HOW MANY JOE BARTONS ARE THERE IN WASHINGTON?

Question of the day: “Who the hell is Joe Barton?” I don’t know about you, but I had never heard of the guy until I watched him sitting before a Congressional committee apologizing to BP’s CEO for what he called President Obama’s “shakedown” of BP yesterday. Barton would have us envision some thugs strong-arming BP into coughing up $20 billion. Gee, Joe, did Obama have a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and did they shine a blinding light in the CEO’s face until he promised to ante up?

Joe Barton, as it turns out is a Republican congressman from Texas, who was first elected to public office in 1984. Before that, he was a consultant for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Company. It bears mentioning that of all industries, oil and gas has donated more money to Joe Barton’s campaigns over the years than any other industry. It’s public record. You can look it up. I did. The numbers tell the story. Barton is absolutely beholden to big oil. In all, oil and gas has contributed approximately $1.5 million to Joe Barton. Among all the members of the House of Representatives, Barton ranks highest in the dollars contributed to his campaigns by oil and gas. So, when Joe Barton sat in front of America and apologized to BP, he was thinking of one thing only – Joe Barton.

If there was a shakedown, it was executed by Republican heavyweights, behind closed doors, against Joe Barton. Barton was reportedly threatened that he would lose his seniority if he did not retract his apology. He did. Just hours after he offered BP his heartfelt apology, he publicly stated that BP should be financially responsible for the catastrophe. His statement sounded ridiculous and coerced after what he had said earlier. To use one our Southern expressions – Joe Barton showed his ass when he apologized to the company that caused the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the United States.

In case you are one of the four people in the U.S. who did not hear this yesterday, watch this:


Note to Joe Barton: So go live somewhere else; maybe one of those places with the funny names, like “Uzbekistan.” However, before you pack, you should know that in Uzbekistan if you started a sentence with “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen…” you would probably find yourself the subject of a different kind of governmental shakedown. Right now, you live in a country that offers you the freedom to say the stupid things you said yesterday. You used your freedom of expression irresponsibly. Gosh, Joe, after 26 years in Congress, I would think that by now you would know what not to say.

So, how many Joe Bartons are there in Washington? Well, the Center for Responsive Politics, the research group that has been tracking U.S. politics for a quarter of a century, reports that in 2009-2010 the top six beneficiaries of oil and gas money are:
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) $286,400
David Vitter (R-LA) $242,600
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) $209,826
Dan Boren (R-OK) $139,700
Robert Bennett (R-UT), $138,400
Roy Blunt (R-MO) $133,100

Joe had an off year – he only got $100,470.

Here’s a snapshot of how the above top five operate: Murkowski (below, left) recently blocked a bill that would raise an oil company’s financial liability after a major spill from $75 million to $10 billion. Environmentalists refer to Lincoln as “Big Oil Blanche,” possibly because she helped the Bush/Cheney regime push through $14 billion in tax breaks for big oil. For his part, Louisiana Senator Vitter introduced legislation in May that would limit the amount of legal damages BP would be responsible for to the last four quarters of profit. Boren vigorously supported The Energy Policy Act of 2005, legislation that provided the oil industry billions in government subsidies. Bennett has come out against legislation that defines goals for a 40 percent reduction in oil use by 2025. And Blunt? Well, he accepted a $1000 check from Haliburton early this month, at the same time his House Energy and Commerce Committee was investigating Haliburton’s possible role in the BP oil spill. The list of Washington legislators who are heavily subsidized by the oil and gas industry is somewhat shocking. Or is it? We “little people,” as BP’s Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg refers to us, may still be somewhat naïve about the ever-sturdy handshake relationships between big oil and our government.

Until the current disaster, most of us did not know that oil companies were the ones writing the regulations for the oil industry. If the BP spill had not happened, perhaps the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service would continue to operate in its Bush/Cheney-era inept fashion and we would be none the wiser for it.

The moral of this dirty story is simply that we, the small people, need to get bigger and better informed. We need to hold our government more accountable for its actions, so that it can exercise enough muscle to hold big oil accountable for its bad behavior. We cannot do that until we know more. And we cannot wait until a natural disaster, man-made disaster or environmental catastrophe to educate ourselves. My thoughts? Put down your remote, get off of Facebook and start learning. And then, deluge your Congressmen with letters, calls and visits, about what you want to happen in YOUR government.

WHAT OBAMA SHOULD HAVE SAID

As is the case with every other journalist in America, after the President's Oval Office speech, I thought about all the things he did not say. In my head I was writing my next post about everything we Louisianans would like to have heard him say. Then, Rachel Maddow said it all for me, eloquently and passionately. Watch:

THE ACRID SMELL OF FAILURE

On Friday night, a group of fine Louisiana chefs will gather at a Marina in Grand Isle to cook their hearts out, so that the residents of the Gulf Coast can forget their troubles and just eat. I’m sure as much Louisiana seafood as possible will be served. The nearby murky, oil-thick water will keep them all land bound. One restaurant that will not be represented is P & J Oysters out of New Orleans. Although doing business since 1876, P & J laid off all of its employees last week. Nothing to shuck. Nothing to serve.

