training before heading to a September arrival in Iraq.
Had anyone in Louisiana's congressional delegation other than Congressman William Jefferson voted against the latest blank check for the Bush administration's war on and occupation of Iraq, those soldiers might not have had to go there, as the cut off for funding in the original bill (which was vetoed by Bush) would have cut off funding for that war/occupation at the end of September.
But, Democrats Mary Landrieu and Charlie Melancon joined other key Democrats to give Bush a victory and continue the ruinous policies that are wrecking our military and spreading Islamic terrorism around the globe.
Had congressional Democrats (and even Republicans) bothered to listen to the troops serving in Iraq, they might well have voted differently. The New York Times on Monday ran a story that included interviews with members of the 82nd Airborne Division, some of whom are on their third deployment in Iraq. Here are some quotes:
It is not just Bush and Cheney's war anymore, though. The Democrats who voted to allow continued funding of the war without any restraints on the administration now own the war, too. And they will have to answer for the lives that will be lost as a result of their votes.
On Memorial Day, the President made his annual pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington to honor the nation's war dead. The Washington Post included this quote in a caption that ran with the photo of him placing a wreath as part of the ceremonies:
Washington Monthly's blog contained a link to a site with a video based on Mark Twain's "The War Prayer." Twain's text is also found there and I found it a lot more powerful than the video, but here's the relevant portion, where God's representative explains to a congregation just what their prayers for victory entail:
Had anyone in Louisiana's congressional delegation other than Congressman William Jefferson voted against the latest blank check for the Bush administration's war on and occupation of Iraq, those soldiers might not have had to go there, as the cut off for funding in the original bill (which was vetoed by Bush) would have cut off funding for that war/occupation at the end of September.
But, Democrats Mary Landrieu and Charlie Melancon joined other key Democrats to give Bush a victory and continue the ruinous policies that are wrecking our military and spreading Islamic terrorism around the globe.
Had congressional Democrats (and even Republicans) bothered to listen to the troops serving in Iraq, they might well have voted differently. The New York Times on Monday ran a story that included interviews with members of the 82nd Airborne Division, some of whom are on their third deployment in Iraq. Here are some quotes:
BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.And this:
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.
They had seen shadowy militia commanders installed as Iraqi Army officers, they said, had come under increasing attack from roadside bombs — planted within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints — and had fought against Iraqi soldiers whom they thought were their allies.The change in the attitudes of the members of this unit came in an April 29 battle.
“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”
It is not a question of loyalty, the soldiers insist. Sergeant Safstrom, for example, comes from a thoroughly military family. His mother and father have served in the armed forces, as have his three sisters, one brother and several uncles. One week after the Sept. 11 attacks, he walked into a recruiter’s office and joined the Army.
“You guys want to start a fight in my backyard, I got something for you,” he recalls thinking at the time.
But in Sergeant Safstrom’s view, the American presence is futile. “If we stayed here for 5, even 10 more years, the day we leave here these guys will go crazy,” he said. “It would go straight into a civil war. That’s how it feels, like we’re putting a Band-Aid on this country until we leave here.”
On April 29, a Delta Company patrol was responding to a tip at Al Sadr mosque, a short distance from its base. The soldiers saw men in the distance erecting barricades that they set ablaze, and the streets emptied out quickly. Then a militia, believed to be the Mahdi Army, began firing at them from rooftops and windows.Word has it that by the time those Louisiana Marine Reservists reach Iraq, the Bush administration will be well into a second surge that will bring a record number of U.S. combat troops into the theater there. More lives will be wasted as the Bush administration tries to run out the clock on its tenure without having to admit its failures in Iraq.
Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, jumped into his Humvee to join his fellow soldiers, racing through abandoned Iraqi Army and police checkpoints to the battle site.
He and his squad maneuvered their Humvees through alleyways and side streets, firing back at an estimated 60 insurgents during a gun battle that raged for two and a half hours. A rocket-propelled grenade glanced off Sergeant O’Flarity’s Humvee, failing to penetrate.
When the battle was over, Delta Company learned that among the enemy dead were at least two Iraqi Army soldiers that American forces had helped train and arm.
