There are 33 U.S. Senate seats up for grabs in 2008 -- 21 currently held by Republicans, 12 by Democrats. All but one of 13 Southern states (Florida being the exception) will choose a new senator in 2008.

Nationally, over a dozen likely won't be nail-biters, but by some estimates up to 20 could be competitive. Which Southern seats will be in play?

From the right, we have a good idea of what seats Republicans are targeting thanks to a copy of Karl Rove's PowerPoint presentation (pdf), which was presented to the General Services Administration this January, in apparent violation of the Hatch Act which prohibits partisan campaign activity on federal property. Here's how Rove's list breaks down:

ROVE: Senate seats held by Democrats, Republican targets
Arkansas
Louisiana

ROVE: Senate seats held by Republicans, vulnerable
Mississippi
Virginia

ROVE: Seats that are "not competitive"
Alabama
Georgia
Kentucky
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
West Virginia

From the left, we have a list today from Markos Moulitsas Zúniga at DailyKos of races that "are or might be interesting by Election Day 2008." He breaks them into tiers of competitiveness:

MARKOS: Tier 1 races
Louisiana

MARKOS: Tier 2 races
North Carolina
Virginia

MARKOS: "Could get interesting"
Alabama
Arkansas
Georgia
Kentucky
Texas

Let's bring in one more analyst: Charlie Cook of Cook Political Report. He's even more pessimistic about the likelihood of competitive senate races in the South. According to his latest publicly-available breakdown (from February; pdf), only three races fall outside of the "Solid Dem" or "Solid Republican" categories, and none are true toss-ups:

Lean Dem: Louisiana
Likely Dem: Arkansas
Likely Republican: North Carolina

So, to answer the question posed in the headline -- it depends on who you ask.

But to kick off the 2008 the prediction game, I'll go with Rove and speculate that at least four Southern senate races will be "in play," and that there may even be a surprising fifth that emerges by next spring. Stay tuned ...

Labels: Election 2008, Southern Politics

An Orleans Parish judge has vowed to make good on his promise to begin releasing alleged criminals from New Orleans jails -- and he also announced that he would no longer appoint the local public defender program to represent such defendants, calling it a "mockery" of what such a program should be.

Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter said that next month he will release 42 poor defendants from custody, and he suggested the public defender program should drop cases because it lacks the staff or money to do its job properly, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"The Louisiana Legislature has allowed this legal hell to exist, fester and finally boil over," Hunter said Friday, ruling from the bench that the poorest defendants in New Orleans are receiving the worst legal services as they face prison time. "This court must take certain measures to protect the statutory and constitutional rights of indigent defendants. Hurricane Katrina is no longer an excuse, and the state has a budget surplus."

Hunter's ruling won't be final until April 18, when the district attorney's office and public defender program are scheduled to present additional testimony on the matter. The chief of trials for the defender's program said he would need $2.1 million to properly staff his office -- about a third more than it currently has.

The public defender program now has 26 full-time attorneys and a growing caseload that stands at about 2,524 felony cases, according to the Times-Picayune.

The problems with the criminal justice system in Orleans Parish did not begin with Katrina, though the storm certainly did nothing to help matters. A report released last year by Safe Streets/Strong Communities, a grassroots group advocating for criminal justice reform, found that of 102 incarcerated people interviewed six months after the storm, not one had spoken to a public defender. As the group's director, Norris Henderson, said in a Times-Picayune op-ed:

Media reports made it seem as if this was unusual and likely due to the storm. Speaking as a person who spent many years in the state's custody, I can tell you that it is sadly par for the course.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

Despite a spirited campaign led by ColorOfChange.org, an online advocacy group, the Congressional Black Caucus has announced it will co-host a presidential debate with Fox News in September 2007. Is the Caucus "dancing with the devil?"

Democrats had decided against participating in a Fox-hosted debate earlier this month, in part because of Fox President Roger Ailes’s recent remarks comparing Democratic Senator Barack Obama to al Qaeda terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

Yesterday, after news came out that the CBC Institute would be partnering with Fox, ColorOfChange.org's leader James Rucker promised to swing its 75,000 base into action:

"The CBC Institute’s decision is shamefully out of step with most Black voters, and we will continue to push on the CBC Institute to drop this deal.” Rucker goes on to say, “Every presidential candidate now must decide whether to legitimize Fox – a network that calls Black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to call Black leaders ‘racist.’ We will be launching a petition at www.ColorofChange.org asking presidential candidates to attend the CBC Institute’s CNN debate and reject the Fox debate.”

The debate Rucker is referring to is a CBC/CNN debate in South Carolina scheduled for January 24, 2008. If the CBC already has a major debate scheduled with CNN, why would it also deal with Fox -- a network that ColorOfChange.org says "consistently denigrates our people?"

Not all progressives agree with the moves to shun Fox. As Marc Cooper wrote in The Nation over the Democratic Party/Fox dust-up:

Count me among those who think the debate cancellation is a ridiculous ending to what was a ridiculous and counter-productive cause. Excuse me, but I thought liberals hated Fox precisely because it was NOT fair and balanced, because of the dearth of voices other than those from the Right.

So here was a chance to force-feed the conservative Fox audience a prime-time dose of Democratic campaigning; but now that's all been called off by --- Democrats!

But many African-American leaders are agreeing with ColorOfChange.org that Fox's bias and hostility to black issues is too strong to legitimize them with a debate. BET host Keith Boykin understands there are pros as well as cons, but ultimately gives the decision a thumbs-down:

To be honest, I have to admit that I have mixed feelings on this issue. Having been on Fox News myself several times to debate O'Reilly and others, I understand the idea of going to your opponents to argue against them. And true, there might be some moderate Fox News viewers who would walk away with a better understanding of black voter concerns if they had exposure to a CBC-sponsored debate.

But in this case, the idea of the CBC holding a debate on Fox News runs the risk of legitimizing a news network that many consider to be anti-black. It gives Fox News a new audience (even for a short period of time) and allows them to argue that they are unbiased. In the end, I think it helps Fox News more than it helps the Congressional Black Caucus, and that's why I'm not inclined to support this idea.

Find out more about ColorOfChange.org's petition drive here.

UPDATE: Rev. Jesse Jackson announces today that he opposes the CBC/Fox partnership.

Labels: Congressional Black Caucus, Election 2008

Many state legislatures have Black Caucuses and Women's Caucuses. But what about a caucus dedicated to helping working people?

Atlanta Progressive News reports that Georgia now has a Working Families Caucus to fill this vacuum:

The Georgia Working Families Caucus (WFC) is the Georgia General Assembly’s newest legislative caucus, having officially formed this session “in order to develop and promote legislation and policies that invest in workers, families, and communities" ...

The Caucus is composed of over 20 members from around the state and meets every Thursday at noon during the Legislative Session to outline Caucus positions, discuss issues, and hear briefings from experts and advocates. The Caucus is also working closely with the Atlanta/North Georgia AFL-CIO and the labor community in Georgia.

