LA 2 louis
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new tag 418 la
SEE VAXX
promoted to primary 6/16 on cancer, EJ, katrina, Jindal, AG
see Louisiana main for older
see cancer alley
see RAGA fuckery LANDRY REP --> AG // MIZZOU
trump judge --> 5th circuit
see HAARP WEATHER BS TRUMP ~ EJ CANCER ALLEY HELP?! DEI
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AN 7 26
Ahead of the 250th birthday of the United States, a Louisiana judge tried to clear a courtroom when a grand jury returned an indictment of a political official. Now, the state supreme court has stepped in to save her.
A grand jury returned an indictment on Thursday of Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, but less than 24 hours later, the conservative majority of the Louisiana Supreme Court stepped in to put the whole thing on hold. All four of the Republican justices voted in favor of Murrill and one Democratic one joined. The other Democrat and one Independent justice dissented.
Local WWL News reported that the court issued Murrill's requested stay of the indictment, claiming that she "makes a compelling argument concerning the disturbing defects in the grand jury proceedings and in the trial court’s handling of those proceedings.”
According to new allegations, Murrill used the chaos in the courtroom to claim that the special prosecutor failed to follow proper procedure in the indictment when people were removed from the courthouse.
On Thursday, journalists, a producer, and a First Amendment lawyer were not only locked out but also handcuffed by court police when they tried to report on the case.
James Finn, reporter for The Times-Picayune, wrote on X that "WWLTV producer Danny Montverde was placed in handcuffs by Orleans Sheriff’s Office court security officers after objecting to the closed-door nature of the proceeding."
He added, "I was told I’d face contempt of court charges and threatened with cuffs if I didn’t leave the courthouse hallway. When I left the building and came back, security wouldn’t let me back in. When I questioned on what grounds, I was again threatened with handcuffs."
Finn issued a follow-up report on the paper, stating that no one at the New Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office has commented on what happened.
The office "has made no comment about its deputies’ conduct yesterday, incl cuffing/detaining journalist @DCMonteverde and 1A lawyer Elana Beiser for refusing to leave a taxpayer-funded courthouse. OPSO has not responded to inquiries from," Finn wrote on X.
WWL TV reporter David Hammer commented on Thursday evening, "Code of Criminal Procedure Section 383 says grand jury 'indictments shall be returned into the district court in open court.” That did not happen in Judge Leon Roché’s court today and Danny was objecting on behalf of the public. @WWLTV ’s lawyer, Elana Beiser, was also detained.'"
Beiser later quipped, "Nothing like a brief detention while standing up for freedom of information to celebrate Independence Day weekend."
"The episode ended with combative, dueling press conferences on the courthouse steps. The special prosecutor assigned to the probe lamented that she had taken the case; defense lawyers for Attorney General Liz Murrill decried a system of 'kangaroo courts' in New Orleans," Finn wrote in his report.
Murrill claimed in her court filing that there were also conflicts of interest involving Special Prosecutor Laurie White. She is currently being represented by the AG's office in a sexual harassment lawsuit. She also served as an attorney for Calvin Duncan, a central person in the case. For those reasons, Murrill claimed that it wasn't fair.
The conservative majority of the Louisiana Supreme Court agreed that the case must be examined and that there are likely conflicts of interest. Everything must remain on hold until further investigation. They also agreed that Murrill is "likely to succeed in having the case dismissed and that she would suffer irreparable harm if it can move forward," said the*Associated Press*.
“This indictment appears to turn the law on its head and flows from what appear to be extraordinary procedural defects and improprieties,” the court said in the Friday filing signed by Republican Justice Jay McCallum.
“I hope this political witch hunt is not a harbinger of things to come,” she said in a statement Friday, “but I fear that it is.”
Echoing President Donald Trump, Murrill claimed the matter was a "witch hunt."
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KFF AN 10 25
In the 1970s, persistent measles outbreaks provoked officials to strengthen child protection with enforced school mandates in every state. Today the partisan split on vaccine policy in the wake of the covid outbreak has changed the equation. This is nowhere more the case than in Florida, although legislators in Texas and Louisiana are also considering ending mandatory vaccination, and Idaho enables parents to get an exemption just by asking for it.
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texas 1o comm all classrm 6 25 ~
'Not a theocracy': Internet erupts after court blocks Louisiana's Ten Commandments law
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Legal Victory in Louisiana: Fifth Circuit Revives Environmental Justice Lawsuit
In a significant development for environmental justice, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on April 9, 2025, that a lawsuit challenging discriminatory land use practices in St. James Parish, Louisiana, can proceed. The plaintiffs—community and faith-based groups—allege that the parish has systematically placed hazardous industrial facilities in majority-Black neighborhoods, disproportionately affecting residents' health and cultural heritage. The court's decision allows the case to move forward, offering hope for communities seeking accountability and change. McGlinchey Stafford PLLC+2Center for Constitutional Rights+2Louisiana Law Blog+2Center for Constitutional Rights+2Louisiana Law Blog+2McGlinchey Stafford PLLC+2
4 25 an
'Not a defense': Republican facing ethics charges pushes overhaul of ethics investigations
Julie O'Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
Gov. Jeff Landry is pushing for dramatic changes to the Louisiana Board of Ethics’ investigation process that was used to charge him in 2023 with breaking the state ethics code. The changes Landry seeks would make it easier for subjects of an ethics complaint – like he is – to avoid charges or a probe into their alleged wrongdoing.
The proposed modifications are part of a sweeping rewrite of the state ethics code for elected officials and public employees in House Bill 397, sponsored by Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia.
Beyond making it harder to bring ethics charges, the legislation also loosens limits on elected officials and state employees’ state travel, weakens restrictions on government contracts with public servants and their families, and reduces requirements for elected officials and political candidates’ public disclosure of financial interests.
The proposal cleared its first major hurdle Wednesday when the Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee allowed it to go to the floor without any objection or amendments.
Stephen Gelé, Landry’s private lawyer who handles ethics and campaign finance concerns for the governor, helped craft the legislation. He presented the bill alongside Beaullieu in the House committee.
Gelé is also one of the attorneys defending Landry against ethics board’s charges for not disclosing flights Landry took on a political donor’s plane to and from Hawaii. The ethics board and Landry, through Gelé, are still in negotiations about the appropriate punishment for the governor’s alleged violation....
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Louisiana argues parts of Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional
an 1 15
NEW ORLEANS – Attorneys representing Louisiana in a lawsuit against the state legislative redistricting plans passed in 2022 are arguing that a key piece of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and should not be applied to the state.
The case could produce a bellwether decision that impacts Black voting strength in several states where similar challenges have arisen.
Arguments were presented Tuesday to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case Nairne v. Landry,in which Black voters are challenging the most recent legislative redistricting maps as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
Last February, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled that maps Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives. Dick’s ruling came after the 2023 elections, when a new class of lawmakers were elected, yielding a Republican supermajority in both chambers.
While Dick’s ruling blocks legislative elections from being held in every district while the lawsuit plays out, plaintiffs in the case agreed to let special elections for two vacant Louisiana Senate seats go forward in February.
The state has appealed Dick’s decision. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.
“Conditions that originally justified those measures no longer apply to Louisiana,” Deputy Solicitor General Morgan Brungard argued. “We ask the court to reverse and hold Section 2 unconstitutional as it applies to Louisiana.”
Brungard argued that Black voter turnout in Louisiana is sufficiently high enough that Section 2 is no longer necessary.
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The three 5th Circuit judges presiding are James Dennis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Irma Ramirez, an appointee of President Barack Obama.
For over a decade, conservative attorneys and officials have sought to whittle down the Voting Rights Act. Nairneis one vehicle politicians have sought to use as a test case against Section 2.
Last year, Republican attorneys general from 14 states filed an amicus brief in the case arguing Section 2 is unconstitutional. That action followed a 2023 decision in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that only the federal government can seek an enforcement ruling under the Voting Rights Act, rather than individuals.
The federal government and voting rights advocates have pushed back on that stance.
Every case brought under Section 2 is likely to be used as a test case for those that seek to have that portion of the Voting Rights Act overturned, advocates have said.
The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in Nairnein response to the state’s arguments against Section 2 but remained neutral on the other aspects of the case.
Noah Bokat-Lindell, a DOJ civil rights attorney, argued states cannot get a carveout from a generally applicable statute. For example, they cannot become exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act because a state argues it doesn’t discriminate against disabled people, he said.
In a press conference after the hearing, Attorney General Liz Murrill argued that if Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional, Black voters could still count on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Those are legal arguments that we wanted to preserve so that they eventually might make it up to the United States Supreme Court,” Murrill said. “They’ve also been percolating in a number of other cases related to the scope and continuing application of Section 2 to states under current conditions.”
If Dick’s decision is upheld, legislators will have another opportunity to redraw the boundaries of their districts. Dick, an Obama federal court appointee, did not specify in her ruling the number of majority Black districts necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Plaintiffs have said the state should add six in the Louisiana House and three in the Senate. Currently, 28 out of 105 House districts are majority Black, as are 11 of 39 Senate districts.
State Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, who is Black, said he intends to file a bill with a new redistricting plan in the upcoming legislative session, which begins April 14.
Also at issue in Nairneis whether Dick erred in blocking the entire redistricting plan. Attorneys for the state argue the plaintiffs only have standing to challenge the districts where they live.
It is not known when the 5th Circuit panel will rule on the state’s appeal.
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
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An election partnership that Wilcox helps lead has even stopped advertising a service that allows local officials to report false voting information online, for fear of conservative backlash — a sign of broader concerns of those who work to safeguard elections as America nears another round of presidential voting.