If you live in New Orleans, the spill is the theme right now. It runs through every conversation, every meal, every radio show and news report. People way outside of Louisiana do not seem to be quite as tuned in to the catastrophe as we are here, but maybe that’s understandable. After all, are New Orleanians fully tuned into to Nashville’s crisis right now? Not really. It seems we Americans are rather localized creatures, but the difference between the oil spill and other regionalized tragedies is that this one promises to affect every American, regardless of geography. Well-placed talking heads assure us that gas prices will go up indefinitely, domestic oil drilling is in peril and fully one-third of the nation’s seafood – from the Gulf waters – is in danger of disappearing.

There is widespread fear at the water’s edge in places like Grand Isle. If a community is built almost entirely on fishing and boating, and the water is being contaminated every day by oil that has gushed for eight weeks non-stop, what will become of the town, the culture, the people and the environment?

We are in the midst of the “information is power” age. Still, BP, the company fully responsible for this debacle, appears to be trying to limit and control information. Last week, a reporter from WDSU-TV in New Orleans went to the beach at Grand Isle and was denied access to the workers. Watch:



Despite such outrageous behavior on the part of BP, information has emerged endlessly about the company’s mishandling of the oil spill. You have to love the arrogance of a company that would mount a PR effort that tries to convince the world they’re good guys who can fix this catastrophe, right as the entire Gulf coast is drowning in their oil. So, that brings us to Dick Cheney. Huh? Well, it seems Ann Womack-Colton, Cheney’s former press secretary, has been hired to spin, spin, spin this story until her daddy takes the T-Bird away. She’s the new PR maven for BP.

Is it me or is there just a little too much corporate/governmental incest happening here? Let’s review: Dick Cheney was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000. From day one of the current spill, Halliburton has been under the microscope as the possible culprit. It was Halliburton that cemented the deepwater drill hole. It was also Halliburton that leased failed equipment to BP. Then BP hires Womack-Colton to make nice with the media and an angry public. Uncomfortably chummy, one might say. And how interesting that BP only mentioned that she had been director of public affairs for the Department of Energy (DOE) under George W. Bush. No mention of Dick Cheney.

From a strictly circumstantial standpoint, one could draw parallels between Halliburton and BP. For example, BP has come under criticism for a lack of transparency in its accounting procedures. Meanwhile, a government contract specialist turned whistle-blower revealed that Halliburton has overcharged the Pentagon for fuel charges in Iraq. Creative accounting seems to run in the BP/Halliburton family. At the very least, each has a lot to answer for, and neither has ever sufficiently cleared its image.

BP, it should be mentioned, also falsified its ability to deal with a major spill. According to Associated Press, in an oil-spill response plan, filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service in 2008, BP assured the government it was prepared to handle an oil spill 10 times larger than the current Gulf spill. There’s more: In the 582-page document, titled "Regional Oil Spill Response Plan — Gulf of Mexico," BP clearly failed to do its homework. In the report, BP talks of possible danger to sea otters, seals and walruses. No such animals have ever lived anywhere near or in the Gulf of Mexico. It also names a wildlife expert as a consultant. The trouble is that the guy died in 2005 and the report was submitted in 2008. This is who we’re dealing with. This is BP. And this is the company that received $837 million in U.S. government contracts from the Department of Defense in 2009.

So here is what we are left with. Every effort to contain the oil so far has failed. BP will now buy oil sucking machines from Hollywood actor Kevin Costner. The company has clearly exhausted its own technological options to cap the gusher. Scientists are expressing fear that the pressure of what has already been done may cause cracks in the seabed, which could start a much greater crisis. Oil has now reached land in four states. Louisiana’s wetlands, already receding at alarming rates before the spill are slowly being destroyed. Hundreds of birds, turtles and other animals are dead or dying. And one wonders how the new PR queen will explain away published eyewitness accounts of BP scooping up carcuses of dead birds, so that they cannot be studied or autopsied. In some circles that might be called destroying evidence of the extent of the spill’s effect on wildlife.

If all of the above tug-at-your-heart stuff does not impress you, let the numbers tell the story. Bloomberg reports the oil spill may drive down the Gulf Coast’s shore-area property values by 10 percent for at least three years, according to CoStar Group, Inc., a property information service. Losses may total $4.3 billion along the 600-mile expanse from Louisiana to Florida.