“We do not have any Republican members yet but we have opened the invitation to all members,” [said] Rep. Brian Thomas (D-Lilburn), a Caucus Co-chair.

To my knowledge, the caucus is the first of its kind in the South.

They've hammered out a legislative agenda, starting with SB 13, a bill to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour by January 1, 2008 (the bill was killed in committee this year, but the caucus is "not giving up.")

The caucus has also promised to lead the charge against attempts by the Republican-led legislature to scale back PeachCare (pdf), the state's program that provides health care for 308,000 low-income children, and another GOP-backed bill to overturn a 2004 ban on payday lending.

Labels: Georgia, Work and Community

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 50% of advertising on television shows for children under 12 is for food.

According to the report:

The study found that tweens ages 8-12 see the most food ads on TV, an average of 21 ads a day, or more than 7,600 a year. Teenagers see slightly fewer ads, at 17 a day, for a total of more than 6,000 a year. For a variety of reasons -- because they watch less TV overall, and more of their viewing is on networks that have limited or no advertising, such as PBS and Disney -- children ages 2-7 see the least number of food ads, at 12 food ads a day, or 4,400 a year.

And as you might expect, the advertising is mostly for not-so-healthy foods -- 34% of TV ads aimed at children are for candy or snacks. Only 15% of the ads depict an active lifestyle. Not one of the nearly 9,000 ads reviewed was for fruits or vegetables.

In contrast, the report says that teens see only 47 public service ads per year promoting fitness or nutrition.

The report makes no finding with regard to the effect of such advertising on children's eating habits or the growing epidemic of child obesity. But according to the Department of Health and Human services:

•Overweight in children and adolescents is generally caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, or a combination of the two, with genetics and lifestyle both playing important roles in determining a child's weight.

• Our society has become very sedentary. Television, computer and video games contribute to children's inactive lifestyles.

• 43% of adolescents watch more than 2 hours of television each day.

In a report on the causes and prevention of obesity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends among other things:

• Reduce time spent watching television and in other sedentary behaviors

• Build physical activity into regular routines

• Ensure that the school breakfast and lunch programs meet nutrition standards

• Provide food options that are low in fat, calories, and added sugars

• Provide all children, from prekindergarten through grade 12, with quality daily physical education

So, a common theme is television and nutrition. It doesn't take a PhD to figure out there might be a connection between ads for unhealthy foods children are exposed to from watching too much TV and developing unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits at an early age.

As with many social indicators of health and wellbeing, the problem of obesity, and childhood obesity, is more prevalent in the South. The CDC's 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey studied child obesity in 39 participating states. At the top of the list for overweight teens are:

• Kentucky (16%)
• Alabama (15%)
• Indiana (15%)
• Oklahoma (15%)
• Arkansas (15%)
• Tennessee (15%)
• West Virginia (15%).

Other Southern states in double digits include North Carolina (14%), South Carolina (13%), Georgia (12%), and Florida (11%). This does not include teens at risk for becoming overweight (18% in Tennessee and Alabama, for example).

Among the factors cited for Tennessee, which are similar for other states:

• 85% ate fruits and vegetables less than 5 times per day during the past 7 days

• 68% did not meet currently recommended levels of physical activity

• Only 21% of school canteens have fruits or vegetables available for purchase

Some might argue that Southern Cuisine such as fried-chicken and biscuits and gravy are part of the problem, but another possible reason for the prevalence of obesity in the South is the connection to poverty, which may not sound logical at first.

Contrary to Rush Limbaugh's assertion that obesity proves that poverty and hunger are not a problem, studies show a strong link between poverty and poor nutrition, and not necessarily a lack of nutrition but rather the wrong kind of nutrition.

A report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says "the highest rates of obesity occur among population groups with the highest poverty rates and the least education." Unfortunately, that includes much of the South.

The study looks at food energy-density v. cost, among other things, and concludes:

Consumer food choices are driven by taste, cost, and convenience, and to a lesser extent by health and variety. Research has linked growing obesity rates with a growing consumption of snacks, fast foods, and soft drinks and with the consumption of high-energy-density diets. What energy-dense foods have in common is low energy cost, due in part to the presence of added sugars and fat. Some nutrition professionals have already noted that diets consumed by groups with a lower [socio-economic status] provide cheap, concentrated energy from fat, sugar, cereals, potatoes, and meat products but very little intake of vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. [..] Our central hypothesis is that limited economic resources may shift dietary choices toward an energy-dense, highly palatable diet that provides maximum calories per the least volume and the least cost.

And back to the original theme, the report also notes that eating habits, healthy or othwerwise, are developed at an early age, and:

Television advertising has been cited as a factor contributing to higher energy and fat intakes and so has the marketing of energy-dense foods. [..] Studies suggest that some of this advertising may be targeted at children and at low-income consumers. As indicated above, such foods provide energy at a much lower cost than do fresh vegetables and fruit, which are perceived as luxury items and are not always easily accessible.

So in addition to improving education and continuing the fight against poverty, maybe we should watch less TV, enjoy more active pursuits in the beautiful Southern outdoors (and reduce your kids' exposure to TV ads for unhealthy foods in the process) and consume more Grainger Co. tomatoes, Vidalia onions, South Carolina peaches and Florida citrus along with our fried-chicken and biscuits and gravy.

Labels: poverty, public health

New Orleans' public housing residents will get their day in court.

Judge Ivan Lemelle yesterday ruled that a lawsuit filed on their behalf deserves to be heard, setting a trial date of Nov. 26, 2007. The Advancement Project, the law firm of Jenner & Block, and New Orleans attorneys Bill Quigley of the Loyola Law Clinic and Tracie Washington of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center brought the suit against U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

Filed last June, the lawsuit seeks the immediate re-opening of the city's habitable public housing units. It claims that HUD and HANO officials violated the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 as well as Louisiana landlord-tenant law by breaching the terms of valid leases, and denied public housing residents their due-process rights.

"It's a mindblowing, emotional experience to watch a city, famed for its food, fun and fabulous cultural significance, get more or less wiped off the face of the Earth," Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne-Davis said in a statement. "But then, to make matters worse, we witness a government that openly suggests that New Orleans -- in particular its African-American citizenry -- just weren't and aren't worth saving."

New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina face great difficulty returning home due to a severe housing shortage. Across the metropolitan area, the storm flooded nearly 228,000 homes and apartments, including 39 percent of all owner-occupied units and 56 percent of all rental units, according to Brookings Institution data. The housing shortage has led to a dramatic rise in rents, with the fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the New Orleans area increasing from $661 in fiscal year 2004 to $978 in fiscal year 2007, according to this month's Katrina Index published by Brookings and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

At the same time, more than 5,000 families -- most of them African-American -- were displaced from the city's public housing. But rather than repairing those units, many of which suffered relatively little damage, local and federal authorities have pressed ahead with plans to demolish several public housing complexes and replace them with mixed-income developments.