Captain Rogers admits, “The 29th was a watershed moment in a negative sense, because the Iraqi Army would not fight with us,” adding, “Some actually picked up weapons and fought against us.”
The battle changed the attitude among his soldiers toward the war, he said. “Before that fight, there were a few true believers.” Captain Rogers said. “After the 29th, I don’t think you’ll find a true believer in this unit. They’re paratroopers. There’s no question they’ll fulfill their mission. But they’re fighting now for pride in their unit, professionalism, loyalty to their fellow soldier and chain of command.”
To Sergeant O’Flarity, the Iraqi security forces are militias beholden to local leaders, not the Iraqi government. “Half of the Iraqi security forces are insurgents,” he said.
As for his views on the war, Sergeant O’Flarity said, “I don’t believe we should be here in the middle of a civil war.”
“We’ve all lost friends over here,” he said. “Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore. We’re serving our country and friends, but the only reason we go out every day is for each other.”
“I don’t want any more of my guys to get hurt or die,” he continued. “If it was something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this conflict, no, it’s not worth it.”
It is not just Bush and Cheney's war anymore, though. The Democrats who voted to allow continued funding of the war without any restraints on the administration now own the war, too. And they will have to answer for the lives that will be lost as a result of their votes.
On Memorial Day, the President made his annual pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington to honor the nation's war dead. The Washington Post included this quote in a caption that ran with the photo of him placing a wreath as part of the ceremonies:
"Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes - men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi," he said. "Like those who came before them, they did not want war, but they answered the call when it came. They believed in something larger than themselves. They fought for our country, and our country unites to mourn them as one."No, they did not want war, but Bush and Cheney sought it. Now Democrats have made it theirs.
Washington Monthly's blog contained a link to a site with a video based on Mark Twain's "The War Prayer." Twain's text is also found there and I found it a lot more powerful than the video, but here's the relevant portion, where God's representative explains to a congregation just what their prayers for victory entail:
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!Who will Congress and the President have die next for this mistaken war?
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Smoke, Mirrors and BS
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Governor Haley "Smug" Barbour's speech at the Delta Regional Authority's Third Annual Meeting in which he extolled the virtues of Gulf Coast residents in his state, in contrast to what he saw as demeaning neediness on the part of Louisiana residents (particularly in New Orleans) in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
Well, Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis, editors of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, a project of the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C., recently published an article in Salon magazine which peels the veneer off Barbour's myth of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's self-made recovery and reveals a much starker picture of life there today. (You'll have to watch a brief ad or pay their premium to go to the Salon story).
Here are a few nuggets:
Think about this for a minute in the context of what we've learned in recent weeks about the Bush administration's efforts to politicize the operation of the General Services Administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, FEMA — well, suffice it to say that the list goes on. Given that context, it should come as no surprise that the recovery process has been politicized, as well,and that Louisiana (and Governor Blanco) have paid a high price for that.
As anyone living in New Orleans will tell you, while this blatant partisanship has been the hallmark of the federal effort, Republicans in Louisiana have been quick to proclaim their commitment to a non-partisan recovery (at least until the statewide election season opened Bobby "The Opportunist" Jindal decided to make the Road Home Program funding his issue).
So, back to Mississippi Governor Smug:
Barbour continues to ignore the plight of struggling communities, while taking credit (at least in the speech he gave to the DRA) for the state government surplus and the economic surge that is taking place in other communities in the state:
That's his story and he's sticking to it. Just like Republicans in Louisiana are claiming that the problems with the recovery in the Katrina and Rita affected areas are Blanco's fault.
Nothing like folks who won't let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
Well, Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis, editors of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, a project of the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C., recently published an article in Salon magazine which peels the veneer off Barbour's myth of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's self-made recovery and reveals a much starker picture of life there today. (You'll have to watch a brief ad or pay their premium to go to the Salon story).