Experts say a campaign of legal and political pressure from the right has cast efforts to combat rumors and conspiracy theories as censorship. And as a result, they say, the tools and partnerships that tried to flag and tamp down on falsehoods in recent election cycles have been scaled back or dismantled. That's even as threats loom from foreign governments and artificial intelligence, and as former President Donald Trump, who still falsely claims to have won the 2020 contest, is likely to use the same tactics again as he pursues the White House in 2024.
Added Wilcox: "Everybody is gun-shy."
"Open season"
As Nina Jankowicz sees it, the opening salvo came in the spring of 2022, when a right-wing campaign quickly snuffed out a Department of Homeland Security initiative called the Disinformation Governance Board.
POLITICS
She joined DHS to fight disinformation. She says she was halted by... disinformation
Jankowicz, who has written books about Russian information operations and online harassment, was tapped to lead the board. The federal government described it as a working group, without "any operational authority or capability," tasked with coordinating efforts to identify false and misleading claims and share facts about security concerns, from elections to natural disasters.
But the combination of the board's ominous-sounding name and DHS's poor efforts to communicate its purpose made it catnip for right-wing influencers, who quickly seized on the board and Jankowicz herself as avatars of a nefarious plot to censor Americans.
"The Biden Administration's decision to stand up a 'Ministry of Truth,' is dystopian in design," said now-House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., shortly after the board was announced. "The government has no role whatsoever in determining what constitutes truth or acceptable speech."
Supporters of former President Donald Trump look at merchandise ahead of his rally in Hialeah, Fla., this week. Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election, fueling conspiracy theories around the voting process.
Ricardo Ardeuengo/AFP via Getty Images
After a barrage of death threats and abuse, Jankowicz resigned, and DHS scrapped the board altogether. Jankowicz told NPR that the timid effort by the federal government to defend her or push back against the allegations sent a clear message.
"That showed ... that it was open season on researchers, on civil servants, on anyone who was working in this space," Jankowicz said.
Amid that furor, in May 2022, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of colluding with social media companies to censor conservative speech, by pressing platforms to take action on misleading posts about COVID-19 and elections.
Supreme Court to hear court ban on government contact with social media companies
This July, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled the government had likely violated the First Amendment and issued a sweeping injunction blocking agencies' communications with platforms about most content. The injunction was narrowed by an appeals court, before being put on hold last month by the Supreme Court, which is slated to hear the case this term.
Pressure is coming from Congress as well, where the House Judiciary Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally, is conducting its own probe into alleged collusion between the Biden administration and tech companies to unconstitutionally shut down political speech.
an 6 24
under renewed pressure from right-wing election deniers, the Louisiana Legislature abandoned its attempt to repeal a 2021 law that has made the task of buying voting machines overly burdensome.
House Bill 856, sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, died just one step shy of final passage during the closing days of the 2024 legislative session after Johnson ended conference committee negotiations.
The proposal would have repealed parts of a 2021 law that added multiple layers of bureaucracy to the Louisiana Department of State’s process to purchase new voting systems. The most significant parts of the bill were created through a late-stage amendment adopted on the Senate floor last week.
In an interview Sunday, Johnson said he decided to sideline the bill after some constituents and other lawmakers expressed concerns with the “process” used to amend the bill into its final version.
Typically, most scrutiny and vetting of legislation occurs during committee hearings before a bill reaches the floor of a chamber, so late-stage floor amendments that make big changes to a bill can sometimes generate pushback from other lawmakers or constituents.
Johnson’s legislation began as a simple one-page bill to add a short clause to an existing statute, making the secretary of state responsible for all “voting system maintenance and repair.” That version of the bill sailed through both chambers without opposition. It wasn’t until a May 8 Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing when lawmakers first hinted at the possibility of an amendment.
At the hearing, lawmakers asked Secretary of State Nancy Landry for an update on the purchase of new voting machines. Landry, a Republican, said it was her “number one priority” but that the 2021 law had turned the acquisition into a “long and drawn out process.”
In a later interview, Landry’s spokesperson, Joel Watson, said the process involves multiple layers of bureaucratic red tape that will delay the purchase of new voting machines an additional two years.
The 2021 law created the Voting System Commission within the Louisiana Department of State. Composed of government officials who serve without compensation, the commission is charged with analyzing any available voting systems and recommending a specific type to the secretary of state. It also created a separate Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee to independently review vendors that submitted bids before making a final recommendation.
Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee members only briefly discussed the bureaucratic issues at the May 8 hearing and advanced the original version of Johnson’s bill without amendments. It wasn’t until May 29 when the bill came up for a Senate floor vote that the public and most lawmakers saw the extent of the changes Landry was requesting through an amendment from Sen. Mike Reese, R-Leesville. Still, the new amended version of the bill cleared the chamber with unanimous support.
The amended version proposed to keep both the Voting System Commission and the Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee with some small changes. It would have repealed requirements that the secretary of state create rules for the purchase of voting machines and hire at least three independent experts to certify them.
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Article: "Louisiana was open to Cancer Alley concessions. Then EPA dropped its investigation" by Michael Phillis.
Article: "Louisiana Poverty Rate" by Welfare Info. thom ref
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180 fix 7 23
https://www.rawstory.com/cancer-alley-louisiana-epa-grist/
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tpm
December 27, 2023
In their endless quest to further defang the Voting Rights Act and gerrymander their way into permanent control, Republican officials have launched a double-headed attack on the landmark civil rights law.
The new attacks emerge as Republican politicians attempt to wriggle out of judges’ orders requiring that they draw additional, majority-minority, likely Democratic districts in their states, which could imperil their party’s thin majority in the House of Representatives.
The attacks on the already-weakened VRA take two forms: arguing that the law doesn’t protect districts controlled by coalitions of multiple minority groups, and that only the U.S. attorney general — not individual voters represented by good government groups, as is most common — can bring lawsuits under the section of the law concerning illegal vote dilution.
Individuals’ Ability To Sue Under Section 2
Arkansas
In perhaps the most stunning voting rights decision this year, a split 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that only the U.S. attorney general can bring VRA lawsuits under Section 2 — a wild break with precedent, decades of VRA cases, legislative intent and Supreme Court writing on the subject.
At least two Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — had telegraphed their skepticism about the validity of suits brought by voting rights groups and other non-Department of Justice actors, called private rights of action. That likely prompted a Donald Trump-appointed district judge hearing an Arkansas gerrymandering dispute to raise questions about the mechanism (which neither party had) in the first place. Two 8th Circuit judges pounced on appeal.
If the 8th Circuit decision stands, VRA litigation would plummet even under Democratic administrations due to the simple reality that the DOJ cannot replace the volume of lawsuits, aimed at protecting the vote, brought each year by civil rights groups around the country. Such litigation would likely end altogether under Republican administrations.
The plaintiffs in that case, led by the Arkansas state conference NAACP, have asked for the case to be reheard en banc, in the hopes that the full circuit will overturn the ruling of two of its judges (both of whom made the Supreme Court shortlist during the Trump administration).
“The full Court should grant rehearing to reaffirm that a private right of action exists to enforce Section 2 of the VRA,” they wrote. “For almost 60 years — across hundreds of federal cases, including in the Supreme Court and this Court — the uniform answer has been ‘yes.’ By a 2-1 vote, the divided panel abruptly fractured this line of unbroken precedent.”
They noted that since 1982, more than 400 Section 2 cases have been litigated, almost all of which were brought by individuals. “Of the 182 successful Section 2 cases in that time,” they added, “only 15 were brought by the Attorney General alone.”
The court has ordered a response to the petition for the full circuit to hear the case by December 26.
Louisiana
Sensing an opportunity, Louisiana Republicans — perhaps the most energetic of all in their attempts to avoid drawing an additional majority-minority district — quickly glommed on to the Arkansas case. They invoked the 8th Circuit decision in an unsuccessful attempt to get en banc rehearing of their own case, where a 5th Circuit panel upheld a lower court’s finding that the congressional maps likely violate the VRA.
“New and important precedent has been handed down after the panel’s decision was published, which creates a definitive circuit split as to whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Acts (“VRA”) confers a private right of action,” they wrote last month. “Just two days ago, the 8th Circuit ruled that Section 2 does not confer a private right of action. The State tendered the same argument with this Court, but it reached the opposite conclusion.”
They argued that the new circuit split strengthens their case for a more rigorous rehearing.
Voters and the NAACP retorted that a reversal in the Louisiana case would not remedy the circuit split the 8th Circuit created and reminded the court that they’d also brought their challenge under a separate law, covering their bases.
The panel ultimately rejected the Louisiana officials’ bid for a full circuit hearing — a convenient method of delay, the voters and NAACP pointed out — and the legislature is expected to produce a new map during a special session in mid-January.
Multi-Minority Group Coalitions
Georgia
Federal district judge Steve Jones wasn’t coy when he ordered Georgia lawmakers to draw an additional Black-majority district: “The State cannot remedy the Section 2 violations described herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans,” he wrote.
But Republican lawmakers did just that, shuffling Black voters around and decimating Rep. Lucy McBath’s (D-GA) district — where a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino voters typically elect Democrats — in the process of drawing the court-ordered new district. Plaintiffs immediately lodged their objections to the new map, fuming that it “makes a mockery” of the judge’s order.
At a Wednesday hearing, Jones reportedly said that he’d take until late January to decide whether the new maps are in compliance. If he decides that they’re not — ruling that these kinds of coalitions are protected by the VRA the same way single-minority group districts are — he’ll appoint a special master to draw remedial maps. Republican officials would almost certainly try to challenge that finding, hoping to get the question before a VRA-hostile Supreme Court.