As a result of the housing crunch, New Orleans is facing a major crisis of homelessness, with a homeless population that's now double what it was before the storm in a city about half the size and lacking shelter capacity, the Christian Science Monitors reports:

"The vast majority of emergency shelters have not been reopened since Katrina," says Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY, a regional collaborative of 60 agencies serving the homeless. "There's an enormous shortage of housing and people are desperate. Do we have the resources to deal with this problem? No."

While New Orleans has long struggled with poverty, the face of homelessness has changed since Katrina, Ms. Kegel and other advocates say. The population now includes the chronically homeless who never left the city or have returned; residents who lost their homes to the flood and have run out of federal assistance -- or may have never received assistance -- and cannot afford higher rents; and thousands of Latino workers who came to rebuild the city, many of whom brought their spouses and children and cannot find a place to live.

The Advancement Project notes that the effort to downsize public housing in New Orleans is not new. In 1996, there were more than 13,000 public housing units across the city. Immediately before Katrina struck, there were only 7,100 units, but almost 2,000 were vacant and slated for demolition. Today, only about 880 families have returned to public housing in the city.

As the lawsuit moves forward, Congress has also begun paying attention to the issue of public housing in New Orleans. As we reported here yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a Gulf Coast relief bill that requires the government to have plans for replacing storm-damaged housing projects before tearing them down, grants public housing tenants the right to return, and instructs HANO to identify which residents want to return and to provide public housing or comparable units for them. The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

Florida decided the 2000 presidential elections. Now, a bill that passed the state's house last week 115-1 could boost the Sunshine State's impact in 2008.

HB 537 calls on Florida to move its presidential primaries to seven days after New Hampshire's or February 5, whichever is sooner. The Senate version of the bill is stalled in committee, but the cause received a major boost this week when Jim Greer, state Republican Party chair, announced his support (Democrats have been pushing the move all along). As Greer wrote in a letter to county and grassroots GOP leaders:

"In the past, Republicans and Democrats who have sought their party's nomination have not been forced to answer some of the questions that are most important to Florida's voters," Greer wrote ... "Other voters ultimately determined the victors, not Floridians, even though Florida's electorate is more diverse and better representative of the nation than many of these states."

Greer makes a good point. Florida is the 4th-largest and 9th fastest-growing state in the country. Florida's demographics also represent the U.S. better than, say, Iowa or New Hampshire: Florida is 80.4% white (compared to 80.2% nationally); 15.7% black (compared to 12.8%); and 19.5% Latino (compared to 14.4%).

Florida has its anomalies, such as the large retiree and Cuban vote, but both have proved volatile in recent years, giving neither party a strong upper hand.

This helps make Florida a fiercely competitive state, which may be why both parties support making it a bigger factor in the primaries. As Marc Cooper of The Nation wrote in 2004:

Florida remains, by all accounts, the most evenly divided state in a deeply polarized America. "Florida is 40/40--40 percent Democratic, 40 percent Republican, with that 20 percent swing vote in the middle, and most of that in the middle of the state just full of registered Independents and ticket-splitters," says Congressman Alcee Hastings, who describes his home state as the New Peoria. "We now so closely mirror America that national marketers use our central corridor for consumer testing. In November it's going to come down again to every single vote."

Clearly 2008 will be no exception.

Labels: Florida, Southern Politics

Alternative fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel are popular stump speech material for politicians in the rural South and Midwest. It's good for farmers who grow the crops used to make bio-fuels, and everyone agrees anything that reduces our dependence on foreign oil and also provides beneficial side-effects for the environment can't be all bad.

Yesterday, President Bush met with automakers to discuss his energy plan. According to the article, he inspected alternative-fuel vehicles and declared them "a major technological breakthrough for the country," while urging Congress to "'move expeditiously' on legislation the administration recently proposed to require the use of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017 and seek higher fuel economy standards for automobiles."

Not so fast, says consumer watchdog group Public Citizen:

President Bush’s support of Flexible-Fuel Vehicles (FFV) as a way to curb the nation’s addiction to oil will have the net effect of lowering the overall fuel efficiency of the fleet, according to Public Citizen.

How can this be? According to Public Citizen, it seems there's a loophole in Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards that gives them a credit for flex-fuel vehicles:

This reduces the fuel economy their fleets must achieve under an assumption that these vehicles use gasoline 50 percent of the time and E-85 (a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) the other 50 percent. Using this loophole, Ford saved itself as much as $135 million in fines it would have received for model years 2003 to 2005 for not meeting the actual fuel economy standards. In reality, Ford and other automakers are cheating the system because E-85 is not widely available, and some vehicles designated as FFVs do not operate properly with the fuel.

The article says that Ford received a 2003 fleet rating of 43 MPG for its flex-fuel vehicles, when in fact they only got 26 MPG which is less than the 27.5 MPG minimum standard for passenger cars.

And not only that, there is some question regarding the environmental efficiency of bio-fuel production. According to Grist Environmental News and Commentary:

Conventional agriculture relies on fertilizer and pesticides derived from fossil fuels. Diesel powers the tractors and other machinery that plow, plant, and spray crops, as well as the vehicles that haul away the final product (due to ethanol's tendency to absorb water, it must be transported in special containers on trucks or trains instead of in the cheaper pipeline system used for oil and gasoline). Figure in the fuel -- mainly coal and natural gas -- burned in the distillation process, and experts reckon each gallon of ethanol takes the energetic equivalent of roughly three-quarters of a gallon of ethanol to produce.

Then there are greenhouse-gas emissions. After accounting for the coal and natural gas burned to process it, the nitrous oxide -- a greenhouse gas hundreds of times more potent than CO2 -- generated from fertilizer production, and other factors, a recent study in Science found that ethanol use reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by just 13 percent compared to gasoline use.

Despite this, the article notes there is continuing government support for ethanol, including a 51 cents-per-gallon tax credit for producers and a 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on sugarcane ethanol imported from Brazil.

This Grist article chronicles the rise of ethanol, and how Archer Daniels Midland has profited handsomely from the corporate welfare surrounding it.

Labels: energy policy, environment

The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a bill giving housing relief to people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The measure frees up building funds for storm-affected homeowners and protects public housing damaged by the storm. It also extends Federal Emergency Management Agency rental assistance through the end of the year -- one of the major recommendations of the Institute for Southern Studies' recent report, "A New Agenda for the Gulf Coast."

Sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act requires the government to have plans for replacing housing projects damaged by Hurricane Katrina before tearing them down, grants public housing tenants the right to return, and requires the Housing Authority of New Orleans to identify which residents want to return and to provide public housing or comparable units to those who do. The measure passed by a vote of 302-125 and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

"Today the House of Representatives took a big step in removing many of the obstacles to the recovery faced by Hurricane Katrina victims by passing a bill that will expedite housing opportunities, return residents to public housing, and make permanent rental assistance for all of those people on temporary rental assistance for so long," Waters said in a press statement.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and HANO had approved plans to raze the city's four largest public-housing complexes as well as other smaller sites. The demolitions would have cleared the way for an estimated $681 million worth of mixed-income housing but left many poor and working-class families homeless.