Here are a few nuggets:
Today, Hancock County and the rest of coastal Mississippi are 21 months into a recovery that has garnered Gov. Haley Barbour lavish praise. Governing magazine named Barbour its 2006 Public Official of the Year largely due to his supposed post-Katrina leadership and savvy, including his skill in convincing federal lawmakers to channel billions of relief dollars to the Magnolia State. As Billy Hewes III, a Republican official from Gulfport, said: "He is to Katrina what Rudy Giuliani was to 9/11." Outsiders might be surprised to learn then, that despite the plaudits, and despite the fact that Barbour's GOP connections seem to have won him a disproportionate share of relief money from Washington, post-Katrina recovery in some of the hardest-hit areas of the Mississippi coast is moving as fast as molasses in winter.You know it's bad when even a cronyism legacy like "Brownie" grasps the partisan nature of the recovery 'effort.'
In Hancock County, Rocky Pullman paints a bleak picture. The recovery is proceeding so slowly that, almost two years after the storm, most of his neighbors still can't get mail. Before Katrina, the majority of Pearlington residents used post-office boxes; but since no post offices -- or any other major city, county or school buildings in Hancock County -- have been rebuilt, they have to drive an hour round-trip to Bay St. Louis to pick up a letter.
Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee with close ties to the Bush administration, has definitely proved more successful than his maligned Louisiana counterpart, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in one respect: lobbying Washington for cash. In fact, Barbour's ability to steer a lopsided share of Katrina money to Mississippi has touched off a firestorm of outrage in Louisiana, which suffered considerably more destruction from the storm.
Consider the Gulf Coast housing crisis, one of the key issues that has kept nearly half the population of New Orleans from returning to the city since Katrina. More than 75 percent of the housing damage from the storm was in Louisiana, but Mississippi has received 70 percent of the funds through FEMA's Alternative Housing Pilot Program. Of the $388 million available, FEMA gave a Mississippi program offering upgraded trailers more than $275 million. Meanwhile, the agency awarded Louisiana's "Katrina Cottage" program, which features more permanent modular homes for storm victims, a mere $75 million.
It's not just housing. Mississippi is also slated to get 38 percent of federal hospital recovery funds, even though it lost just 79 beds compared to 2,600 lost in southern Louisiana, which will get 45 percent of the funds. Mississippi and Louisiana both received $95 million to offset losses in higher education, even though Louisiana was home to 75 percent of displaced students. The states also received $100 million each for K-12 students affected by the storms, despite the fact that 69 percent resided in Louisiana.
The disparity between the states' needs and the funding they received from Washington has been so glaring that even disgraced former FEMA director Michael Brown recently charged that politics played a role. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," Brown told students at Metropolitan College of New York in January.
Think about this for a minute in the context of what we've learned in recent weeks about the Bush administration's efforts to politicize the operation of the General Services Administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, FEMA — well, suffice it to say that the list goes on. Given that context, it should come as no surprise that the recovery process has been politicized, as well,and that Louisiana (and Governor Blanco) have paid a high price for that.
As anyone living in New Orleans will tell you, while this blatant partisanship has been the hallmark of the federal effort, Republicans in Louisiana have been quick to proclaim their commitment to a non-partisan recovery (at least until the statewide election season opened Bobby "The Opportunist" Jindal decided to make the Road Home Program funding his issue).
So, back to Mississippi Governor Smug:
For the residents of Hancock County, Barbour and Mississippi's ability to capture the lion's share of Katrina relief dollars makes the slow progress in their area all the more demoralizing. The county's 911 system still operates out of a trailer. Damaged wastewater and drainage systems frustrate hopes of a return to normalcy; earlier this month in Waveland, 16 miles east of Pearlington, a 9-and-a-half-foot alligator was found swimming in a drainage ditch next to a bus stop at 8 o'clock in the morning. Mayor Tommy Longo says the creatures freely roam throughout devastated residential areas.One of those barriers was the Stafford Act requirement that local governments put up a 25 percent match for disaster relief money. Governor Blanco and Senator Landrieu made getting Louisiana communities exempted from the Act their top personal priority. They succeeded. Mississippi communities will now benefit from their efforts. No doubt, Barbour will claim the credit.