Texas
Another case out of Galveston County, Texas pushes on this same question. There, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reluctantly upheld a lower court’s finding that the county commissioner map was a violation of the VRA. It also asked the full 5th Circuit to overturn its own precedent.
“The court’s decisions in this respect are wrong as a matter of law,” the judges wrote. “The text of Section 2 does not support the conclusion that distinct minority groups may be aggregated for purposes of vote-dilution claims.”
Earlier this month, the conservatives on the Supreme Court allowed the maps — found by two courts to be illegal — to stand without comment. The liberal dissenters were less taciturn.
“In imposing a different map, acknowledged to violate current law — on the theory that the Circuit might someday change that law — the Court of Appeals went far beyond its proper authority,” chided Justice Elena Kagan.
The full 5th Circuit will hear the critical case in May
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G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election
A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.
By Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel
June 19, 2023
On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.
The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money,according to several people involved.
They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise— and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director ofColumbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute,an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.
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The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.
A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.
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Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.
In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.
A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.
Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.
[The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods
The Titanic Truthers of TikTok: On the app, long-established facts about the 1912 disaster are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content.
A Global Effort: A group of scholars introduced an international panel to study online misinformation, inspired by the way scientists documented the global effect of carbon emissions.
A Hub for Conspiracy Theories: The Denver airport is a magnet for tall tales inspired by the paranormal — and an experiment into whether, sometimes, institutional fabulism can just be fun.
Climate Lies: In 2021, Google said that it would stop running ads alongside content that denied climate change. But a report shows that one of its platforms, YouTube, has continued to profit from videos pushing misinformation on the topic.]
Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.
Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.
Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes.The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.
The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social media companies.
The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.
If the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.
Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”
The researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.
The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”
The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 electionto identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.
Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.
In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.
A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.
No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.
“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.
The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.
In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)
The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.
“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”
The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.
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Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including theGateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.”
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” @stevenleemyers • Facebook
Sheera Frenkel is a prize-winning technology reporter based in San Francisco. In 2021, she and Cecilia Kang published “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.” @sheeraf
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Doughty
terry Alvin Doughty (born January 16, 1959) is the Chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Nominated by President Donald Trump, Doughty previously served in the Fifth Judicial District Court in Louisiana.
Biography
Doughty was born on January 16, 1959, in Rayville in Richland Parish in northeastern Louisiana.[1] He received his Bachelor of Science in finance from Louisiana Tech University and his Juris Doctor from the Louisiana State University Law School.[2]
State judicial service
As a judge, Doughty presided over criminal, civil, and juvenile cases arising in the parishes of Franklin, Richland, and West Carroll. Elected in 2008 to serve as a judge of the Fifth Judicial District in Louisiana, he replaced retiring Judge Glenn W. Strong. He assumed that office on January 1, 2009.[3]
In 2015, Doughty was re-elected to the courtand received the Citizen Lawyer Award from the Louisiana State Bar Association. From 1985 through 2008, Doughty served as an assistant district attorney for the Fifth Judicial District. During that period, he prosecuted misdemeanor and felony cases, and litigated post-conviction proceedings and juvenile cases. Prior to joining the district attorney's office, he practiced at the Rayville firm of Cotton, Bolton, Hoychick & Doughty.[2] Doughty retired from the state bench on March 8, 2018.[4]
Federal judicial service
On August 3, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Doughty to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, to the seat vacated by Judge Robert G. James, who assumed senior status on May 31, 2016.[5] On November 1, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[6] On December 7, 2017, his nomination was reported out of committee by a voice vote.[7] On March 1, 2018, the United States Senate invoked cloture on his nomination by a 94–2 vote.[8] Doughty's nomination was confirmed on March 6, 2018 by a 98–0 vote.[9] He received his commission on March 7, 2018. He became chief judge on December 5, 2022.[10]
:{:{The nomination was endorsed by U.S. Representative Ralph Abraham of Louisiana's 5th congressional district, who like Doughty resides in Richland Parish, and U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy and John Neely Kennedy.[11] Doughty was rated "well qualified" by the American Bar Associatio:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:n.[12]}:
Block on COVID-19 vaccine mandate
In 2021, Doughty issued a nationwide injunction against a federal mandate that health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.[13] Doughty's opinion includes manyfalse and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including an incorrect suggestion that vaccines are not useful because booster shots are recommended after six months, a misleading statement that vaccines "do not prevent transmission of the disease", and the falsehood that "the virus has achieved an immune escape from COVID-19 vaccines". Doughty's opinion uncritically invoked the views of a doctor who is a known for making false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine.[14][15]
On New Year's Day 2022, Doughty issued an injunction on a federal mandate that would require workers at Head Start (a pre-K program) to be vaccinated from COVID-19. Doughty's ruling applied to the 24 states whose Attorneys General signed on to the lawsuit.[16]
On September 21, 2022, Doughty entered a permanent injunction against a federal vaccine and mask mandate for the Head Start program in 24 states, which would have required its teachers, contractors, and volunteers to be fully vaccinated, stating that Biden did not have constitutional authority to issue such mandate.[17]
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desmog 2 23
Louisiana Democratic Party ‘Funneled’ Utility Donations to Climate Candidate Challenger
A Window into Louisiana’s Continued Embrace of the Fossil Fuel Industry
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/louisiana-mother-daughter-custody-rapist/
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https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/03/new-report-destroys-gop-talking-points-blaming-dems-for-crime-trump-states-have-8-out-of-the-10-highest-murder-rates/
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New Report Destroys GOP Talking Points Blaming Dems for Crime: Trump States Have 8 Out of the 10 Highest Murder Rates
Published on March 16, 2022 By David Badash
Consider these explosive headlines from Fox News over the past several months: “Democrat-run cities overwhelmed by crime surge,” “Murder and crime rates spike in Democrat-run cities – is it a control play?” or, “Democrat-run cities experience record breaking homicide rates.”
Ten days before Christmas last year House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy falsely blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “crime wave” that’s “spreading across the country.”
“Speaker Pelosi should look in the mirror to see what caused the ‘attitude of lawlessness’ spreading across the country,” he wrote. “Democrat politicians defunded police, raised money for rioters, and pushed policies that are soft on crime. They own this crime wave.”
And here’s McCarthy just days ago, again lying, claiming crime is “created by Democrats.”
A new report from Third Way destroys all these GOP talking points – and points out that “murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.”
About that claim Leader McCarthy made? He should look in the mirror – and at his own district before pointing fingers.
The report notes that “the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.”
In fact, in all of 2020, “per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.”
It gets worse for the GOP.
“8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century,” the report reveals.
The actual facts blow away what an average Fox News watching die-hard Republican voter would think.
“We found that murder rates are, on average, 40% higher in the 25 states Donald Trump won in the last presidential election compared to those that voted for Joe Biden. In addition, murder rates in many of these red states dwarf those in blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts.”
“Mississippi had the highest homicide rate at 20.50 murders per 100,000 residents,” Third Way reports, “followed by Louisiana at 15.79, Kentucky at 14.32, Alabama at 14.2, and Missouri at 14. The national average was 6.5 per 100,000 residents, but the top five states had rates more than twice that high.”
These red states are not generating “murder is out of control” national headlines. They seem to generate no headlines at all. The rest of the top ten were filled out by South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee—all states rarely talked about in breathless media reports about rampant crime in Democratic strongholds.
The report does not even mention guns, which are a massive part of the problem, exacerbated by red state gun free-for-all policies.
And for those Fox News watching die-hard Republican voters who may say Third Way is a left-wing think tank, it’s actually been criticized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And former bank regulator William K. Black has accused Third Way of being a “group that pretends sometimes to be center-left but is actually completely a creation of Wall Street.”
Read the full report here. https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem
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stay@ home gov jb edwards
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-louisiana-gops-crash-and-burn-push-to-strip-governor-john-bel-edwards-powers
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an 820 Louisiana Republican wants to force people to submit a positive COVID test to vote by mail
Matthew Chapman / Raw StoryAugust 18, 2020
According to the Daily Advertiser, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin is proposing a rollback of voter eligibility to cast an absentee ballot ahead of the November election. “Ardoin’s new plan will…
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720 desmog
New Orleans Activists Call out Environmental Racism Alongside Police Brutality in Week of Protests
On June 3, just hours before New Orleans police tear-gassed a group protesting racial violence, Jesse Perkins, a Black veteran, called out the many shades of racism and violence his community...
READ MOre
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https://theintercept.com/2020/06/25/environmental-activists-charged-terrorizing-louisiana-formosa/
TWO LEADERS OF the long-running fight for environmental justice in Louisiana turned themselves in to police in Baton Rouge Thursday morning. The activists, who work in a part of the state known as “Cancer Alley,” faced charges of “terrorizing” related to a nonviolent protest action. Civil liberties attorneys are calling the charges a dramatic escalation of a yearslong effort by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to criminalize efforts to halt the expansion of polluting facilities in the state — part of a nationwide trend of cracking down on dissent around climate change issues.
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The accusations against the activists, Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh, stem from a seemingly innocuous activist stunt carried out in December, the day after a festival designed to draw attention to the environmental misdeeds of Formosa Plastics. The Taiwanese petrochemical company plans to build a massive plastics manufacturing complex in a largely Black Louisiana community that has already suffered health problems linked to local industry. In October, Formosa agreed to a $50 million settlement for dumping pollutants, including the small pellets that form the building blocks for plastic products known as nurdles, into Texas’s Lavaca Bay — the largest settlement of a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed by private citizens.
with a key environmental permit still pending for Formosa in Louisiana, the action — dubbed “Nurdlefest” — was meant to pressure the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to scrutinize the company’s record. Boxes of the plastic pellets, used as evidence in the Texas case, were carted to the front of the agency, where around 75 people gathered in the rain.