So, to all of those anti-big government types out there: If anything, we Louisianans would like government to huff and puff a bit harder immediately and spread its legislative wings. The U.S. government needs to relegate BP to second string now and simply take over. If President Obama expects the electorate to stand behind him in 2012, he needs to stand up to BP right now. Elected officials in Washington up for re-election soon need to find some non-partisanship and go to bat for their constituents. Job one is stopping the oil from spewing into the Gulf. After that, BP must be held absolutely accountable for the disaster, and must pay every single American citizen for their losses. We have no time for Congressional hearings, across-the-aisle bickering or political posturing. For those who still doubt the national implications of this spill, reportedly President Obama will visit the coast again this week, and then address the nation in prime time from the Oval Office. Will he announce a Gulf recovery package that compensates the thousands of citizens and small businesses directly affected? Will the government come to the aid of places like Orange Beach, AL or Pensacola, FL, beach destinations that rely on tourism that is now non-existent? Will there be a plan and a timeline for restoring the coastline to its natural state? Stay tuned.

HELEN THOMAS: The Rest of the Story

During the JFK years in Washington, there was a network television correspondent named Nancy Dickerson. Understand, very few women were taken seriously as journalists at the time, making Dickerson a true pioneer. Even before Dickerson, there was Sarah McClendon, who covered Washington politics for half a century. Regretfully, both are gone now. But only one woman has covered the White House through 10 presidential administrations, beginning with Eisenhower. That would be Helen Thomas, 89, who with the utterance of one ill-conceived sentence last week unceremoniously killed her career. Watch:



Reaction worldwide was swift and brutal. At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs called her statement "reprehensible." Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, "“She should lose her job over this. As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling.” And it gets worse: President Obama called her comments "offensive," and "out of line."

Well, here's the thing: I'm also someone who is Jewish, and I have mixed feelings about Thomas losing her job, which she quickly did after the uproar became too deafening for Hearst Corporation to keep her on. A student of mine asked me, "As a Jewish man, how do you feel about what she said?" I told her I thought the comments were stupid, but somehow I can't condemn a 60-year career for one statement.

There are those out there who will question my judgment on this, but consider that long career. Thomas is and has always been known for asking the tough questions when no one else would. Watch this encounter with George Bush, who she deemed the worst President in the history of the U.S. Her comments caused her to lose her coveted front row center seat at press conferences and to struggle to ever get called on again:



Thomas was a White House correspondent for 57 years and later Washington bureau chief for UPI. In 2000, she moved to Hearst. Think of it: It was Helen Thomas who was in the briefing room when the Bay of Pigs almost sank Kennedy’s presidency, and it was she who covered the transition after JFK was killed. She was head of the pack when Lyndon Johnson used to parade reporters around the White House grounds instead of taking their questions in the press room. And she was on the job in 1968 holding LBJ’s feet to the fire in the wake of the catastrophic Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Who can ever forget those middle-of-the-night phone calls she used to receive from Martha Mitchell (wife of then-attorney general John Mitchell). Martha filled Helen’s ear full of juicy bits about the Nixon administration’s culpability in the Watergate scandal.

You name it: Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Katrina, AIDS, hostage crises, Middle East unrest, unemployment – if it happened anytime in the second half of the 20th century and up until last week, Helen Thomas was on it like white on rice. She was the curious mouth of the American people anytime she had the opportunity. Instead of occupying her gifted seat in the press room as a throne, she used it more as a bully pulpit. She caused the most powerful men in the free world to quake in their presidential boots. And while her peers were routinely more reverential to the President, Thomas was respectful, but persistent and borderline relentless in the quest for truth. She once said, “I don’t think a tough question is disrespectful.”

Thomas’s questions were informed, timely and just plain smart. But like every one of us, she had a fatal flaw. As she got older, she became overly aggressive and sometimes needlessly provocative in her communication. She even said, “I censored myself for 50 years. Now I wake up and ask myself, ‘Who do I hate today?’” Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post said last week, “She's always said crazy stuff. One reason she gets a pass is that there's an entrenched system of deference to seniority in the White House press corps. This newfound horror and dismay that people are expressing about Helen Thomas are beyond a day late and a dollar short.”

One can almost sense the rage at big, dishonest, unaccountable government that was building inside of her all of those years as she sat in the front row. By the time George Bush took office, she was evidently inconsolable. Just as it was for most of us, those eight Bush years were torturous for Thomas. Fiercely anti-war and consistently frustrated with the White House spin machine, maybe she just finally blew. Unfortunately, her contention that Jews didn’t belong in Palestine belies the fact that Jews have been there forever. And, of course, one cannot diminish the level of inhumanity that was wrought upon the six million people, many of them in Germany and Poland, two of the countries to which Thomas suggested the Jews should return. Thomas’s comments were uncharacteristically uninformed and inexplicably cruel.