Indeed, Hancock County was one of three Gulf Coast areas recently singled out as having "severe problems" by the Rockefeller Institute on Government and the Louisiana Public Affairs Council, with the towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis flat-out "struggling to survive."
Most important, Hancock leaders say, Mississippi leaders and their federal allies have failed to use their clout to tackle some of the most obvious barriers to rebuilding.
Barbour continues to ignore the plight of struggling communities, while taking credit (at least in the speech he gave to the DRA) for the state government surplus and the economic surge that is taking place in other communities in the state:
Parts of Mississippi are doing much better than Hancock County. The Rockefeller Institute report found that recovery "is well underway" in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula, and that there's actually been a post-Katrina economic boom in Jackson, Hattiesburg and Laurel.Yep. Communities in Mississippi are at risk of going under. Listening to Barbour talk, you'd have thought that this kind of thing could only happen in Louisiana.
And thanks to the economic boost in certain areas, Mississippi is now looking at a windfall in tax revenues. For the first six months of the 2007 budget year, general fund revenues were up 12.7 percent, and the Mississippi Legislative Budget Committee and the governor recently increased the estimate for the 2007 budget from $4.5 billion to nearly $4.7 billion, which means the state has an extra $192.7 million thanks to higher-than-expected tax collections largely from Katrina spending.
But under Barbour's leadership, the state has been unwilling to use its good fortune to help debt-ridden towns -- and some are at risk of going under.
That's his story and he's sticking to it. Just like Republicans in Louisiana are claiming that the problems with the recovery in the Katrina and Rita affected areas are Blanco's fault.
Nothing like folks who won't let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Blood Money
The new blank check that Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate gave to the Bush administration this week to continue the occupation of Iraq contains money and write-offs for storm-affected areas of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. Members of Louisiana's congressional delegation would have us believe that this is some great victory for the state.
It is not.
It is blood money.
It is the craven attempt of two of Louisiana's three congressional Democrats to provide some semblance respectability for their assumption of joint-ownership of the national disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. Democrats who voted for the supplemental appropriation for the war are now co-owners of the policy choices that are wrecking the Army.
Republicans like Senator David Vitter and Congressman/compulsive candidate Bobby Jindal took ownership of this war long-ago. Democrats in Louisiana ought to have expected more out of Senator Mary Landrieu and Congressman Charlie Melancon on this war; after all, Louisiana has paid a very steep price for this war in terms of lives lost in this war that was based on lies. That does not even bring into account the cost storm-ravaged Louisiana paid in 2005 when so much of our National Guard's equipment was in Iraq instead of being put to use in rescue and recovery efforts here. It also was revealed this week that the Bush administration had been warned by the CIA about the hazards of invading Iraq.
For the first three years of this war and occupation, the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to hold the Bush administration accountable for its policies in Iraq. With this vote, many Democrats have demonstrated that they are no more committed to accountability than the Republicans were.
It has become clear that the Bush administration has used the pretext of this war of choice as the basis to subvert constitutional law in this country, to violate civil liberties with impunity, and to abandon the rule of law. Democrats who voted to allow this occupation to continue without restraint have signed on to this process. Like the President, they have now violated the Constitution that their oaths of office committed them to defend and protect.
With this vote to continue funding the occupation of Iraq without any restraints on the administration's policies, Democrats have spent whatever moral and political capital they had won by posing as strong opponents of the administration's policies in Iraq. If Democrats cannot stand up to this administration now when nearly 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, when almost 2/3 of the people believe going to war was a mistake, when will they have the courage and conviction to do so?
Democratic voters need to wise up. This vote demonstrates that the presence of a "D" behind a candidate's name cannot be sufficient justification for support. Senator Landrieu and Congressman Melancon will run in party primaries in 2008. I hope members of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party will have the courage to challenge Landrieu and Melancon in those 2008 primaries in order to force them to account for the votes they just cast in support of this war.
Ask Landrieu and Melancon how they can justify asking our men and women in the armed forces to continue dying for a mistake.
It is not.
It is blood money.