What apparently terrorized community members, however, was a container of the pellets that appeared on the porch of an oil and gas lobbyist, with a detailed note attached, explaining what they were and their Texas origin. “We have delivered this package of nurdles as a reminder – Louisiana does not need anymore pollution, plastics or otherwise,” the letter said. “We demand that LDEQ DENY Formosa’s air emissions permit application.”
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The letter was signed by Concerned Citizens of Louisiana and included the phone number of Bill Quigley, the activists’ pro bono attorney.
The Baton Rouge Police Department apparently agreed that the plastic particles were threatening. “A note was observed on the top of the package indicating not to open the container as the contents could be hazardous. Police requested Hazmat to be contacted,” spokesperson Don Coppola told The Intercept. Although the note discouraged against removing the nurdles or leaving them around children or pets, it did not describe them as “hazardous.” It included a Formosa phone number for safely recycling the material.
Rolfes and McIntosh, who are respectively the director of and a program assistant at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which provides support to groups of community members living near polluting facilities, face a maximum of 15 years in prison and $15,000 in fines for so-called terrorizing — defined as “the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist” — with the intention of causing members of the public to fear for their safety.
“This is an unwarranted escalation because they are using the term ‘terrorizing,’” said Pam Spees, senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is representing McIntosh and Rolfes. “It is imposing unfairly and inappropriately a label on people that have been peacefully working for years to raise awareness of the impact of industry on frontline communities. To use that word in a context like this is potentially damaging and chilling to others.”
THE CHARGES AGAINST Rolfes and McIntosh come on the heels of a series of incidents where environmental activists have been dealt hefty charges for actions challenging the petrochemical, oil, and gas industries in Louisiana.
In August 2018, Louisiana legislators passed a law establishing a new felony charge for anyone who trespasses on critical infrastructure facilities, including chemical manufacturing facilities and oil and gas pipeline construction sites. Over the following couple months, police used the new law to charge 14 people protesting the oil company Energy Transfer’s Bayou Bridge pipeline, as well as a journalist. Local prosecutors have not yet acted on the charges.
[pix Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa agreed to a $50 million settlement for dumping small pellets that make up the building blocks for plastic products, known as “nurdles,” into Texas’s Lavaca Bay.
Photo: Courtesy of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade
Last October, police charged Gregory Manning, the legally blind pastor of Broadmoor Community Church and a member of the Coalition Against Death Alley, with a felony for allegedly inciting a riot. Authorities said Manning failed to immediately leave a hallway outside the office of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry during a protest against the association’s influence over state politics. A prosecutor later dropped all charges.
This spring, legislators passed an enhanced version of the critical infrastructure law, which would have ramped up charges for trespass during a state of emergency. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed the bill.
To Rolfes and McIntosh’s attorneys, the timing of the latest charges is particularly suspect. At 9:30 a.m. on Juneteenth, the June 19 holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., Quigley — Rolfes and McIntosh’s pro bono lawyer, who is also a professor at Loyola University New Orleans — received a phone call from a Baton Rouge Police Department detective, notifying him that a warrant was out for the pair’s arrest. (Formosa and the Baton Rouge Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
:{:{}:
“It seems more than a little suspicious that this long dormant warrant was activated 12 hours after Formosa lost in court. It seems like it’s clearly retaliation.”
}:
Both the activists were en route to a ceremony at a burial site for enslaved people, located in a field where Formosa plans to build one of its facilities. The right to carry out the ceremony had been hard-won: Formosa had fought in court for the past week to prevent community members from holding the gathering. A judge denied the company’s final appeal only the night before.
The detective told Quigley that the charges had been filed in April, but they’d held off on issuing the warrant because of risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic. “It seems more than a little suspicious that this long dormant warrant was activated 12 hours after Formosa lost in court,” said Quigley. “It seems like it’s clearly retaliation.”
Spees, the Center for Constitutional Rights attorney, said, “If there’s such a danger, why wait seven months and pick the day of a community celebration of its liberation from slavery to send that message?”
In response to the latest charges, local organizers are launching the Alliance to Defend Democracy to push back on the increasing criminalization.
“Five years ago — maybe three years ago — this kind of charge against an activist would have had an isolating effect. The movements are stronger now,” said Spees. “It’s an overreach, and it’s going to backfire.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/cnn-host-grills-louisiana-pastor-for-asking-poor-parishioners-to-hand-over-their-stimulus-money-in-fiery-interview/
spell blackwell tony
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LA NO hard hit early covis, many poor POC
Pastor Tony Spell has previously been arrested on misdemeanor charges for holding crowded church services in spite of Louisiana’s stay-at-home orders.
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earth justice
suing to stop the coming plastics surgeLouisiana regulators recently approved air permits to build what would be one of the largest plastics plants in the world, even though it would dump 800 tons of toxic pollution into a local community and contribute to the worldwide plastic pollution crisis. We’re representing people in St. James Parish, a region that’s already surrounded by industrial plants an
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https://www.propublica.org/article/how-louisiana-lawmakers-stop-residents-efforts-to-fight-big-oil-and-gas
no lnx pix
Malaika Favorite, daughter of the late environmental advocate Amos Favorite Sr., in Geismar, Louisiana. Geismar tried to incorporate industrial plants into a new city but was blocked from doing so by the Louisiana Legislature. (Sophia Germer/The Times-Picayune and The Advocate)
POLLUTER’S PARADISE
How Louisiana Lawmakers Stop Residents’ Efforts to Fight Big Oil and Gas
Louisiana has pioneered ways for other states to discourage environmental protests around “critical infrastructure” projects. Much of it can be traced back to efforts by corporate lobbyists.
by Sara Sneath, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate Feb. 7, 2 p.m. EST
SERIES:POLLUTER’S PARADISE
Environmental Impact in Louisiana
This article was produced in partnership with The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, which was a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network in 2019.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
As the Bayou Bridge Pipeline was under construction in 2018, Anne White Hat ventured deep into the Atchafalaya Swamp in St. Martin Parish to protest it.
St. Martin is one of 11 parishes crossed by the pipeline, which brings crude oil from Texas to refineries in Louisiana. Though White Hat had permission to be there from some of the more than 100 people who jointly own the tract where she held her protest, she didn’t have permission from all. She was arrested on two felony counts related to trespassing. She posted a $21,000 bond and was released.
Two years later, the district attorney still hasn’t decided whether to proceed with the charges: two counts of unauthorized entry of a critical infrastructure. The maximum penalty is five years in prison, with the possibility of hard labor and a fine of up to $1,000.
“It is intimidating when you’re looking at facing prison in South Louisiana,” she said.
Ironically, a court later found that the pipeline company itself had been trespassing at the time of White Hat’s arrest. The main owner, Energy Transfer Partners, had not obtained easement agreements with all landowners to begin construction, nor had it been granted permission to do so through eminent domain. Its penalty: a $450 fine paid to the landowners.
The judge who set White Hat’s bond at $21,000 was the same judge who imposed Energy Transfer Partners’ fine.“This is yet one more in a long line of examples of how Louisiana laws are first made by oil and gas corporations and then are ignored by the same corporations if they feel like it,” said Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University who is representing White Hat pro bono.
Energy Transfer Partners did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Louisiana has blazed a trail for other states in discouraging environmental protests by raising the legal stakes for those who trespass on or near “critical” oil and gas infrastructure — which includes refineries, chemical plants and ports. In 2004, it was the first state to make that crime a felony.
Louisiana’s pioneering law can be traced to corporate lobbyists. BP and DuPont were among the energy and chemical companies that produced a 2003 guide disseminated to state officials, arguing that enhanced penalties would discourage attacks by terrorists that could cause economic disruptions.
Two years ago, legislators added oil and gas pipelines to the list of infrastructure deemed critical. In White Hat’s view, the entire suite of laws is anti-democratic. “They’re using the state to protect their corporate interests,” she said.
Residents have repeatedly pushed back against pipelines, proposed plants and existing industry in their backyards. While such opposition is almost never monolithic, it is often overwhelming at the local level. But the state’s elected leaders have historically sided with industry, in some cases passing new laws aimed at quelling opposition.
[A sign marks the area of a pipeline in the Atchafalaya Basin, the same swamp where Anne White Hat protested the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in 2018. (Brett Duke/The Times-Picayune and The Advocate)]
Legislators are trying to reduce local officials’ power to decide whether to exempt industry from local taxes. Years ago, when a local board made up of experts filed an ambitious lawsuit that aimed to hold oil and gas companies accountable for damaging coastal wetlands, state officials undermined it. In another episode, they passed a law that barred communities from using incorporation to collect property taxes from chemical plants. And more than once they have sought to punish student law clinics that represent communities fighting industry.
This year’s legislative session, which begins in March, will again include bills to restrict local input into industrial tax exemptions.
Some of these efforts are part of a larger, coordinated strategy. The three Louisiana lawmakers who sponsored the trespassing bill were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial organization that brings lawmakers and corporate lobbyists together to draft “model legislation” that they then shop to other states.
Louisiana’s 2004 trespassing law became just such a template. Fifteen years later, 10 states have similar laws. “Louisiana was a particularly important state,” said Connor Gibson, an investigator with Greenpeace.
The addition of pipelines to the law two years ago came in response to protests that garnered national attention, notably those at Standing Rock in North Dakota, which became the focal point of indigenous protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “This just protects against those who want to inhibit commerce,” bill sponsor Rep. Major Thibaut said as he introduced the bill in 2018.