The measure did not pass without some controversy, however, as House Republicans successfully attached an amendment that bars some convicted criminals and gang members from receiving housing assistance. The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) and passed by a vote of 249-176.

The motion requires HANO or any manager of replacement units to deny the return of individuals convicted of crimes involving sex, dealing drugs or domestic violence, or who pose a direct threat to public safety such as gang members. It will provide right-of-return priority to any individual or household who is in compliance with existing public housing resident requirements, including community service and work requirements, or for the purpose of family reunification.

"We must work to keep drugs and violence out of our public housing system, and to ensure that the residents of our public housing are put in a position to succeed," Jindal said in a statement. "To repeat the same mistakes that led to the problems of the past would be irresponsible and unacceptable. Many of our public housing residents are hardworking people, and their families should not be forced to have drug dealers or gang members as neighbors."

Some Democrats -- including committee chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts -- complained that Katrina victims were being held to a higher legal standard than other recipients of low-income housing across the nation, the Washington Times reports.


In another positive development on the post-Katrina housing front, a coalition of groups advocating for tenants' rights in New Orleans won an important victory earlier this month by getting city council members to drop a proposal that would have blocked construction of any new housing in certain districts except for single-family and two-family homes.

Led by the People's Hurricane Relief Fund's Tenants Rights Working Group, the coalition collected some 10,000 signatures on a petition supporting renters' rights and against price gouging. The coalition also held demonstrations outside the home of New Orleans City Council member Stacy Head and inundated councilors with phone calls and e-mails.

The protest movement was sparked March 1, when council members Cynthia Willard-Lewis and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell proposed a new moratorium on multi-family housing in their eastern New Orleans districts. At-large Councilor Arnie Fielkow agreed to co-sponsor the proposal.

PHRF blasted the plan as an effort to exclude working-class blacks -- especially those who rely on Section 8 rent subsidy vouchers -- from those communities. The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and New Orleans Legal Assistance also opposed the moratorium.

"Everyone displaced by the storm has the right to come home. Housing is a human right," public housing resident and TRW member Stephanie Mingo said in a statement (Word document). "That includes housing for working people, particularly people on Section 8. City Council don't have no right to tell people who want to come home where they can and can't live. They’re acting like racist segregationists against poor, working Black people. But, we defeated racial segregation in this country, now we’ll fight against class segregation and beat it too."

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported:

...Willard-Lewis said her real target was what she considered an unfair concentration in her district of large low-income apartment complexes that often became blighted and threatened property values and the quality of life in nearby single-family neighborhoods.

Instead of the moratorium, Willard-Lewis proposed two alternative measures. One, approved unanimously by the council, calls on the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency to give council members an opportunity to provide input into the agency's decisions in order to ensure that tax-credit projects are fit residents' desires on rebuilding. The other, expected to be voted on next week, says the council won't support issuing low-income tax credits for any development with 100 or more units "without public input from the (affected) neighborhood," according to the Times-Picayune. Residents from more than 15 eastern New Orleans neighborhood associations recently created a commission to give such input, the paper reported.

According to a PHRF statement, the coalition's protest at the March 15 council meeting

"...marked the first occasion since the Hurricane and Great Flood where renters and tenants spoke and acted on their own behalf and were directly included in the decision making processes of the government determining the course of the city’s reconstruction. To this point the reconstruction process has been totally dominated by developers, property owners, and designers. Another critical development was the organic connections and identifications made by private and public market renters as "tenants". This emerging consciousness is critical for the development of the TRW, which seeks to unite public and private market renters into one powerful organization or block to win Affordable Housing and the Right of Return.

The coalition plans to continue pressing for an ordinance that would ban price gouging and implement rent control.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

There's been some interesting movement of late in the Republican Party to draft former Tennessee U.S. Senator and actor Fred Thompson to run for president in 2008. Although he won't say for sure if he's running, he has not ruled it out and appears to be testing the waters (and that's an understatement). In a recent straw poll at a county GOP caucus in Georgia, Thompson got more votes than all other candidates combined. All kinds of speculation and crazy rumors have been flying around Tennessee, including one about some sort of deal in the works between Thompson and McCain.

Meanwhile, there has been a "draft Gore" (sometimes called "reelect Gore") movement since 2001, but it is gaining strength on Al Gore's newfound celebrity. He, too, says he is not running, but he's coy about it (recall his "announcement" that was cut off by the "wrap it up" music at the Oscars). Similar to Thompson, Al Gore has been moving up in any polls that mention him. Many pundits believe the nomination is his if he wants it. Some speculate that he's biding his time, waiting for Clinton and Obama to beat each other up, and then come riding in to save the day for the Democrats.

I have speculated for several months that the eventual nominees for both parties are flying below the radar and not among the high-profile candidates currently being discussed. Could Fred Thompson and Al Gore be those candidates?

And, do you suppose national Democrats would pay more attention to the South if the GOP and the Democratic nominees were both from the Great State of Tennessee? The South would be center stage in the national spotlight. Wouldn't that be something?

Labels: Election 2008, Southern Politics

The excellent Pew Center has released a new poll on Iraq, and the results are surprising. The main finding is that the public supports the House plan for withdrawal by August 2008:

A solid majority of Americans say they want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by August 2008. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they would like to see their representative vote for such legislation, compared with just 33% who want their representative to oppose it.

I called Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research at Pew, to get a regional breakdown on the numbers, and there was an interesting surprise:

Percent supporting/opposing House plan for troop deadline

- EAST: 66% in favor of House plan; 28% against
- MIDWEST: 64% in favor; 29% against
- SOUTH: 60% in favor; 32% against
- WEST: 48% in favor; 41% against (11-12% "don't know")

So except for the West -- which Mr. Keeter agreed was an interesting outlier -- there's double-digit support for the plan in every region of the country, including the South. This jibes with other polls, such as the Institute's finding last October that 30% of Southerners supported immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

On the flip side, the other interesting finding of the Pew poll is a slight up-tick in the number who think the Iraq war is going "very or fairly well." In February, only 30% of the public thought that; in March, the fourth anniversary of the war, the number rose to 40%.

I asked for the regional breakdown on this question, too, and it shows that the Midwest and South remain the most optimistic regions about the war -- but the majority still don't think Iraq is going well:

Percent who believe Iraq war is going "very well," "fairly well," "not well," "not well at all"

- EAST: 9% "very well;" 23% "fairly well;" 36% "not well;" 31% "not well at all"
- MIDWEST: 8% "very well;" 32% "fairly well;" 33% "not well;" 25% "not well at all"
- SOUTH: 12% "very well;" 33% "fairly well;" 30% "not well;" 20% "not well at all"
- EAST: 8% "very well;" 30% "fairly well;" 29% "not well;" 25% "not well at all"

The Attorney General scandal is now moving beyond questions of "who said what, and when did they say it" to the deeper issue of the political agenda that motivated the firings: rolling back voting rights.