It is the craven attempt of two of Louisiana's three congressional Democrats to provide some semblance respectability for their assumption of joint-ownership of the national disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. Democrats who voted for the supplemental appropriation for the war are now co-owners of the policy choices that are wrecking the Army.
Republicans like Senator David Vitter and Congressman/compulsive candidate Bobby Jindal took ownership of this war long-ago. Democrats in Louisiana ought to have expected more out of Senator Mary Landrieu and Congressman Charlie Melancon on this war; after all, Louisiana has paid a very steep price for this war in terms of lives lost in this war that was based on lies. That does not even bring into account the cost storm-ravaged Louisiana paid in 2005 when so much of our National Guard's equipment was in Iraq instead of being put to use in rescue and recovery efforts here. It also was revealed this week that the Bush administration had been warned by the CIA about the hazards of invading Iraq.
For the first three years of this war and occupation, the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to hold the Bush administration accountable for its policies in Iraq. With this vote, many Democrats have demonstrated that they are no more committed to accountability than the Republicans were.
It has become clear that the Bush administration has used the pretext of this war of choice as the basis to subvert constitutional law in this country, to violate civil liberties with impunity, and to abandon the rule of law. Democrats who voted to allow this occupation to continue without restraint have signed on to this process. Like the President, they have now violated the Constitution that their oaths of office committed them to defend and protect.
With this vote to continue funding the occupation of Iraq without any restraints on the administration's policies, Democrats have spent whatever moral and political capital they had won by posing as strong opponents of the administration's policies in Iraq. If Democrats cannot stand up to this administration now when nearly 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, when almost 2/3 of the people believe going to war was a mistake, when will they have the courage and conviction to do so?
Democratic voters need to wise up. This vote demonstrates that the presence of a "D" behind a candidate's name cannot be sufficient justification for support. Senator Landrieu and Congressman Melancon will run in party primaries in 2008. I hope members of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party will have the courage to challenge Landrieu and Melancon in those 2008 primaries in order to force them to account for the votes they just cast in support of this war.
Ask Landrieu and Melancon how they can justify asking our men and women in the armed forces to continue dying for a mistake.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Gospel According to Governor Smug
I went to Tunica, MS, this week for the Third Annual Meeting of the Delta Regional Authority. I had attended a meeting of theirs (held in conjunction with the Southern Technology Council) in January '06 in Jackson, MS. At that meeting, sewerage backed into the hotel, the Health Department shut down the kitchen between breakfast and lunch and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi addressed the gathering.
He was back on the agenda in Tunica and, in talking about the new Toyota plant his state just won (in the Tupelo area), Barbour blamed New Orleans' response to Katrina (at least as compared to Mississippi's) with helping the state win the manufacturing plant.
Barbour told the 250 or so people gathered for the DRA luncheon that Mississippi had borne the brunt of a great natural disaster, but "the people on the coast did not complain, did not seek to blame anyone; they just picked themselves up and went to work helping each other."
Barbour said that he'd heard people wonder why the media wasn't covering the Mississippi coast as it was New Orleans. He gave this explanation: "The media does not cover the story of a plane landing safely on time." He added that the media were attracted to New Orleans because of the slow recovery there.
Barbour said his wife had been down to the coast "on about 50 of the first 90 days after the storm hit, serving as my eyes and ears." Apparently, only photo ops with the President could draw the Governor down there.
The Governor's smug attitude about Mississippi's recovery versus that in New Orleans conveniently (for him) overlooks several relevant facts that he may or may not know.
First, the disaster in New Orleans was turned into a catastrophe through the combined actions and inactions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the people who built the defective levees that failed the city) and FEMA was was infested by the kind of rank cronyism that has come to be recognized as the hallmark of the Bush administration.
Second, for almost 60 days after Katrina hit, water that entered the city through those breached levees stood in the streets of New Orleans (about as many days that Barbour could get his wife to go to Gulf Coast, only consecutively).
Third, Louisiana's recovery effort was being deliberately sabotaged because of the fact that we have a Democratic governor (that fact was revealed in emails between the White House and FEMA and in testimony by former FEMA head Michael Brown). This is a particularly relevant fact in the wake off the revelations about the partisan nature in which the Justice Department has been run. Add to that the fact that Barbour is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the whiff of crony-driven favoritism enters into gagging range.