Thibaut, now president of Pointe Coupee Parish, said the law protects workers and would-be protesters from safety concerns on work sites with heavy equipment. When asked whether protesters should be arrested if they don’t interfere with workers, he said, “That’s up to the courts to determine.”
In a prepared statement, Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association President Tyler Gray said the law “does not infringe on an individual’s constitutional rights.”
So far, 15 people have been arrested for violating Louisiana’s new law: 14 protesters and a journalist covering them. Some of them filed a suit in May, claiming the law chills free speech and is thus unconstitutional. The suit is pending.
Mounting Political Pressure
For decades, an obscure Louisiana board doled out 10-year property tax exemptions to nearly every major manufacturer that was building or expanding a plant in the state.
It was the definition of a rubber stamp. Between 1997 and 2016, the board rejected just eight of the 16,931 applications for relief through the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, for an approval rate of 99.95%, according to an analysis by Together Louisiana, a grassroots organization that has pushed to rein in the program.
That changed when Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order in 2016 that gave local governing bodies affected by the exemptions a say over them for the first time. The breaks can have a big effect on local government’s bottom line.
[Chemical Companies Are Building Their Plants Overseas and Shipping Them Back In. They Still Get State Tax Breaks.
Louisiana attracts chemical companies with one of the country’s most generous tax exemptions. The idea is to bring jobs to the state. Instead, construction often happens offsite, and automation has cut down on the jobs that remain.
Since the 2016 executive order, the local agencies that would forgo money on industrial tax exemptions have gotten to vote on them. The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board last year rejected a tax break for an expansion Exxon Mobil had completed two years earlier. That prompted heavy pushback from industry.
Unsuccessful legislation last year would have required parishes to create a single board that votes up or down on the tax breaks, rather than letting the sheriff, the school board and the parish government approve or deny them piecemeal. Explaining his bill, Sen. Bodi White, R-Baton Rouge, said, “I didn’t elect my school board for economic development to bring companies to this state.”
A broad swath of local officials fought to kill White’s bill, including associations of sheriffs, school boards and parish governments. “A parish governing authority should be able to decide whether they can afford to give an exemption and make sure the company getting the exemption is holding up their end of the deal,” said Guy Cormier, executive director of the lobby for parish governments.
A failed bill filed by Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, would have gone even further, putting the exemption back in the state’s hands. Ivey, who said manufacturers need more certainty, is already working on a similar bill this year. “I intend to start off where I left off at the end of the 2019 session,” he said.
Despite a recent boom in industrial plants moving to Louisiana, Edwards’ modest reforms were used by his Republican challengers in last year’s gubernatorial race as evidence of the Democrat’s hostility toward industry. Baton Rouge businessman Eddie Rispone — who garnered 49% of the vote in November — made undoing Edwards’ tweaks a major part of his platform.
Edwards, now in his second term, appears to have heard the complaints. He is trying to get local governments, including those in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, to dump new rules that bar exemptions for projects, like Exxon’s, that were completed by the time the break was requested.
Louisiana’s Love Affair With Industry
As Louisiana’s wetlands vanish, coastal communities have become ever more susceptible to storm surges and sea level rise. And while there are disagreements over how to apportion blame for the erosion, it’s undisputed that oil and gas exploration has played a key role — in part, by dredging 10,000 miles of canals.
A gas transmission pipeline cuts through the wetlands in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Canals alter the drainage patterns of wetlands, causing the loss of the marshes and flood protection. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
And so, in 2013, the board that oversees flood protection in most of metropolitan New Orleans filed an audacious lawsuit that sought to hold 97 oil and gas companies accountable for damaging the region’s natural flood defenses. It set off an immediate firestorm.
The board’s lawsuit quickly earned it rogue status — even though, after the levee failures of Hurricane Katrina, levee board members for the first time were required to have specific qualifications. As a result of those changes, the board that filed the suit was made up of members nominated by professional groups, appointed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco and confirmed by the Senate.
Historian and author John Barry, who was vice president of the board, estimated the Legislature filed 20 separate bills in 2014 to gut the lawsuit. “The Legislature made a very sincere effort to kill the lawsuit after it had already been filed,” he said. “In the end, we defeated all but one piece of legislation.”
The surviving bill, authored by former state Sens. Robert Adley and Bret Allain, retroactively voided the suit. Adley said his beef was that the board didn’t give the proper authorities a heads-up before filing suit. A state judge later found the new law to be unconstitutional, in three different ways.
That wasn’t the end of the assault. Then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who opposed the suit, tried to swap out the authority’s board. He replaced four of the nine board members, dumping coastal experts in favor of political appointees. Even then, a narrow majority of the board backed the suit.
Ultimately, the lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, who said oil and gas companies had no legal obligation to pay the levee authority for wetland damage, a view upheld by an appeals court. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Since then, seven coastal parishes, including New Orleans, have filed similar lawsuits against oil and gas companies over land loss in their communities, and Edwards has urged other coastal parishes to follow suit. None of the cases have been decided.
The Chilling Effect
Those who push back against industry in Louisiana often find themselves outmaneuvered.
In 1994, residents of Geismar, in Ascension Parish, were hoping to follow in the footsteps of their upriver neighbors in St. Gabriel by incorporating into a town. The move would give residents more political clout — including the ability to say no to new plants — and bring in tax dollars from nearby industrial facilities.
The late Amos Favorite Sr., who was 71 at the time, was a leading advocate.
“These plants pay a lot of money to Ascension Parish. We (in Geismar) don’t see anything but pollution,” Favorite said in 1994.
[Amos Favorite Sr. speaks at a meeting about racial discrimination in the River Region plants in 1997. Favorite, an environmental activist, led an incorporation attempt in the community of Geismar. (Tim Mueller/The Advocate)
But the following year, 11 chemical plants in Ascension Parish filed a lawsuit to quash the incorporation. With that case pending, state Rep. Jerry Luke LeBlanc, a Democrat, sponsored a bill to ban new municipalities from including industrial areas into their boundaries. Then-Gov. Edwin Edwards signed it into law in 1995.
Citing the new law, the court sided with the plants.
The new law meant the planned city would have a much smaller tax base and much less say over the polluters in its midst. Geismar’s drive for incorporation lost steam.
Favorite’s daughter, Malaika Favorite, an artist who still lives in Geismar, said the episode took an emotional toll on her father. “It was really disappointing to him,” she said. “The plants have so much power.”
Restricting Representation
New laws are hardly the only method Louisiana elected officials have used to stifle residents’ opposition to industry.
In 1997, former Gov. Mike Foster pressured the Louisiana Supreme Court to trim the sails of student law clinics after the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped St. James Parish residents fight a polyvinyl chloride plant the chemical giant Shintech wanted to build in Convent.
Foster badly wanted to see the Shintech plant built. He mocked the plant’s two most vocal opponents, Emelda West and Pat Melancon of Convent, as “a bunch of housewives.”
Calls to Shintech seeking comment were not returned.
Former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster pushed for Tulane University to be defunded after students in the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped Convent residents challenge air and water permits for a proposed polyvinyl chloride plant. (Bryan S. Berteaux/The Times-Picayune)
In addition to challenging Shintech’s air and water permits, Convent residents — with the help of Tulane — filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claiming the state violated the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act when it approved the project.
The complaint became the first key test of an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 that aimed to address the fact that communities of color bore a disproportionate burden of pollution.
Foster was apoplectic. He encouraged Tulane alumni and business leaders to reconsider their financial support for the university.
Several industry lobbying groups, meanwhile, urged the Louisiana Supreme Court, which oversees student law practice in the state, to investigate the law clinic.
Student law practice allows legal novices to gain hands-on experience, while providing legal assistance to those who would not otherwise have access.
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s most powerful business lobby, had recently helped three pro-business justices win seats on the Supreme Court. The chief justice, Pascal Calogero, was up for election the following year.
At LABI’s urging, the court began investigating the Tulane clinic in 1997. As the election heated up, Calogero — and all but one justice — voted to restrict student law assistance. The new rules banned the representation of any community organization affiliated with a national organization — like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club or the NAACP and prohibited students and supervising lawyers from initiating contact with potential clients.
The new rules also placed limits on how much residents could earn and still receive student representation. A family of three, for example, could not get assistance if they made more than $13,650 annually.
The head of the Association of American Law Schools called the new requirements “the most restrictive student practice rule in the nation.”
Emelda West, of the St. James Citizens for Jobs and the Environment, speaks in front of the Governor’s Mansion during a protest against the governor’s threats against the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in 1997. (Tim Mueller/The Advocate)
Ironically, the new rules — which have since been relaxed some — came too late to save Shintech’s plant. The company announced in 1998 it had scratched its plan, opting instead for a much smaller facility in Iberville Parish.
The Tulane clinic has continued to garner the ire of industry over the last two decades. In 2010, Adley introduced another bill aimed at stopping the clinic from going after chemical plants. It would have yanked state funding from Tulane if its law clinic sued a government agency. As the bill was introduced, Dan Borné, then head of Louisiana Chemical Association, said: “My board acted on taking an aggressive approach toward the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. This is part of that approach.”
But Adley’s bill to defund Tulane was ill-timed. One month earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Lawmakers were concerned that if the bill passed, residents affected by the spill wouldn’t be able to get legal assistance from Tulane. The bill failed.
Lisa Jordan, director of the clinic, co-wrote the civil rights petition to the EPA on behalf of Convent residents two decades ago. Even though the case put a crimp on the clinic, she’s proud of taking on the fight. “It was hard, and it had a really good result for the clients,” she said. “And because it told me this is such important work, even when you don’t necessarily succeed ... to give people a legal voice that they otherwise couldn’t have had.”