We've been covering Tim Griffin, the Arkansas attorney who helped "cage" African-American votes in 2000. But he wasn't the only one, as McClatchy newspapers reported last Friday:

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing. [...]

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

In 2004, Southern Exposure published an in-depth investigative report (pdf) on how the Department of Justice was increasingly using "voter fraud" as a way to restrict voting access -- and benefit Republicans. As Southern Exposure reporter Jordan Green observed:

The department launched the Voting Access and Ballot Security Initiative shortly after Bush took office. The initiative reflects two central concepts of voting rights law, which often clash. “Voting Access” refers to removing barriers to voting (traditionally a concern of the Democratic Party), while “Ballot Security” refers to combating vote fraud (historically a Republican Party priority). Since 2001, the department appears to have made Ballot Security a higher priority.

In October 2002, the Department of Justice held a day-long “Voting Integrity Symposium” to train personnel in about 300 FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices on how “to prevent election offences and bring violators to justice,” according to a recent report by the Center for Voting Rights and Protection that provides a history of Republican “ballot security” programs.

The DOJ’s more pronounced interest in limiting the number of people who can vote rather than expanding ballot access is also seen in the professional background of Hans A. von Spakovsky, a top lawyer in the Voting Section.

Jeffrey Toobin, in the Sept. 20 edition of the New Yorker, reports that von Spakovsky is a longtime “voting integrity” activist from Georgia. Before coming to the Bush administration, he served on the board of advisers for an outfit known as the Voting Integrity Project (V.I.P.). In 1997, he wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation advocating a campaign to “purge” felons from the voting rolls. The V.I.P. coordinated with Database Technologies, the company infamous for designing the program that disenfranchised thousands of legitimate Florida voters whose names were falsely matched with actual felons. During the 36-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked as a volunteer for the Bush campaign.

In the most contentious debate to open among progressives since Democrats took control of Congress this year, Rep. Nancy Pelosi successfully navigated a $124 billion package to finance war in Afghanistan and Iraq, while also requiring that combat operations cease by September 2008.

The House passed the measure 218-212, largely along party lines. Five of the 14 Democrats voting "nay" came from the South; the list appears to be evenly split among progressives who opposed it because they wanted the U.S. out faster, and conservatives who thought the bill should include no timetable with withdrawal:

John Barrow, Georgia
Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Lincoln Davis, Tennessee
Dennis Kucinich, Ohio
Barbara Lee, California
John Lewis, Georgia
Jim Marshall, Georgia
Jim Matheson, Utah
Mike McNulty, New York
Mike Michaud, Maine
Gene Taylor, Mississippi
Maxine Waters, California
Diane Watson, California
Lynn Woolsey, California

North Carolina had two other notables: (1) one of only two Republicans who opposed the bill -- Rep. Walter Jones -- a long-time critic of the war) and (2) one of only three reps to miss the vote entirely -- Rep. Mel Watt (D) -- who came late and said he was one of the progressives who was persuaded to vote "yes."

The Democratic leadership prevailed, but the real fight is just beginning. As expected, Bush has promised to veto the bill. Since Pelosi and the Democrats don't have the votes to override a veto, the victory will be short-lived -- and another round of battle commenced.

Democrats also have to confront the vote's fallout among their anti-war base -- many of whom mobilized heavily to defeat the war spending measure (with notable exceptions like MoveOn) -- as well as the world community. As Marcus Raskin, founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, pointed out in a recent editorial, the people of Iraq have little interest in U.S. political maneuvering -- they just want the U.S. out of their country, now:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn't want additional American troops in Baghdad. Indeed, he wants the United States out as quickly as possible. A September 2006 poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes revealed that 7 out of 10 Iraqis want the United States to leave within a year. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins, the environment, the water and sanitation systems are virtually destroyed, and violence between groups and within groups rage, exacerbated by the lingering U.S. presence.

Even worse, the bill passed by the Democrats today endorses the Bush administration's position on one of the biggest issues facing Iraq: who will profit from the country's oil wealth. As Ken Silverstein of Harper's points out:

[A]bout halfway through the 80-page supplemental bill is a section that demands that the Iraqi government enact “a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis” by this fall. That sounds perfectly fine, but the law in question turns out to be one that the Bush Administration and American energy firms have been pushing for years and that, as Antonia Juhasz of Oil Change International explained last week in a New York Times op-ed, would allow international companies to take control of much of Iraq's oil “for a generation or more,” with no requirements to reinvest earnings in the country.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) tried in vain to have the language removed, leading Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International to say:

The Democrats say they're determined to not “let the perfect be the enemy of the good” with this bill. But we're unclear as to how giving the Bush Administration and Big Oil exactly what they want most in Iraq, at the expense of Iraq's future, can be seen as good.

Labels: iraq, peace and security, Southern Politics

We wrote two weeks ago about one of the more startling examples of cronyism to emerge from the U.S. attorney scandal now engulfing Washington: the brazen move to replace Arkansas' Eastern District attorney Bud Cummins with Karl Rove's chosen replacement, J. Timothy Griffin.

The process alone was suspect: President Bush used provisions in the Patriot Act to install Griffin as an "interim attorney" even before Cummins had "resigned." Outrage only grew when it became clear that Griffin's resume largely consisted of partisan experience at the Republican National Committee and as part of the Bush 2000 Recount Team in Florida, often working directly with Rove. Griffin was also directly involved in purging the names of 70,000 voters in Arkansas, including soldiers who were flagged as suspect because they couldn't be reached at their voting address (they were deployed to Iraq).

Today's Washington Post has more evidence of the lengths the administration went to to install Griffin:

Two months before Bud Cummins was fired as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove was maneuvering with the Justice Department to take his place.

Last April, Tim Griffin, a Rove aide and longtime GOP operative, sent the attorney general's chief of staff a flattering letter about himself written by Cummins, the prosecutor he was trying to replace, internal e-mails released this week show. Rove and Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, were keenly interested in putting him in the position, e-mails reveal.

New documents also show that Justice and White House officials were preparing for President Bush's approval of the appointment as early as last summer, five months before Griffin took the job. [...]

The e-mails show how D. Kyle Sampson, then the attorney general's chief of staff, and other Justice officials prepared to use a change in federal law to bypass input from Arkansas' two Democratic senators, who had expressed doubts about placing a former Republican National Committee operative in charge of a U.S. attorney's office. The evidence runs contrary to assurances from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that no such move had been planned.

"This was a very loyal soldier to the Republicans and the Bush administration, and they wanted to reward him," said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). "They had every right to do this, but it's the way they handled it, and the way they tried to cover their tracks and mislead Congress, that has turned this into a fiasco for them."

Here at Facing South, we've been following the attempted political revival of ex-Rep. Newt Gingrich (GA-R). Since 2005, Gingrich -- known during his tumultuous days in Congress as the GOP's bomb-throwing attack dog -- has been trying to show a kinder, gentler side.

There have been lapses, like the time last September when he agreed that Iraq critics were the same as Hitler's appeasers. Or his claim at C-PAC earlier this month that people in New Orleans died because they were uneducated and lacked "citizenship" (as opposed to cars, good levees and a FEMA evacuation plan).