Pete Johnson, federal co-chair of the DRA, called Barbour "the best governor this state has ever had." If so, no wonder Mississippi is such a mess.
This is a governor who has twice vetoed legislation over the past two years that would have raised the tax on cigarattes while eliminating in whole or in part the sales tax on food in a state that ranks among the poorest in the country. Did I mention that Barbour was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry between the time he ran the RNC and the time he was elected governor of Mississippi. One has to ask if he's still being paid by them or has been promised a job by them once he leaves office to veto legislation that is so clearly in the interests of a large segment of his state's population.
So, this smug defender of corporate interests at the expense of the health of the people he allegedly serves thinks Toyota is going to his state because the people on the Gulf Coast didn't complain after Katrina. Well, perhaps if the Governor would have gone down there, he'd have heard the outrage about the insurance companies not paying on losses. Imagine how mad they'd have been and how loudly they would have complained if the federal government in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed them like they failed New Orleans.
No doubt if Barbour would have been around during the flood of 1927 he'd have 'tutt-tutted' the folks in his state who lost property, prosperity and lives when the Corps' levees failed on the Mississippi. Governor Barbour's attitude exemplifies the arrogance of ignorance that typifies so much of the conventional wisdom about New Orleans and Katrina. He's got his story and he's sticking to it, let the facts be damned.
Ironically, Barbour's comments preceded an address by Tom Piazza, author of the book "Why New Orleans Matters." Tellingly, Barbour did not stay to hear Piazza's speech.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Fox News Louisiana: Cog in the Republican Slime Machine
Well, isn't that convenient?
Fox stations across Louisiana have suddenly decided to get into the 'news' business just as Louisiana gets set to enter its statewide election cycle.
It's particularly interesting here in Lafayette where the Fox affiliate has been mired in bankruptcy proceedings but somehow managed to add the cost of a news bureau to its balance sheet.
The parent of these efforts — Fox News — has proven itself to be a propaganda machine that has no credibility as a news organization.
Guess it's just a coincidence that Fox decides to launch a news operation across the state at the same time that other national Republican organizations have targeted Louisiana as fertile ground for takeover.
Yep. Just a coincidence. Sort of like all those emails of Karl Rove being erased from the Republican National Committee's servers, no?
Fox stations across Louisiana have suddenly decided to get into the 'news' business just as Louisiana gets set to enter its statewide election cycle.
It's particularly interesting here in Lafayette where the Fox affiliate has been mired in bankruptcy proceedings but somehow managed to add the cost of a news bureau to its balance sheet.
The parent of these efforts — Fox News — has proven itself to be a propaganda machine that has no credibility as a news organization.
Guess it's just a coincidence that Fox decides to launch a news operation across the state at the same time that other national Republican organizations have targeted Louisiana as fertile ground for takeover.
Yep. Just a coincidence. Sort of like all those emails of Karl Rove being erased from the Republican National Committee's servers, no?
X Fest in Baton Rouge
Saturday, I took my daughter and a friend of her's to Baton Rouge to "X-Fest" — a six-band concert promoted by a Baton Rouge radio station (104.5/104.9 "The X") at the River Center (formerly The Centroplex).
The bands we saw were: Sayosin, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Pappa Roach, Jet, AFI (A Fire Inside), and The Killers.
The sound system was tuned for The Killers, but the only band among the opening bands that was even a bit interesting was Jet. The sound was too muddy to make a real assessment of what Jet show might sound like, though they are heavy on guitars, use a keyboard player sparingly, and generally know how to play.
The rest of the bands (except The Killers, which I'll get to in a minute) seemed to be covering ground between speed metal and, well, speed funk metal (like they might try to sound like Red Chili Peppers if only they knew how to play better).
I was familiar with at least one song from every band that played, because I listen to KLSU and to The X stations when I'm in the Baton Rouge area, which is frequently.