But I, for one, will not fully condemn her. I know how tirelessly and tenaciously she worked to bring truth to the American people, and I have observed how consistently she pushed for transparency from American Presidents. Hers was a life of service to the American people, even if her career ended because she could no longer hide her misguided passion. Words were her vehicle, and ultimately words were her undoing. She did her best to tow the journalistic objectivity line as long as she could, and finally she simply couldn’t do it anymore. If she were younger, she could possibly somehow rehabilitate her career, but at 89 the clock is against her.

So, how do mixed feelings express themselves? Like this: Helen Thomas, thank you for doing a stellar job of holding the White House accountable, decade after decade. And Helen, shame on you, not only for insulting and hurting so many people with your recent words, but also for committing the Cardinal sin of reporting: You became the story, rather than reporting it. And this particular story had a very sad ending.

WOULD YOU LIKE KETCHUP WITH THOSE LIES?

Even now, in 2010, sometimes I run across a person who swears up and down he was at Woodstock in 1969. I can’t prove him wrong, but experience now tells me that if every person who said they were at Woodstock was really there, the population in China couldn’t hold a candle to the 1960s most memorable music event. It seems people love to re-invent their past and make it seem more glamorous or heroic than it really was. Lately, there’s been a lot of that going around, and I can’t help wondering: Are these people delusional or do they simply believe the rest of us are idiots?

One of my recent favorites is U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, (right) who more than once publicly stated that he served in Vietnam. Of course, he did not. And, of course, his PR machine found a good workaround for his gaffe. Now he says he “misspoke.” (Did we ever hear the word “misspoke” before about the year 2000? I think not). Blumenthal says he regrets what he said, and what he really meant to say is that he served in the military “during” Vietnam. Had Blumenthal “misspoke” once, we’d cut him a break, right? But reportedly, he said “in Vietnam” on numerous occasions. Blumenthal, who bears some eerie resemblance to another regretful guy, former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, is playing us. I don’t like being played. How about you?

Guess who else is playing us. One Mark Kirk. (below, left) Don’t sweat it if you’ve never heard of the guy, but he’s making headlines lately. Kirk, who is in the running for the Illinois Senate seat formerly held by President Obama, falsely claimed he was awarded the Navy Intelligence Officer of the Year Award - a prestigious honor that is given to only one individual a year. A little digging by his opponent uncovered the lie. And yes, I am calling it a lie. I may have cut the guy some slight slack, had it not come to light that this was not his only lie about his military service. Kirk also claims that he "command[s] the war room of the Pentagon," faced combat in Kosovo, and served in the Iraq war. Oh, and you’ll love this: he’s resorted to using Blumenthal’s “during/in” argument about Iraq, saying he actually served “during” Iraq, rather than “in” Iraq. Please. Just this week his latest fiction surfaced. Now he says he came under fire while flying aboard an intelligence reconnaissance plane in Iraq. But the best was yet to come: By week’s end, Kirk was digging himself in even deeper, when he told a group of newspaper people, “I simply misremembered it wrong.” Jesus, do we really want to elect a guy who says things like “misremembered it wrong?” Oy.

Let’s face it: These guys – and they are not the first to try to pull this type of stunt – are outright lying. But what about other high profile people who just say stupid things, even while staring right into a news station’s camera? Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, for example, said right out loud that he doesn’t see anything wrong with business owners deciding who they will and will not serve or sell their goods to. Rand, we knocked that type of discrimination out more than four decades ago. And how about BP CEO Tony Hayward, who said he’d like his "life back,” while thousands of Gulf Coast residents were slowly and painfully watching their own lives whither away due to his company’s inept handling of the oil spill? Oh, and lest we forget young Miss Kristen Stewart,(right) an actress who compared being hounded by photographers to being raped, in the current issue of British Elle Magazine. Are these people lacking the sensitivity chip, or are they just so taken with their own selves that no one else matters? I seriously don’t get it.

Of course the greatest gaffe in recent memory came at week's end when veteran reporter Helen Thomas killed her decades-long career with a few ill-chosen words. Thomas,89, a veritable institution in the White House press room, had this to say when asked about Israeli/Palestinian relations:
Within days, her speaker's bureau had dropped her, a high school at which she was to speak had cancelled her appearance, a White House official had called her out for her remarks, and finally, her employer, Hearst Newspapers had "retired her." If ever again you doubt the power of words, please think of Helen Thomas.

Every one of the crazies mentioned in this piece has now come forward with “heartfelt” apologies. Heartfelt, or simply humiliated by all of the bad press? Call me a cynic, but I’m going with the latter. But listen – guess who I predict will not be coming forward with any apologies? That would be our old buddy George Bush, who this week said his administration did indeed condone water boarding of terrorists – and he’d do it again!