Monique Harden, of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice who co-wrote the civil rights petition, said the repeated assaults on the clinic exemplify how Louisiana officials tend to react to environmental uprisings.
“There is this systemwide hostility to people fighting back,” Harden said. “They want to cut support. But not just cut support, cut your remedy.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/louisiana-republicans-fail-to-win-supermajority-to-override-democrats-vetoes-heading-into-redistricting/
n o lnx
Louisiana Republicans fail to win supermajority to override Democrats’ vetoes heading into redistricting
Image via Shutterstock.
Written by Jeff Singer / Daily Kos November 18, 2019
Louisiana Republicans unsuccessfully tried to win a two-thirds state House supermajority in Saturday’s runoffs that would allow them to override Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ vetoes. Instead, Team Red ended the night with 68 seats, which is two short of the 70 they needed.
Democrat Mack Cormier unseated GOP incumbent Chris Leopold in a seat in the New Orleans area, which gives Democrats a total of 35 seats in the new legislature. The other two seats are held by independents Joe Marino and Roy Daryl Adams. Republicans won a supermajority last month in the state Senate, but Democrats will still be able to maintain Edwards’ vetoes as long as they can maintain party unity and win the support of at least one of the chamber’s two independents.
There’s reasons to be optimistic that Marino and Adams will vote with Team Blue more than they’ll support the GOP majority: Marino says he voted for Edwards in 2015 and supported his criminal justice reforms, while Adams has an F-rating from the NRA because he supports banning bump stocks. Adams also was a Democrat until he filed to run for office this year, and he says he switched because he wanted to show voters he wouldn’t be beholden to any party. However, Marino does identify as a fiscal conservative while Adams says he opposes abortion, so they may still back the GOP on some issues.
Members of both chambers of the Louisiana legislature serve four-year terms, so the legislature won’t be up again until after new congressional and legislative maps are due following the 2020 Census. However, both parties have very little room for error going into the redistricting cycle, and they’ll want to be ready for any special elections that might arise over the next few years.
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New EPA Rules Aim to Reduce Toxic Emissions. But Many “Cancer Alley” Chemical Plants Won’t Have to Change.
The proposed rules reducing emissions across the country would not apply to many of Louisiana’s chemical plants. These facilities release tons of dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals like ethylene oxide, and more plants are on the way.
by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate
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Commenters on the Internet piled on President Donald Trump late…
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https://www.propublica.org/
In a Notoriously Polluted Area of the Country, Massive New Chemical Plants Are Still Moving In
Data from an EPA model indicates that communities along the lower Mississippi River corridor already face severely elevated cancer risks from industrial activity. Massive new chemical plants are slated to be built there anyway.
by Lylla Younes, Al Shaw and Claire Perlman Oct. 30, 12 p.m. EDT
POLLUTER’S PARADISE
Welcome to “Cancer Alley,” Where Toxic Air Is About to Get Worse
by Lylla Younes, ProPublica, and Tristan Baurick and Joan Meiners, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate Oct. 30,
I’ve Investigated Industrial Pollution for 35 Years. We’re Going Backwards.
Decades ago, Mark Schleifstein and his colleagues exposed environmental threats coming out of industrial plants all along the Louisiana section of the Mississippi River. A lot of those plants never went away, and even more are moving in.
by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate Oct. 30, 12 p.m. EDT
Why Louisiana’s Air Quality Is Going From Bad to Worse, in 3 Charts
Welcome to “Cancer Alley.”
by Lylla Younes Oct. 30, 12 p.m. EDT
How We Found New Chemical Plants Are Being Built in South Louisiana’s Most Polluted Areas
ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate investigated the potential cancer-causing toxicity in the air. Using EPA data, public records requests and more, we found that some of the country’s most toxic air will likely get worse.
by Lylla Younes and Al Shaw, ProPublica, with Michael Petroni Oct. 30, 12 p.m. EDT
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WIN
919 desmog
Chinese giant Wanhua Chemical officially withdrew its plans to build a $1.25 billion plastics manufacturing complex in St. James, Louisiana, in the heart of the already industrialized Cancer Alley. The news bought relief to opponents of the plant.
“I’m glad they won’t be coming,” Eve Butler, a lifelong resident of St. James Parish, told me in a call. “I live straight across the river from where the plant was going to be built.” Butler was part of a group of residents, local community groups, and environmental advocacy nonprofits that took part in a concentrated battle to stop the Wanhua plant from being built.
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As More Diverted Floodwaters Head Their Way, Dolphins Keep Dying in Louisiana
desmog
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New Concerns Raised by Opponents Delay Wanhua’s $1.25 Billion Plastic Complex in Louisiana
“Look at what is coming into the Parish, instead of saying ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’—it is time to say ‘No,’” Pastor Harry Joseph told the St. James Parish Council on July 24. He implored councilmembers to consider freshly unveiled public health and economic concerns before they reaffirmed a permit allowing yet another petrochemical plant in a southern Louisiana community fed up with its already rapid industrialization.
Joseph, pastor of Mount Triumph Baptist Church in St. James, is one of the plaintiffs appealing the parish council’s permit granted May 20 to Wanhua Chemical, which is planning to build a $1.25 billion plastics factory on the banks of the Mississippi River. During the appeal, new information about the project caused the council to halt a vote on repealing the permit. Instead, it sent the matter back for reconsideration to the parish planning commission, which had previously granted the project permission. READ MORE
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/28/cancer-coalition-against-death-alley-louisiana-expanding-petrochemical-industry
Outraged, New Coalition Emerges Against Louisiana’s Expanding—and Polluting—Petrochemical Industry
long
“Take a deep breath” is common advice for helping people to relax. However, that advice has the opposite effect on some citizens who live in heavily polluted Louisiana communities along the Mississippi River. There, a new coalition is emerging from a growing awareness of — and discontent with — the potential health impacts of living alongside the expanding petrochemical industry lining the river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The 80-mile stretch along the river known as Louisiana’s “Petrochemical Corridor” is often referred to as “Cancer Alley.” Simmering frustrations among its communities, which are exposed to the industry’s pollution, recently led the new coalition of environmental and civil rights activists and Louisiana residents to rebrand it “Death Alley.”
“The government is not doing its job to protect us,” Robert Taylor, a resident of St. John the Baptist Parish, and part of the group, Coalition Against Death Alley (CADA), told me. “By not acting they are signing our death warrants.”
The coalition formed early this year as the number of companies seeking approval to build fossil fuel-hungry plastics manufacturing facilities along the Mississippi River has grown. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already has identified the sites as hot spots for toxic chemical releases in its latest National Air Toxics Assessment. Those hot spots include parts of St. James Parish and St. John the Baptist Parish.
To call attention to the area’s environmental injustices, CADA announced ambitious plans to march about 50 miles from St. John the Baptist Parish to Baton Rouge, stopping in communities impacted by fossil fuel industry pollution along the way. Louisiana-based residents and groups that make up the coalition include members of RISE St. James, Justice and Beyond, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, 350 New Orleans, and the Concerned Citizens of St. John, among others.
St. John the Baptist Parish: Where the Air Increases Cancer Risk
Taylor asks: “How can you relax when you know you are breathing in carcinogens?” As the founder of the Concerned Citizens of St. John, he is taking a leading role in the new coalition. He started the concerned citizens group in 2016, after his community learned that the EPA reclassified chloroprene, a chemical released in his area for more than 40 years, as a likely human carcinogen.
In St. John the Baptist Parish, a Denka plant releases chloroprene and other chemicals as it makes the synthetic rubber commonly known as Neoprene. Taylor is outraged by what he characterizes as the state and federal governments’ lack of action to protect his community.
According to a 2015 EPA assessment, residents near Denka’s plant, including Taylor and his family, have a lifetime cancer risk from air pollution 800 times higher than the national average, and the populations in six parish census tracts closest to the Denka facility have the highest risk of air pollution-caused cancer in the country.
[vid]
Though Denka reduced chloroprene emissions 85 percent in the last year, levels remain considerably higher than 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter, the EPA standard deemed acceptable to protect human health. Ongoing air monitoring near the plant shows emissions remain consistently greater than this level.
Denka does not agree with the EPA’s findings and continues to challenge them. Chuck Carr Brown, head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, has taken a “wait and see” stance when it comes to requiring more from Denka to limit emissions. Brown and Jimmy Guidry, the state health department head, have a contentious relationship with the citizens group in St. John the Baptist Parish and have butted heads over the EPA’s recommended standard and government actions.
The group’s outrage grew on February 19 after David Gray, a regional EPA official, told them that the EPA will likely never set a legal standard for chloroprene emissions. Though the agency stands by its earlier findings for now, Gray explained that, because only one plant in the United States emits chloroprene, the agency is unlikely to embark on the laborious five-year process to create a rule. In the past, the agency has only set rules for chemicals used by multiple plants.
Many at the meeting audibly gasped. “We are being poisoned,” Taylor said, then asked why the government isn’t protecting the parish’s 400 black children from Denka’s “monstrous plant.”
Gray expressed empathy for the community. He assured the group that the EPA will continue working to bring down chloroprene levels, and, though he too is frustrated that his agency can’t do more for the community faster, the EPAhas limitations.
After the meeting, Taylor doubled down his participation in the new coalition. Though the coalition’s call “to stop the genocide in Death Alley” isn’t language all of the members of the Concerned Citizens are on board with, none are satisfied with their treatment by state regulators or the governor.