But the New Newt aims to be a voice of reason and conciliation, as when he confessed to conservative religious leader James Dobson this March that he was having an extramarital affair just as he was leading the charge against President Clinton's "moral failings."

It's unclear if Gingrich's admission helped him with "values voters" (for example, see here); it certainly armed critics with ammunition in charging him with hypocrisy.

If Gingrich's claims to personal morality have invited ridicule, so has his campaign to be seen as an "arbiter of political ethics." This ramped up in January 2006, when Gingrich began decrying the "unhealthy" and "dysfunctional" nature of D.C. politics. Gingrich didn't mention, of course, the fact that he was socked with an "unprecedented" $300,000 fine by his House colleagues in 1997 for "reckless disregard" of campaign rules. Indeed, it was the first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing, and House Republicans said they were "embarrassed."

All of which makes Gingrich's latest entry into the "political ethics" debate even more rich. Joe DeSantis, Gingrich's communications director, eagerly sent me an announcement today about Gingrich's latest YouTube posting, footage from a conference in which Gingrich takes on the now-famous pro-Obama video created by a former employee of Blue State Digital.

You can see Gingrich's video here; here's a quick transcript of the good bits:

I don't know how many of you have seen the YouTube commercial about 1984 [...] It's a very interesting attack on Hillary and modest promotion of Barack Obama. And it is utterly, totally destructive to the process of thought.

There is not a single thing in that commercial that enables America to solve a problem. Oh it's clever, it fills up space on television, people can talk about it. It's the Entertainment Tonight version of governing our great country. And it's very dangerous.

Because we have no habits anymore of serious dialogue, we have no habits of serious citizenship. Everything is reduced to gossip, attack, whose consultant is cleverer. And it's really, very destructive.

He would know. Better than most.

The 2007 State New Economy Index by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation examines a number of key indicators in every state to assess their ability to compete in the emerging global economy.

As Southern states fall all over each other to recruit new auto-manufacturing jobs with big incentives, the report suggests that much of the South is falling behind in a new economy that began taking shape in the post "mass-production and corporate economy" of the 1940's and 1950's.

According to the study, the new economy is defined as "a global, entrepreneurial and knowledge-based economy in which the keys to success lie in the extent to which knowledge, technology, and innovation are embedded in products and services." It has the following attributes:

- Today’s economy is knowledge dependent.
- Today’s economy is global.
- Today’s economy is entrepreneurial.
- Today’s economy is rooted in information technology.
- Today’s economy is driven by innovation.

The report ranks states on 26 indicators that "measure the differences in the extent to which state economies are structured and operate according to the tenets of the New Economy. In other words, it examines the degree to which state economies are knowledge-based, globalized, entrepreneurial, IT-driven, and innovation-based."

In the overall rankings, there are some bright spots for the South (Virginia at 8th, Texas at 14th, Georgia at 18th). But the bottom of the list is populated with the usual suspects (Louisiana at 44th, Kentucky at 45th, Alabama at 46th, Arkansas at 47th, Mississippi at 49th, and West Virginia dead last at 50th place.)

There are other bright spots in some of the individual rankings. Virginia ranks 3rd in knowledge jobs, and Georgia ranks 20th. Virginia ranks 1st in IT employment. Georgia had the fifth highest improvement in workforce education. Texas ranks 2nd in export focus, and South Carolina had the second best improvement for this indicator.

In globalization, Texas ranks 3rd, South Carolina 5th, Kentucky 10th, and Georgia 14th. (One of the factors is workforce employed by foreign-owned companies, so it's possible that the massive foreign investment in auto manufacturing helped Kentucky and South Carolina in this regard. In fact, South Carolina is ranked first in foreign direct investment.)

So, what accounts for the South's overall not so great showing in the results? From the report:

The two states whose economies have lagged most in making the transition to the New Economy are West Virginia and Mississippi, with nearly identical ranks in 2002. Other states with low scores include, in reverse order, South Dakota, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Wyoming, Montana, and Hawaii. Historically, the economies of many of these and other Southern and Plains states depended on natural resources or on mass production manufacturing (or tourism in the case of Hawaii), and relied on low costs rather than innovative capacity to gain advantage. But innovative capacity (derived through universities, R&D investments, scientists and engineers, and entrepreneurial drive) is increasingly what drives competitive success in the New Economy.

[..]

Regionally, the New Economy has taken hold most strongly in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, the Mountain West, and the Pacific regions; 14 of the top 20 states are in these four regions. (The exceptions are Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia.) In contrast, 15 of the 20 lowest ranking states are in the Midwest, Great Plains, and the South. Given some states’ reputations as technology-based New Economy states, their scores seem surprising at first. For example, North Carolina and New Mexico rank 26th and 33rd, respectively, in spite of the fact that the region around Research Triangle Park boasts top universities, a highly educated workforce, cutting-edge technology companies, and global connections, while Albuquerque is home to leading national laboratories and an appealing quality of life. In both cases, however, many parts of the state outside these metropolitan regions are more rooted in the old economy – with more jobs in traditional manufacturing, agriculture, and lower-skilled services; a less educated workforce; and a less-developed innovation infrastructure. As these examples
reveal, most state economies are in fact a composite of many regional economies that differ in the degree to which they are structured in accordance to New Economy factors.

But, the report suggests that there is an opportunity for the South to leverage it's strengths:

While lower ranking states face challenges, they can also take advantage of new opportunities. The IT revolution gives companies and individuals more geographical freedom, making it easier for businesses to relocate, or start up and grow in less densely populated states farther away from existing agglomerations of industry and commerce. Moreover, metropolitan areas in many of the top states suffer from increasing costs (largely due to high land and housing costs) and near gridlock on their roads. Both factors will make locating in less congested metros, many in lower ranking states, more attractive – especially those with a high quality of life.

So, how did the South get here? Again, from the report's analysis:

The last time the United States underwent a major economic transformation, after World War II, there was a similar reordering as regional labor, capital and consumer markets transformed into national ones. That “new economy” of the 1950s and 60s faced its own “globalization” challenge, but companies were not moving to low-cost Southeast Asia, they were moving to low-cost Southeastern United States. The completion of the Interstate Highway System and the emergence of jet travel, coupled with the mass adoption of air conditioning, electrification, and telephony, opened up the low-wage South as a viable branch plant location. Like today, there were large income differentials, making relocation to the South an attractive way to cut costs. As a result, Northern industries flocked south, leaving behind shuttered factories, devastated communities and unemployed workers.

[..]

Then, as now, low-wage regions established economic development programs and offered substantial incentives to lure industry inside their borders.

There is a warning in there somewhere to Southern states competing to attract "old economy" manufacturing jobs.