OIL AND LOGIC DO NOT MIX

Every time there is a major world-altering crisis, it seems the smartest thing humans do is find the smartest humans. So, if there is, say, a flu virus that emerges and threatens various populations, the greatest medical minds pool their cerebral resources and find treatments, or suggest necessary precautions or whatever it takes to fight the threat. If there is a world economic crisis, the greatest financial brains all throw their fiscal-loving hats in the ring and come up with some sort of plan. That makes me wonder: When the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S. happens in the Gulf of Mexico, where are the great environmentalists, marine life researchers, chemists and oil industry minds and why have they not gathered to figure this out? Is it just me, or have others wondered this, as well? I don’t know, because not one talking head in the media has yet to come forward with this query.

It is somewhat understandable that the international oil company experts have not come forward. After all, guess where the biggest oil companies are located. Give up? Watch this list: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Libya, Russia and China. I rest my case. You didn’t really think Iranian oil experts were going to take a goodwill trip to Grand Isle, LA, now did you? Libyans to Biloxi? Not likely. Saudi Arabians to Plaquemines Parish? Right.

That leaves the U.S. oil companies to pitch in with boots on the ground, cutting edge tech equipment and a collaborative spirit to end this crisis before it gets bigger and badder. So, where are Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and Conoco-Philips? And why does the U.S. government continue to use knowledgeable researchers to simply identify the problem, rather than help fix it? As recently as May 31 a team of researchers from the University of Florida revealed that a hidden deep sea oil plume was headed toward the Alabama coastline, an area hugely populated by marine life. Associated Press quoted an LSU fish biologist who said, "Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that.”

BP counters each such statements with its own declarations that naysayers are overstating the problem. BP CEO Tony Hayward (right)
claims that oil naturally gravitates to the surface, and sees no reason for alarm about underwater plumes. It bears noting that CEO Hayward also looked straight into a news camera last weekend and said, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I’d like my life back.” So do thousands of Gulf Coast fishers and their families, Hayward. The difference is that Hayward’s life involves an annual salary from BP of roughly $1.5 million, according to Forbes. Oh, and let’s not forget his 2009 bonus of just over $3 million. Who wouldn’t want that life back? Gosh Hayward, we just can't tell you how sorry we are to inconvenience you like this. Really. We can't. Hayward, who has a tendency to speak before he thinks, also said, the oil spill is “relatively tiny” in comparison with the size of the ocean.

Clearly it is up to President Obama to convene the oil gurus, wildlife advocates and marine life rescuers, so that together they might find solutions. BP is not motivated to do so because it does not have to. The U.S. government has limited authority over BP. Obama, who spent a short three hours in Louisiana last week, has yet to take any further measureable steps toward solving this crisis since his visit. And unlike BP, he should be motivated to do so. He is now being compared to George Bush during Katrina. Talking heads are referring to the oil spill as Obama’s hostage crisis, measured in days. Politicos offer dire prognostications about Obama becoming the first one-term president since Jimmy Carter, if he does not exhibit strong leadership and become a catalyst for action in the Gulf.

The oil spill, you may have noticed, is not at the top of the media’s headline list each day, the way Katrina was. The story is not as sexy. There are no photos of New Orleans underwater. Nobody is stranded on a roof with giant signs that read “HELP!” Gulf Coast residents are not scattered coast to coast in refugee fashion. Katrina was tailor made for media drama, and make no mistake – these days, drama often trumps truth. Instead of oil spill headlines, we get juicier stories that just serve to piss us off – did you hear the one about Louisiana Senator David Vitter coming out in support of BP? True. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

You may also have noticed that George Clooney and the rest of Hollywood’s elite have not rallied to come to the aid of the fishers. No telethons, no emotional requests for immediate help. No food drives, no national coming together for the needy. Let’s face it: George and Oprah and Madonna and fill-in-the-blank boldface names know very little about small fishing towns in Louisiana that are facing extinction. You cannot really rally for something you don’t understand. And is America really going to toss coins at Louisiana just after Nashville went under water? Not likely.

We are dealing with the ultimate loss of a vital eco-system here in Louisiana. We are facing a culture shift that could significantly alter the national seafood market in a most unfortunate way. And just as New Orleans was regaining its pride and some sense of real life, we walk out of our houses on evenings when the air is still and we smell something quite foul. Is it oil, or is it chemicals used to disperse the oil? We do not know, and apparently no one else knows either. And if it is chemicals we smell, how dangerous is it to ingest them? Are there respiratory illnesses yet to be seen that may fully emerge long after the immediate crisis is negotiated down? We don’t know that, either. And since the oil spill is being reported in a rather laissez faire way, America seems to have a distorted view of what is happening here. Some people are cancelling their vacations to New Orleans. Associations are wondering if their already contracted annual conventions might be better placed elsewhere. Visitors are unsure about eating the seafood in world-famous seafood restaurants. You begin to see the trickledown effect on the state’s economy.