Very little dynamics in the music, but the kids (and there were a lot of them there, parents in tow) loved them, equating aerobic stamina with energy and skill. I tried explaining to my daughter and her friend how the bands were good in their own ways, but that — for the most part — they weren't good musicians. I didn't think they could play anything but what they were playing. I tried explaining this a couple of different ways and, I think, they kind of got it after the second (or maybe it was the third) try.
The Killers, though, are for real! I have a couple of their songs from "Sam's Town" and have heard a good bit of them on the radio. They can play AND they put on a good show. Light on the aerobics though. They had a five-piece lineup. The lead singer plays a little bit of keyboards (primarily some synthesizer, with a couple of piano intros and segments on a couple of songs). He also played bass on one song. The primary bass player played guitar on the song that the singer played bass on. There was a drummer and a lead guitarist, plus a guy who played guitar and keyboards, but hung back in the shadows.
I don't think I've ever heard/felt as much low end as I did over the seven-plus hours (uh-huh!) we were there. It was loud, but not painfully loud, primarily because so much of the power was in the low end and thanks in part to the fact that no one played really piercing guitar solos. It would have been interesting to have been outside the arena to see if it sounded like it felt — like being inside one of those cars with the massive sub-woofers rattling hood ornaments and dental bridges within a multi-vehicle/multi-lane range.
It was an interesting evening from a sociological standpoint as the age mix at the event was pretty broad. Clearly, the younger kids like the neo-headbanger stuff and their parents didn't want to send them off on their own to a concert on their own for what amounted to a full day. I know that's how I ended up being there for the entire show.
But, I would pay to see The Killers again and would encourage you gents to do so if you have the chance. I think they're going to be around for a while (at least by industry standards).
The Baton Rouge Advocate had a story on the concert, but I don't have that link.
The bands we saw were: Sayosin, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Pappa Roach, Jet, AFI (A Fire Inside), and The Killers.
The sound system was tuned for The Killers, but the only band among the opening bands that was even a bit interesting was Jet. The sound was too muddy to make a real assessment of what Jet show might sound like, though they are heavy on guitars, use a keyboard player sparingly, and generally know how to play.
The rest of the bands (except The Killers, which I'll get to in a minute) seemed to be covering ground between speed metal and, well, speed funk metal (like they might try to sound like Red Chili Peppers if only they knew how to play better).
I was familiar with at least one song from every band that played, because I listen to KLSU and to The X stations when I'm in the Baton Rouge area, which is frequently.
Very little dynamics in the music, but the kids (and there were a lot of them there, parents in tow) loved them, equating aerobic stamina with energy and skill. I tried explaining to my daughter and her friend how the bands were good in their own ways, but that — for the most part — they weren't good musicians. I didn't think they could play anything but what they were playing. I tried explaining this a couple of different ways and, I think, they kind of got it after the second (or maybe it was the third) try.
The Killers, though, are for real! I have a couple of their songs from "Sam's Town" and have heard a good bit of them on the radio. They can play AND they put on a good show. Light on the aerobics though. They had a five-piece lineup. The lead singer plays a little bit of keyboards (primarily some synthesizer, with a couple of piano intros and segments on a couple of songs). He also played bass on one song. The primary bass player played guitar on the song that the singer played bass on. There was a drummer and a lead guitarist, plus a guy who played guitar and keyboards, but hung back in the shadows.
I don't think I've ever heard/felt as much low end as I did over the seven-plus hours (uh-huh!) we were there. It was loud, but not painfully loud, primarily because so much of the power was in the low end and thanks in part to the fact that no one played really piercing guitar solos. It would have been interesting to have been outside the arena to see if it sounded like it felt — like being inside one of those cars with the massive sub-woofers rattling hood ornaments and dental bridges within a multi-vehicle/multi-lane range.
It was an interesting evening from a sociological standpoint as the age mix at the event was pretty broad. Clearly, the younger kids like the neo-headbanger stuff and their parents didn't want to send them off on their own to a concert on their own for what amounted to a full day. I know that's how I ended up being there for the entire show.