The final section of the report outlines a number of progressive policies that states should pursue to be competitive:

In order to succeed in the new global economy, then, a growing share of regions can no longer rely on old economy strategies of relentlessly driving down costs and providing large incentives to attract locationally mobile branch plants or offices. Even low-cost regions will have a hard time competing for facilities producing commodity goods and services against nations whose wage and land costs are less than one-fifth of those in the United States. Rather, regions, even those that followed the low-cost, branch plant path to success since World War II, must now look for competitive advantage in earlier-stage product cycle activities. This strategy can mean either fostering new entrepreneurial activities or helping existing firms innovate so that they do not become commodity producers searching for any number of interchangeable low-cost locations. In short, regions need to be places where existing firms can become more productive and innovative and new firms can emerge and thrive.

The key strategies discussed are:

1. Align Incentives behind Innovation Economy Fundamentals
2. Co-Invest in an Innovation Infrastructure
3. Co-Invest in the Skills of the Workforce
4. Cultivate Entrepreneurship
5. Support Industry Clusters
6. Reduce Business Costs without Reducing the Standard of Living
7. Boost Productivity
8. Reorganize Economic Development Efforts

While there are sure to be controversial elements in some of the specific recommendations, there are a number of thought-provoking ideas here.

For example, "align incentives behind innovation economy fundamentals" means to tie incentives to specific state goals that support the "building blocks of knowledge, innovation, and entrepreneurship." The report also recommends rethinking incentives to accomplish such things as making them contingent on higher wages, targeting distressed areas of the state and enhancing "key industrial centers."

One particular strategy in this regard is quite interesting:

Stress innovation incentives instead of job creation incentives. Forty-five states have job creation incentives. While their goal may be worthy, especially during periods of higher unemployment, the means are not effective. Unless job creation tax credits are very large, they seldom induce companies to hire. Companies hire more workers if they believe that the demand for their products or services is going to increase, not if the government offsets the cost of a new employee by a small percentage.

Indeed, when the state of North Carolina evaluated their job creation tax credits, created by the William S. Lee Act, they found that only about 4 percent of jobs claimed under the Act were actually induced by the tax credits.

There is a second reason job creation tax credits are ineffective. Job creation tax credits try to lower the cost of labor relative to capital, hopefully spurring the substitution of labor for capital. But this is exactly the wrong goal. While developing nations use the strategy of cheap labor as a way to grow, states should instead ensure that their workers have better capital (equipment and skills) so their productivity is high enough to offset developing nations’ lower costs.

The report's recommendations on investing in an educated workforce and partnering with universities to innovate are also good examples of how good business and progressive policies intersect.

The full 92 page report (PDF format) should be required reading for every governor of every Southern state, and anyone else interested in ways to move the South along into the "new economy."

Labels: economy, jobs

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin held a press conference earlier this week to set the record straight on remarks first reported by the Washington Post -- and repeated here on Facing South -- that the bungled rebuilding is part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities.

The specific comment the Post attributed to Nagin was: "Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere. They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community."

Nagin said the Post story unfairly took his comments -- made last week at a meeting of the black press' National Newspaper Publishers Association -- out of context, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"I've been in enough hot water for things I have said," Nagin said. "And this is what makes me mad. Because I didn't say it, and now I'm almost in hot water, so this is just not right."

Though Nagin didn't deny making the comment, he accused Post reporter Hamil Harris of distorting its meaning:

"My take on it is that it was some young reporter in the back of the room, looking for some way to get a nice story out," Nagin said. "He jumbled everything I said up, and brought some things in the middle of the talk to the front, and painted this picture that was just not what I intended to do, nor would I say."

The Post said it stands by its story. It even ran an editorial this week criticizing Nagin for the reported remarks:

Maybe Mr. Nagin lashed out in frustration. No question, there's plenty of blame to go around as city, state and federal officials continue to bicker and point fingers over decisions large and small. But his latest racial ramble distracts from the real issues facing his hobbled city. The slow pace of recovery, the fleeing professional class and crime are a few of them. Mr. Nagin's considered opinion on those weighty matters would be most welcome.

At Monday's press conference, Nagin denied saying anything racial, according to the Times-Picayune:

He added, however, as he has said previously, that he believes if Katrina had occurred in a locale with higher incomes, such as Orange County, California, "it would have been a different response."

Because of race?

Not exactly. "I thought it was more of a class issue than a race issue," he said Monday, adding: "Now, racial aspects are obviously in everything we do."

We invite readers to make up their own mind about what Nagin said and meant by reading the transcript of the speech, which has been posted to the Times-Picayune's Web site here.

Of course, for those of us who have been living through or closely following the disastrous rebuilding effort in New Orleans, it's difficult not to suspect that both racism and classism have been factors. And as we pointed out in our earlier post about Nagin's remarks, the mayor himself has furthered these nefarious causes by promoting policies that have benefited the propertied classes and investors while largely ignoring or even being outright hostile to the needs of his city's poor, who are overwhelmingly black.

At Monday's press conference, Nagin also complained that the Post mistakenly assumed he was referring to Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, his recent mayoral runoff opponent, when he made reference to a "golden boy" supported by his detractors. Without naming anyone, Nagin implied that he was referring to Audubon Institute CEO Ron Forman, who led the candidates in fundraising heading into the primary, in which he finished third. This point was also made here on Facing South by commenter jeffrey:

Nagin was referring there to Ron Forman who was, in fact, seized upon in the early part of the race by the "Uptown conspirators" looking to install a true white plutocrat in the mayor's office. In a sense, Nagin's characterization of this maneuver is correct. What he doesn't tell you is that in order to back Forman, the white Uptown conservatives backstabbed and abandoned Nagin who they had installed as their puppet in 2002. In order to overcome this, Nagin reinvented his political persona as a racial panderer. Once Forman was eliminated in the primary, the conservatives "came home" to Nagin backing him against the more liberal (but white) Landrieu. So Nagin's new formula is: Kowtow to capitalists and Republicans while pandering to the black community by demagoguing against a mysterious "they".

Indeed, Nagin's speech to the NNPA did nothing to dispel the notion that he embraces a neoliberal philosophy that favors the capitalist investor classes over the poor. In fact, he urged his listeners to come to New Orleans and invest in cheap property -- that is, property that was once home to the city's dispossessed:

So I'm not going to stand up here and moan and groan about our struggles in New Orleans. I'm telling you, New Orleans is coming back. Y'all come visit us during Essence Fest. You're going to have a good time, and we are going to have some entrepreneurs in New Orleans that will be making big bucks because, guess what, they can't hold this money back much longer because its starting to hurt other folks, and ya'll know what I'm talking about, so they got to let it loose. And in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast they estimate they will spend within 30 and 100 billion over the next five to seven years. If you don't hear nothing else I say tonight, buy some dirt in New Orleans, buy some dirt in New Orleans. Real estate values are going to go out the roof and you need to be a part of that. We have programs where you can buy adjudicated and blighted properties for half their appraised value and you hire your own appraiser.

Hire your own appraiser? Sounds to us like the Post may have ignored the real outrage in Nagin's speech: an invitation to rip-off.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

Some big news today from Louisiana on post-Katrina reconstruction:

* First of all, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) bowed out of Louisiana's gubernatorial race yesterday, just six weeks from the start of the legislative session. In an address televised from the governor's mansion, the state's first female chief executive said:

After much thought and prayer, I have decided that I will not seek reelection as your governor.