Right now, as a Louisiana citizen, I place this crisis squarely at the feet of President Obama. I expect him and Congress to make this oil spill every bit as much of a priority as the national unemployment crisis. I urge him to do just what I suggested earlier – assemble the great minds to find solutions, release enough funds to implement the solutions and manage the crisis on an hour to hour basis. Perhaps he could cancel his still-scheduled trip to Australia next month. I'm thinking maybe there is no pressing diplomatic business with Australia that would trump the President's obligation to manage the biggest oil crisis in the history of this country.

It matters not who is to blame here for the spill. The political ramifications of this crisis will have to wait until the human crisis is addressed and solved. Ponder this: If the oil spill resulted from a terrorist attack, rather than an accident, would our government be more mobilized to fix this? I believe they would. So why is it that the circumstances under which this happened dictate the aggressiveness or lack of such that characterizes the response? Obama and all elected officials need to get busy. Now. We cannot wait.

After all, in addition to our current Gulf crisis, be aware that hurricane season officially began June 1. The oil spill likely happened due to human error. If Mother Nature reigns terror on our little corner of the earth while the spill is still wreaking its own havoc….well, let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s just fix this – now.

REBEL WITH A RACIST CAUSE

If you haven’t heard much about Rand Paul, get ready. You’re going to hear a LOT about him in the days to come. Paul, an ophthalmologist from Kentucky won the GOP primary Tuesday night and is now full throttle in the race to become Kentucky’s next Senator. He may have won under the guise of the Republican party, but Paul is the ultimate hero of the Tea Party.

Remember, the Tea Party would have us believe its tenets have only to do with fiscal reform. Uh-huh. Why then, is controversy swirling bigtime around Paul’s recent comments about the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It seems he supports “most” of the Act, but one-tenth of it bothers him. He says he believes private businesses should not be subject to controls by the Federal government. He also claims he fully disagrees with any measure that would support re-segregating our society. Really? That is interesting, largely because if he had his way, apparently restaurants could still display “whites only” signs, and apartment complexes could decide not to rent to gay people. Paul can frame his comments however he chooses, but the bottom line is that not one political candidate in modern history has even remotely bashed the Civil Rights Act until now. He is treading on dangerous territory, and despite his comments to the contrary, what he is suggesting is clearly racist.

Who’s next on Paul’s hit list? Poor people? Illiterate people? Disabled people? To say Rand Paul is conservative would understate his views. Even Dick Cheney seems to be put off by Paul’s views. He backed the opposing candidate. By the way, Paul is so intent on reducing government in our culture, that he has publicly come out for eliminating the departments of education, commerce and energy. Oh, and here’s the rub: Kentucky has evolved into one of the most conservative states, and Paul has a shot at actually winning this race. Still, the Tea Party heartily endorses Paul’s candidacy. So, the question remains: If the Tea Party was founded for fiscal reform, why would it support a guy who could conceivably usher in a new era of segregated lunch counters? Is there some connection between all things fiscal and civil rights reform? Just asking. Listen to his comments on the Rachel Maddow show, and you be the judge:A couple of quick notes to Rand Paul: If I were a disabled person who went to work in that three-story building you mentioned: If the department for which I was hired is on the third floor, and you position me on the first floor because of my disability, I have a clear cause of action for discrimination. Further, if we roll back the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the point that business owners can choose their patrons, have you considered there may be a number of businesses that do not choose you as a patron? If those businesses are important to you as a consumer, and if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is deconstructed, on what basis would you argue for your own rights? Further, your Senatorial inexperience is showing: There will seldom be a piece of legislation that you support completely. You will have to make concessions and compromises as a U.S. Senator. In 1964, had you believed in “nine-tenths” of the Civil Rights Act, most likely you would have been compelled to vote for it.

Does Kentucky (or any state, for that matter) truly want a U.S. Senator whose views are obviously not fully formed? Is it possible Rand Paul needs to study the legislative landscape a bit more before attempting to become a legislator? Let’s hope so.

New Orleans Welcomes MAYOR MITCH LANDRIEU

Mayor Mitch Landrieu was innaugurated today on the steps of historic Gallier Hall in downtown New Orleans. Listen to his inspiring acceptance speech:

CITY WITHOUT FEAR: New Orleans After Ray Nagin

Finally, and mercifully, New Orleanians can take a full breath as Mayor Ray Nagin is out of office. Find me a New Orleanian who says otherwise and I will show you someone who simply hasn’t been paying attention to the neglectful, laissez-faire, disinterested, uninvolved, apathetic two-term mayor. We are almost five years on from the great wave Katrina and subsequent crumbling of aged, ill-conceived levees. Although our city is remarkably resilient, and its people doggedly determined, these past five years could have been the most progressive in our 300-plus year history, had there been fierce and skilled leadership. There was not.