But, I would pay to see The Killers again and would encourage you gents to do so if you have the chance. I think they're going to be around for a while (at least by industry standards).
The Baton Rouge Advocate had a story on the concert, but I don't have that link.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Bruneau imitates Tauzin
Apparently, being a so-called 'conservative Republican' in Louisiana means standing up for the divine right of kings. OK, at the very least hereditary (read that 'dynastic') claims to political power.
We this courtesy of Friday's blatant attempt to manipulate the election process and calendar by long-time Republican state Representative Emile 'Peppi' Bruneau. Peppi, it seems, has grown weary of using his position at representative of the Lakeview area of New Orleans as a podium to flog whatever administration happened to lead (and that term must be used loosely) New Orleans. But, rather than serve out his term and let the electoral process run its course (Yes, we do have state elections this year), Peppi has announced his intention to resign effective the first day of the next session of the state Legislature.
The reason for this abrupt pull-out is that Peppi wants to help his son 'Jeb' get elected to succeeed him.
Apparently Peppi is afraid that Jeb might not be able to hold is own in a regular election, thus the early resignation which will necessitate a special election that will have a very short run-up time to the primary and run-0ff (March 10 primary; March 31 run-off).
Peppi is tearing a page out of the Billy Tauzin, Jr. play book. It was Tauzin Jr. who tried to get his son Billy Tauzin III elected to Congress from Louisiana's Third District in 2004. Big "Tauzin Congress" billboards filled the district, giving the distinc impression that incumbent Congressman Billy Tauzin was seeking re-election, rather than his boy (and BellSouth lobbyist) Billy III seeking election.
Funny how these Republicans can spout paeans to democracy and use that as justification for just about any action in some other part of the world but they appear to be deathly afraid of the real thing at work in their own back yards.
What is kind of shocking about this is that for 30 years in the House, Bruneau earned a reputation of railing against alleged manipulation of the political process by those he considered his opponents. He also railed against 'big guv'ment'. Yet, as he tries to ensure his son's succession, Peppi Bruneau has resorted to political manipulation and acting in a way that reflects nothing so much as one of the more recent big government boondoogles: No Child Left Behind.
Peppi! Who knew that for all these years you've just been impersonating a good government conservative. Certainly not your House District 94 constituents!
We this courtesy of Friday's blatant attempt to manipulate the election process and calendar by long-time Republican state Representative Emile 'Peppi' Bruneau. Peppi, it seems, has grown weary of using his position at representative of the Lakeview area of New Orleans as a podium to flog whatever administration happened to lead (and that term must be used loosely) New Orleans. But, rather than serve out his term and let the electoral process run its course (Yes, we do have state elections this year), Peppi has announced his intention to resign effective the first day of the next session of the state Legislature.
The reason for this abrupt pull-out is that Peppi wants to help his son 'Jeb' get elected to succeeed him.
Apparently Peppi is afraid that Jeb might not be able to hold is own in a regular election, thus the early resignation which will necessitate a special election that will have a very short run-up time to the primary and run-0ff (March 10 primary; March 31 run-off).
Peppi is tearing a page out of the Billy Tauzin, Jr. play book. It was Tauzin Jr. who tried to get his son Billy Tauzin III elected to Congress from Louisiana's Third District in 2004. Big "Tauzin Congress" billboards filled the district, giving the distinc impression that incumbent Congressman Billy Tauzin was seeking re-election, rather than his boy (and BellSouth lobbyist) Billy III seeking election.
Funny how these Republicans can spout paeans to democracy and use that as justification for just about any action in some other part of the world but they appear to be deathly afraid of the real thing at work in their own back yards.
What is kind of shocking about this is that for 30 years in the House, Bruneau earned a reputation of railing against alleged manipulation of the political process by those he considered his opponents. He also railed against 'big guv'ment'. Yet, as he tries to ensure his son's succession, Peppi Bruneau has resorted to political manipulation and acting in a way that reflects nothing so much as one of the more recent big government boondoogles: No Child Left Behind.
Peppi! Who knew that for all these years you've just been impersonating a good government conservative. Certainly not your House District 94 constituents!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)