Controversy Over Role of Politics in Fight Against Pollution
On March 2, RISE St. James, a faith-based community group focused on stopping industrial expansion in St. James Parish, organized a gathering of about 50 at a local church. In addition to praying and sharing a meal, they discussed the need to stop more petrochemical plants from being built in the Louisiana parishes along the Mississippi River.
Lt. General Russel Honoré at a RISE St. James revival event at a church in St. James Parish.]
Lt. General Russel Honoré, founder of the Green Army, was one of the invited speakers. He advised CADA to clarify its goals and warned he won’t stand with the coalition if it targets the current Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, who is up for re-election. believes the only way to make changes in the state is through the legislature.
Robert Taylor and Pat Bryant at a coalition meeting on February 16.]
Pat Bryant, with Justice and Beyond, a New Orleans-based civil rights organization, countered Honoré. He pointed out that Edwards’ administration is responsible for not enforcing environmental regulations and permitting more polluting plants, making him part of the problem. CADA, Bryant said, will not stop its pointed criticism of the governor or other local officials until they protect the citizens they are supposed to serve.
Taylor doesn’t equate criticizing the actions of current government officials as taking a political stance. “I’m not attacking the governor,” he told me on a call, “but by not protecting us, we are under attack.” The Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist won’t endorse any political candidates.
Two New Chemical Plants Seek Permits to Build in St. James Parish
The new coalition’s concerns came into focus at a March 25 St. James Parish Commission meeting, where commissioners planned to vote on permitting two new petrochemical additions to the area: Syngas’s methanol facility and Chinese-owned Wanhua’s chemical plant.
Several residents who live near both the proposed sites, which are in predominantly African-American communities, accused the commission of selling them out in the past. They pleaded with the commissioners to deny both permits to keep more pollution out of their already polluted environment.
A commissioner questioned a Wanhua representative about an allegation that the company left chemicals off the parish permit which were listed on its state environmental permit application. The Wanhua representative explained that the parish application didn’t require listing those particular chemicals but that they won’t harm the community.
The response didn't satisfy the commission, which voted unanimously to table a vote on Wanhua’s permit. The commission voted six to one to let Syngas proceed, but before voting on Wanhua, Commissioner Dean Millet said they needed answers about the potential environmental impact of the plant.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/28/st-charles-parish-louisiana-sheriff-pipeline-records-standing-rock
On December 27, a state* appeals court ordered a Louisiana’s sheriff’s department and its sheriff to release information about its officers’ trip to North Dakota during the heated protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The extended, indigenous-led protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation drew a highly militarized response from public and private law enforcement. Out-of-state cops, including those from Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish, flooded North Dakota to support it via an interstate agreement.
The latest move reversed a decision by a district court, which denied a public records request made by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human rights law firm which has worked on behalf of environmental groups* in Louisiana, after parish law enforcement spoke out against Dakota Access pipeline opponents and endorsed the Bayou Bridge pipeline, a similar oil pipeline in Louisiana.
“We saw a dangerous blurring of the lines between law enforcement and private corporations at Standing Rock,” Pamela Spees, a senior staff attorney with CCR, stated when first filing suit for the public records in December 2017.
Spees, who was raised in Lake Charles, one of the communities that will be affected by the Bayou Bridge pipeline, is leading a lawsuit by Louisiana environmental groups seeking public records fromSt. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne. She was also an attorney in a lawsuit against Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC, which so far has unsuccessfully challenged the company's right to use eminent domain to confiscate land to build the pipeline, which is nearly operational.
The Dakota Access pipeline is owned by Energy Transfer (formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners), the principal owner of the also-contested Bayou Bridge pipeline, a 163-mile-long pipeline that cuts across southern Louisiana from St. Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, on the Mississippi River. Despite ongoing legal battles in federal and state courts, the Bayou Bridge pipeline has been nearly completed.
Louisiana Sheriffs, a Pipeline Company, and a Private Security Firm
According to a CCR press release, the center’s request “also seeks to investigate larger connections among SCPSO [St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office], Sheriff Champagne, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), and TigerSwan LLC, in light of ETP’s proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline project in Louisiana.”
TigerSwan, a private security firm involved in the Dakota Access response but denied a license to operate in Louisiana, is a corporate donor to the National Sheriffs’ Association’s $3.46 million budget, according to the association’s most recent tax forms. Under Sheriff Champagne’s leadership, the association lobbied Congress for surplus military gear and other undisclosed issues related to the Dakota Access pipeline, according to a review of federal lobbying disclosure forms by Steve Horn for DeSmog.
The center’s public records request, filed September 18, 2017, was made after St. Charles Parish’s Sheriff Greg Champagne and others connected to law enforcement, including Joseph Lopinto, the newly elected sheriff of Jefferson Parish who spoke on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association at a Bayou Bridge permit hearing, publicly criticized pipeline opponents.
At the time of his October 2016 visit to Standing Rock, Sheriff Champagne was also the president of the National Sheriffs’ Association and made largely unsubstantiated claims about the Dakota Access protests against the pipeline. In a Facebook postChampagne wrote: “Despite the statements coming from the media and protesters that they were completely peaceful and prayerful, it has been a fact that more militant protestors [sic] (terrorists) have destroyed property and physically beaten employees of the company in recent weeks."
[lopinto vid]
February 2017 Sheriff Lopinto voiced support for the Bayou Bridge pipeline at a permit hearing in which he claimed that Dakota Access protesters shot at law enforcement officers. “We don’t want the same thing occurring in Louisiana,” he said.
Were North Dakota Trip Photos and Videos Destroyed?
The records Spees is seeking include receipts for all travel expenses, which reportedly add up to nearly $36,000, and video and photos taken by St. Charles Parish deputies during their trip to North Dakota.
Though the appeals court ruling makes clear photos and video taken in North Dakota by Captain Patrick Yoes, commander of the St. Charles Parish Special Services Division, should be released, Spees worries those may never surface because it is unclear whether the department retained the materials.
Captain Yoes testified that “the files from the devices were loaded on a hard drive, and he provided all of the files relating to the EMAC [Emergency Management Assistance Compact] to the [North Dakota Morton] county’s sheriff and the public information officer.” However, Yoes said the original camera memory cards which he returned to Louisiana with may not have been preserved and it is unclear if the data on to the hard drives left in North Dakota have been preserved.
Spees doesn't see anything controversial about the records request and considers its initial denial unfortunate, because it compelled the center to litigate on behalf of opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
Champagne could appeal the federal court’s decision with the Louisiana Supreme Court. I reached out to Champagne’s communications officer but did not receive a response.
*Update 12/29/18: This story has been updated to reflect that a state, not federal, appeals court reversed the decision and that CCR filed the public records request and lawsuit, which was not filed on behalf of environmental groups.
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On February 21, the New Orleans City Council unanimously voted to uphold approval of Entergy's proposed natural gas power plant, which faces a growing number of lawsuits, and passed a resolution to impose a $5 million fine on the company for its role in a paid-actors scandal.
Before the vote, in nearly three hours of often emotional testimony mostly against the plant, many contended that the $5 million fine was not a sufficient punishment. This was in light of the council's commissioned investigation, which concluded the company "knew or should have known" that a subcontractor was paying actors to support its proposed power plant at council meetings.
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219 nyt
A School Board Says No to Big Oil, and Alarms Sound in Business-Friendly Louisiana
Louisiana depends heavily on the energy industry, and is eager to attract billions of dollars in oil and gas investment. Exxon Mobil’s refinery in Baton Rouge has been a major employer in the city for decades.
Louisiana depends heavily on the energy industry, and is eager to attract billions of dollars in oil and gas investment. Exxon Mobil’s refinery in Baton Rouge has been a major employer in the city for decades.CreditCreditEmily Kask for The New York Times
By Richard Fausset
Feb. 5, 2019
BATON ROUGE, La. — It was a squabble over $2.9 million in property-tax breaks — small change for Exxon Mobil, a company that measures its earnings by the billions.
But when the East Baton Rouge Parish school board rejected the energy giant’s rather routine request last month, the “no” vote went off like a bomb in a state where obeisance to the oil, gas and chemical industries is the norm.
The local chamber of commerce took out a full-page newspaper ad, warning of a rise of “radicalism.” The head of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry wrote that “the anti-business crowd has had their fun,” but needed to “cool their jets.”
And now, somewhat surprisingly, business-friendly Louisiana finds that it is the latest flash point in a roiling, community-by-community debate that pits liberals and local activists against defenders of the lavish tax incentives offered to woo big business.
It has been a David vs. Goliath story in the Louisiana capital, where a grass-roots coalition of black and white churches, activists and ordinary citizens have successfully clamored to democratize a system that used to dole out billions in property-tax breaks without giving the local school boards, city councils and other government entities that depend on those taxes any say in the matter.
The vote has also revived a vexing, and defining, Louisiana question about the deference a perennially impoverished state must show to big business.
“We’ve allowed the oil and gas industry to hijack our democracy,” said Russel L. Honoré, a retired Army lieutenant general who earned acclaim for leading the military response to Hurricane Katrina, and who had urged the East Baton Rouge Parish school board to reject the exemptions. “The industry will brag about it all the time, how well we’re doing in terms of business development. Well, if we’re doing so well, why are we the second-poorest state?”
Complaints that state and local governments have given away the farm to big business have flared recently in other states as well, most sharply in New York City, where liberal politicians and union supporters have blasted the incentives of up to $3 billion that helped woo Amazon’s new corporate offices in Queens. In Virginia, a socialist state House member, Lee Carter, has called a $70 million grant package for the chip maker Micron “corrupt.”