A few years before Katrina, one night I was at a gathering at an uptown New Orleans home, at which the Mayor was the honored guest. When he rose to speak I noticed several impressive things: First, he was impeccably dressed and groomed. But more importantly, he was articulate, full of enthusiasm for our city and determined to rid City Hall of its heritage of corruption. He spoke convincingly, and he was clearly comfortable in front of the news camera in the room.

Therein lies the problem with Ray Nagin: he is a nattily turned out chameleon who can tailor his suits and his words for whatever crowd happens to be present. Five months after Katrina, it was a very different Ray Nagin who stood on the steps of Gallier Hall on the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, and said this:

"We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.”

That day he spoke with a twinge of dialect, and his earlier all-inclusive civic spirit had clearly dissipated. That was the day Nagin unwittingly wrote his own mayoral legacy. And that was the day the Mayor of New Orleans became a national punchline.

Every New Orleans citizen suffered for that and still does. You will please pardon the analogy, but the citizenry of New Orleans is a rich gumbo pot. Everybody gets to jump in. Yes, we are racially divided in a big way, but we are not a black city or a white city or a Creole city. We are richly diverse. Nagin did not understand the importance of honoring our diversity.

Some would say that is the least of our complaints about Ray Nagin. More importantly, after our 2005 tragedy, the mayor needed to firmly and decisively step up. He did not. He whined, bitched and complained about what victims we were. In doing so, he weakened us and victimized us. Had he been a savvy negotiator with the Feds, a good collaborator with Senator Mary Landrieu and Senator David Vitter, and one whose ego was less important than his dedication to the citizenry, the last five years could have put us on the fast track toward rebuilding the city.

That very citizenry voted him back in office for a second term, largely because many New Orleanians felt it was not a good time to shift gears to a new administration. We were in the middle of FEMA battles, Senate hearings, Katrina-related lawsuits, insurance companies trying to lowball the worst hit areas and more. It seemed logical to many citizens to maintain continuity. A new mayor, many reasoned, would set us back to square one. Nagin won the race (against Mitch Landrieu, our new mayor), and then essentially retired. We saw very little of him, we heard even less about his questionable whereabouts and by a year or two after the storm, we knew we were on our own.

In his last year in office, Nagin took up such causes as attempting to buy a downtown office building (right) to which he wished to move City Hall. The multi-million dollar enterprise was nixed by a city council that knew Nagin was not a reliable arbiter of the city’s welfare or budget. While Ninth Ward citizens continued to live elsewhere as their section of the city rotted, Nagin concerned himself with unrelated issues. For one, when an ordinance came up that would make it impossible for vendors with a history of corrupt practices to do business with the city, Nagin tried to veto it, essentially condoning criminal behavior. Once again, the city council had to step in and exercise its common sense.

Nagin operates independently, rather than cooperatively with individuals and groups that could advance the city's needs. Chief among his adversarial relationships is that with the media. Here is a typical example of how the mayor conducts himself with the press:

So, let’s review: Here is what we New Orleanians are left with as Ray Nagin smugly talks of moving into “disaster consulting.” A drive through the lower Ninth Ward reveals blocks that look much like they did the day after Hurricane Katrina. The local school public system is so fractured and disabled that some former board members are in jail, and some schools were taken over the by State. A large percentage of downtown office space sits empty. We have a police department that is slowly revealing itself to be ill-trained, poorly managed and corrupt. Because of the Danziger Bridge debacle, the Department of Justice is insinuating itself into local law enforcement. This, just as the local murder rate is spiking again and other crimes are on the increase. As Nagin strolls out of office, the city is seven months behind and $8 million in debt to the major contractor handling big recovery projects.

And here comes Mitch Landrieu. As mayor, we wonder if Landrieu will be able to offer hope to those who were displaced by the storm and never got to come back. Will the city’s business climate become more welcoming to the rest of the world, and will we finally have more industry than tourism and shipping? We wonder if the combination of a new police chief and Federal intervention will result in less crime, and we sure hope the extreme racial divide will narrow. One thing we have learned is not to place all of our dreams in the hands of the city leader. We learned we have to jump in and participate in the decision making process and monitor the administration’s performance. Most of all, we learned how resilient we are in the face of massive tragedy and governmental incompetence. We’re still standing. We don’t identify our city any more as “post-Katrina New Orleans.” Nagin was the last symbolic element of that, and now we’re moving on. We now view ourselves as a top-tier destination city in the country. Pack your bags and say goodnight, Ray.