There is nothing more important to Louisiana's future than a strong recovery, free from politics.

I'm announcing my decision early - well before the legislative session. I'm doing this so we can work without interference from election year politics. Every action in my remaining months in office will be to serve Louisiana's best interest.

Blanco also announced her intention to focus in the upcoming session on what she described as a "bold and sweeping" education agenda.

* Second, the Louisiana Recovery Authority has submitted language to the feds that would change Road Home program rules, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. The changes will allow owners of storm-damaged homes to get their grants more quickly by allowing them to receive the money in lump sums rather than installments from mandatory escrow accounts.

The changes were made at the insistence of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which last week notified Louisiana officials that requiring homeowners to request phased disbursement as each stage of construction was completed violated HUD rules on "compensation" programs, which are supposed to have few strings attached, according to the paper. HUD is expected to OK the changes quickly.

The agency's demands shocked Louisiana officials, who say they had gotten HUD's approval for its program design at every step along the way, the Times-Picayune reports. The state was concerned that paying homeowners a lump sum would leave them vulnerable to predatory mortgage companies and contractors, and would remove the incentive to rebuild.

More than 115,000 people have applied for Road Home aid to date, but only about 3,000 have closed their grants.

*And last but certainly not least, an official report by the state of Louisiana into the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina blames the disaster on decades of incompetence by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Times-Picayune reports:

In a sweeping indictment of Corps stewardship, the report alleges that agency supervisors ignored increases in the threat level for their project, knowingly built levees and floodwalls lower than congressionally mandated, failed to detect or ignored glaring errors during the review process, underestimated the impact of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet on the city's defenses, and failed to properly maintain the system.

The report, conducted by Team Louisiana at the request of the Department of Transportation and Development, echoes many points made in other probes last year, including that of the Independent Levee Investigation Team, led by the University of California-Berkeley, and the interim report from the Corps' own Independent Performance and Evaluation Team.

While earlier efforts to pinpoint what went wrong concentrated on technical aspects of the structural failures, the Louisiana State University-based Team Louisiana worked to identify the decisions that caused those failures. They include:

-- The Corps ignored two increases in the severity of the model storm that the system was designed to protect against, thus knowingly failing its 1965 congressional charge to protect the city against "the most severe combination of meteorological conditions reasonably expected."

-- In 1985, the head of the project ordered his staff to ignore an official reduction in the elevation of the land they were building on, resulting in the Corps finishing levees and floodwalls that it knew were as much as 2 feet lower than claimed.

-- The Corps failed to maintain the parts of the system properly and ignored advances in engineering knowledge and technology that could have prevented the flood.

The report calls for the state and Congress to hold "8-29 Commissions" to fully investigate the disaster, passage of a federal "Katrina Recovery Bill" to fund coastal restoration and flood protection, and greater transparency on the part of federal and state authorities when discussing flood protection plans.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

Imagine being one of only three African-American children in a class of 26 eighth graders in a rural North Carolina school.

Then imagine that, as part of an effort to observe Black History Month, your teacher instructs you and your classmates to discuss the "good" aspects of slavery -- even offering 10 extra points on the next test to the student offering the "best" answer.

That's the situation that sisters Tatiana and Timeca West of Davidson County, N.C. found themselves in last month in veteran teacher Kathy Proctor's language-arts class at North Davidson Middle School, according to a report that originally appeared in the Winston-Salem Chronicle:

According to Tatiana and Timeca, some of the perks of slavery suggested by their classmates were slaves' "feeding the animals and washing them" and "not having to do hard labor." Both answers were added to the chalkboard by Proctor. Downfalls of slavery, per the students, were slave owners "having to provide shelter for your slaves" and "having to replace slaves if they died or ran away."

The girls say they sat dumbfounded during the lively discussion.

"I felt bad because there's nothing good about being a slave," Timeca said.

The sisters say they were humiliated and angered by the assignment. At one point during the brainstorming session, Proctor reportedly stepped out of the room, during which time a white classmate jokingly asked Timeca to "clean my shoe off."

Outraged upon hearing about the incident, the girls' father contacted the Davidson County Board of Education (which happens to be all white in a county that is about 9 percent black). That led to a meeting between him; his daughers; Principal Bruce Johnson; and Proctor, who reportedly apologized to the girls and their father at the board official's insistence. The board also ordered Proctor to apologize to the entire class the following day.

Though Proctor and Johnson declined to comment for the Chronicle's story, Davidson County Schools Attorney David Inabinett offered this statement:

"On something involving students or personnel, we are not at liberty to discuss a lot of details," Inabinett said. "I don't know the exact content of the discussion, but I think it's fair to say there were several (students) who felt uncomfortable and that their parents brought that to the school's attention. Immediate action was taken to review what had occurred and to bring all the parties involved together for a full and frank discussion about the matter… It appeared that everybody was able to share their feelings and agree that this was something that was unfortunate, but were able to feel any differences were resolved."

But the girls' father, who goes by the single name of Aszullayme, told the paper that while the girls feel somewhat better since their teacher apologized, he doesn't think anything was resolved. He contacted the Winston-Salem, N.C. branch of the NAACP, which is reportedly working with the Davidson County chapter to make sure the case is not, as chapter President Stephen Hairston said, "swept under the rug."

This ugly situation raises some questions: Is the teacher in question really so ignorant about slavery that she thinks it has a "good" side, or is she just cruel? And in either case, is someone like that really qualified to teach in North Carolina's public schools?

Labels: race and racism

In April 1953, the famous "red state" Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower made this famous statement about the trade-offs between war spending and human needs:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

No one knows this better than veterans, and on the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Military Families Speak Out are making the same connection in a education and service caravan they are leading through the South.

Last night they conducted a vigil in Columbia, S.C. -- home of Fort Jackson, an army base that has seen many soldiers deployed to Iraq.

The end destination: the Gulf Coast, a region still devastated from Hurricane Katrina in large part because of a lack of federal action. The team will help rebuild houses and draw attention to the need for Washington to jump-start the recovery.

Today marks four years since the U.S. began bombing Iraq in this latest war. While there's been a great deal of discussion in the U.S. media about the considerable toll the war has taken on American and other coalition soldiers, let us take time today to contemplate the death and suffering the violence has caused for Iraqi civilians:

* An estimated 59,000 to 65,000 civilians -- Iraqi men, women and children -- have been reported killed by the U.S. military intervention and occupation, according to Iraq Body Count.

* Other estimates of the war's toll on Iraqi civilians have been even higher. A study by researchers with Johns Hopkins University and Al Mustansiriya University published in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006 estimated that there have been 655,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq since March 2003.

* The U.N. High Commission on Refugees estimates that as many as 2 million Iraqis have been forced to flee to other countries -- about 16 percent of the total Iraqi population. To put that in perspective, 16 percent of the population of the Uni