One Nation Divided, Part II: Crisis of Color

It was one of those rare balmy days in New Orleans when the air was perfect enough to allow me to keep my windows open. I could hear one of my neighbors talking to someone, and soon realized he was on the phone speaking to his son. I couldn’t help eavesdropping because I’m just that nosey:

“I don’t hate white people, but listen, you can’t trust them," he said. "If you think those guys you work with are your friends, just wait until it comes down to you or them to take the rap for something on the job. They’ll turn on you so fast you won’t know what hit you. My grandma taught me that and I never forgot it. That’s just how they are.”

The racial divide in this country is worse now than it has ever been in my lifetime, including the Civil Rights era, when there was rioting in the streets, coast to coast. Anyone who thinks the black and white citizens of our country are harmoniously co-existing is delusional. Here’s some evidence:

• Headline: April 14, 2010, Reuters News: "Judge tells Mississippi schools to stop segregating." If you have never heard of the rural Mississippi borough of Walthall County, join the club. It seems tiny Walthall County has been systematically separating its white students and black students, despite the desegregation rulings handed down by the U.S. government more than 40 years ago. Not only have hundreds of white students been allowed to transfer outside of their residential district so as to not have to attend classes with black students; but even those schools who mix races in the buildings have classrooms for whites and classrooms for blacks. In 2010. Worth noting is that the revelation about Walthall County comes just days before the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“Snick”) holds its 50th reunion, 836 miles away in Raleigh, NC. Snick was a group of young people, including emerging luminaries like GA Congressman John Lewis and NAACP President Julian Bond, who staged lunch counter sit ins, orchestrated the legendary Freedom Rides and staged countless peaceful demonstrations in the name of civil rights. As they gather, there will no doubt be a societal cloud looming over their festivities, brought on by Tea Party demonstrators who called John Lewis a nigger during the recent health care debates. Walthall County’s decades-long defiance of desegregation laws will likely be a pervasive topic.

• Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared April “Confederate History Month.” Not only were vast numbers of Virginians offended by McDonnell’s recognition of the Confederacy, but the fact that slavery was not even mentioned was a clear indication that the Governor did not see this historical abomination as significant at all. After much public protest, McDonnell revised his proclamation to include mention of slavery. The annual commemoration of the Confederacy bit the dust back in 2001, but McDonnell brought it back, saying, “"I felt just as I've issued dozens and dozens of other commemorations, that it was something that was worthy of doing so people can at least study and understand that period of Virginia history and how it impacts us today.” Is Bob just nostalgic for the good ole slavery days, or is this really a political move to strengthen his position with his base supporters? It is most likely the latter, but what does that say about the mindset of his supporters?

• Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour just could not see what all the fuss was about after all hell broke out in response to McDonnell’s proclamation. Said he: “To me, it’s a sort of feeling that it’s a nit, that it is not significant, that it’s not a — it’s trying to make a big deal out of something (that) doesn’t amount to diddly.” Interestingly enough, the Governor’s mansion is less than 100 miles from soon-to-be infamous Walthall County. Even more interesting is that Barbour also declared April in Mississippi to be “Confederate Heritage Month,” calling on his citizens to celebrate the “rich heritage” of the Confederacy. Like his GOP colleague in Virginia, Barbour made no mention of slavery in his proclamation, even in a state with the highest percentage of black citizens in the U.S. For a guy who is rumored to be considering a Presidential run in 2012, Barbour emerges as something of a figure with his head in the sand. Note to Haley: What plays in Mississippi does not stay in Mississippi.

• The Southern Poverty Law center released findings that from 2000 to 2008, the number of hate groups in the U.S. rose by 50%. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2008, 72.9 percent of hate crime victims were targeted by attackers with an anti-black bias.

• The emerging Tea Party was ostensibly formed so that politically and fiscally conservative citizens could form a collective voice to protest the 2008 bailouts and the 2009 stimulus package. While the party members continue to claim that racism is not inherent in its followers, those who attend Tea Party events suggest otherwise. Anecdotal reports show that protestors routinely carry signs with racist connotations, often directed at President Obama. Typical of those signs: “Cap Congress and trade Obama back to Kenya.” Others carry signs with renderings of Obama as Hitler. Radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh and a number of his neocon cronies say it’s much ado about nothing, and that Tea Partiers are not racist. Right.

The American culture has a tendency to focus on very few issues at a time. (Best evidence? Financial reform didn’t go front burner until healthcare simmered down). So, in the 1960’s, we focused on Vietnam and civil rights, two seemingly disparate societal issues. When Vietnam was finally settled, did the civil rights movement lose momentum at the same time? Maybe. And that is unfortunate for all of us. As mentioned earlier, the racial divide in this country is more evident than ever, and with an economy that has tanked and stayed sluggish, frustration and anger are front and center. Is it just me or does it seem like racial tension is reaching a boiling part in many quarters around the U.S.? If you lived through the 1960s, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you were not around at that time, stay tuned, stay alert and watch your back.