But the tone is markedly different in Baton Rouge. Though the city is home to the state’s flagship university, it is more Bakersfield than Berkeley, defined strongly by the business and culture of the oil patch. Exxon Mobil’s vast old refinery on the North Side has employed generations of local workers. It is the area’s largest manufacturer and largest taxpayer.
Dawn Chanet Collins was among the school board members who voted against the tax break in a 5-4 vote in mid-January. Though she praised the oil giant for the donations and volunteer hours it showers on local schools, she said that giving the company exemptions for the already completed expansions of the refinery and a polymer plant simply did not make sense.
The school district is in a budget crisis, and it is looking for ways to cut roughly $30 million in future spending. Layoffs may be on the table. Teachers say that administrators have even been rationing paper.
“It would have been completely irresponsible for the board to say, ‘Go ahead, keep your money,’ when we have to fill a $30 million gap on our end,” Ms. Collins said.
For decades, industrial property-tax breaks in Louisiana were in the sole control of a little-noticed state board that approved them with no local input — a system unique in the nation, according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit group that tracks such incentives.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, a moderate Democrat, overhauled the process in 2016 with an executive order that for the first time in 80 years gave local governments the right to decide whether their revenue would be sacrificed to aid industry.
Broderick Bagert, left, and Edgar Cage are organizers with Together Baton Rouge, a coalition that has become a powerful force opposing the lavish property-tax breaks Louisiana has traditionally granted to industry.
Broderick Bagert, left, and Edgar Cage are organizers with Together Baton Rouge, a coalition that has become a powerful force opposing the lavish property-tax breaks Louisiana has traditionally granted to industry.CreditEmily Kask for The New York Times
In the months before Mr. Edwards’s order, the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, had been thrust into the public debate by the efforts of the grass-roots coalition, known as Together Baton Rouge. Before then, it had gone largely unnoticed by everyone except those who benefited from it.
The appointed panel that ran the program, the Board of Commerce and Industry, handed out nearly $10 billion in local tax exemptions between 2008 and 2016, but its actions were rarely covered in the press. Many Louisianans had no idea what the board did.
“Nobody knew about it,” Ms. Collins said. “It had gone on for so long that people had forgotten.”
Together Baton Rouge and its sister organization, Together Louisiana,argue that the industrial tax breaks starve local schools and governments of badly needed funds and leave them unable to lift a state mired toward the bottom of national rankings on education, crime and infrastructure. In Baton Rouge, one in four residents lives in poverty.
Their message has found an audience: Together Louisiana’s YouTube video about the exemptions, posted in November and titled “Why Louisiana Stays Poor,” has been viewed more than 600,000 times.
A few days before the Baton Rouge school board vote, the groups held a meeting at St. Mary Baptist Church to organize opposition to the Exxon Mobil application. Scores of people crammed into a Bible study classroom decorated with maps and photos of the Holy Land.
Edgar Cage, who organized the meeting, was careful to say that no one was accusing Exxon Mobil of any wrongdoing. “All we’re saying is, we want a change,” he said. “We want a balance.”
Business leaders reacted strongly to the Baton Rouge vote because they are worried about much more than just how a few capital improvements are taxed. As much as $90 billion in oil and gas industry investments could come the state’s way in the next decade, driven in large part by the boom in domestic shale gas drilling, according to David Dismukes, executive director of the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University.
By itself, Dr. Dismukes said, the school board’s vote “was not a big deal — but the precedent it sets is going to be really big for these projects on the drawing board that are $100 million or $200 million.”
Critics of the 2016 overhaul that gave local officials a say over tax breaks argue that it deprives the state of a big competitive edge it used to enjoy: one-stop shopping. Instead of dealing only with a central state board, businesses must now make their case for tax breaks to a host of parish councils and school boards and sheriffs, and win them over individually.
Last week, State Senator Mack A. White Jr., a Republican from the Baton Rouge area who used to work for Exxon Mobil, said he planned introduce a bill to reverse the overhaul and take approval power away from local officials again.
There have also been stabs at damage control and soul-searching. Mayor Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge spoke on Jan. 28 at what the local newspaper described as a “pep rally” for Exxon Mobil.
On Sunday, Tim Morris, a columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, compared the state’s tax-break system to the $241 million contract extension the New Orleans Pelicans of the N.B.A. offered to their star player Anthony Davis — an offer he turned down, asking to be traded instead.
“Why do we have to offer exorbitant bribes to get people (and businesses) to stay here?” Mr. Morris wrote.
But for others — including some local government officials freshly armed with the new veto power — the tax breaks are a pragmatic choice in an increasingly competitive world.
In November, local authorities in Calcasieu Parish unanimously approved a tax break worth $2 billion over 10 years for a $15 billion liquefied natural gas facility. Eric Tarver, a car dealer who sits on the parish school board, said he feared “playing chicken” with a big company that was promising to create hundreds of jobs.
“Should we have negotiated with them? Maybe,” Mr. Tarver said. “But the benefits of them coming far outweigh the risk of haggling with them and having them go to Corpus Christi or Houston, or even Lafayette.”
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Karen Savage, an award-winning investigative reporter, did not expect to be arrested as she covered Energy Transfer Partners’ controversial construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline through Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, a river swamp bigger than the Florida Everglades.
“We were on land that the pipeline company doesn’t even claim to have,” she said, adding that she had permission in writing from the property owner to be there. “I didn’t think there was really any risk at all.”
Savage, a freelance reporter who teaches at the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, has previously covered the BP oil spill and environmental justice issues. Truthout describes her as “embedded” with L’eau Est La Vie protest camp, which opposes the pipeline.
She now faces “critical infrastructure” trespass charges, as do over half a dozen others recently arrested near Bayou Bridge construction. These felony charges come under a newly minted Louisiana law modeled after “critical infrastructure” laws in other states, which have been criticized as efforts to criminalize oil and gas pipeline protests.
Louisiana’s first felony trespass arrests came on August 9, when three people kayaking through waters adjoining Bayou Bridge construction were charged under the new law, according to pipeline opponents who said the kayakers were paddling in public waterways. And three more people were arrested the same day as Savage, according to Truthout.
Early Monday morning, a Bayou Bridge activist who identifies as a “water protector” was tased and arrested after being forced from a “skypod,” a device similar to the tripods sometimes used in civil disobedience campaigns. That person was charged and held on $10,000 bail, according to a statement put out by local activists.
Like many who opposed Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, Bayou Bridge opponents identify themselves as water protectors. Some of those opposed to Bayou Bridge have engaged in tree-sits as a form of civil disobedience.
Trespassing Near 'Critical Infrastructure'
Traditionally, trespass charges are relatively low-level crimes often punishable by little more than a fine.
The law turning trespassing — if it’s near “critical infrastructure” or construction sites for critical infrastructure — into a felony carrying a sentence of up to five years went into effect on August 1. It specifically amended the Louisiana criminal code to include oil and gas pipelines under the definition of “critical infrastructure,” and included “conspiracy” charges to enter or damage these sites with harsh penalties both in terms of prison time and fines.
Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Bayou Bridge pipeline, supported the bill elevating “critical infrastructure” trespassing to a felony, a local ABC News affiliate reported in April.
Another ALEC Bill Now Law
The Louisiana law is similar to a bill pushed nationwide by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded bill mill whose members include oil and gas companies like Chesapeake Energy and Continental Resources. Energy Transfer Partners has twice supported ALEC’s annual conferences, according to Sourcewatch.
Part of the reason that trespass charges are rarely serious is that it can be a complex legal issue to sift out who exactly owns a piece of land, especially if ownership is disputed. The owners of land where Bayou Bridge construction is currently underway have said that the company never obtained an easement or seized their property through eminent domain, meaning that they believe the construction is illegal.
Bayou Bridge opponents predicted that the bill would be used to target their campaigns — particularly if there’s a risk of being arrested for a felony even when you reasonably believe you are not trespassing.
“Clearly the purpose is to chill lawful dissent,” New Orleans-based environmental activist Meg Logue told The Advocatein April.
Other reports of police misconduct and the blurring of the lines between public officials and private security at Bayou Bridge sites drew a warning from lawyers from three prominent civil liberties organizations in late July.
Police stood by while company “[c]onstruction workers [used] chainsaws on the very trees these individuals are sitting in,” William P. Quigley, law professor and director of the Loyola Law Clinic; Pam Spees, senior staff attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights; and Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center wrote in a July 28 letter to Louisiana’s governor. “We also have reports that various state employees from the Department of Public Safety, Corrections, and Probation and Parole are working as private security in this matter.”
DeSmog has previously reported that legislatures in at least three other states have begun considering laws similar to ALEC’s model bill. So far this year, “critical infrastructure” bills have passed either the state House or Senate in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Similar bills have also been introduced in states including Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Minnesota, and Colorado and Washington state have also considered related measures.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/23/8-years-bp-oil-spill-sick-cleanup-workers-waiting-louisiana-court
Years After BP Oil Spill, Sick Cleanup Workers Still Waiting for Day in Court
On the eighth anniversary of the BP oil spill, Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré stood in front of the New Orleans Federal Court House and called “bullshit” on the court’s handling of claims made by those who participated in the cleanup efforts.
Thousands of workers BP hired to clean up the spill that polluted the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 have claimed exposure to oil and the dispersant has made them sick and still have not had their day in court. “It’s a crying damn shame we’ve allowed this in America,” Honoré said.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/03/30/tigerswan-lisa-smith-security-license-louisiana-bayou-bridge-pipeline
The private security firm TigerSwan, known for its controversial military-style tactics against Dakota Access pipeline protesters, is appealing the decision to deny its application for a license to operate in the state of Louisiana, where Energy Transfer Partners is building the Bayou Bridge pipeline. In November, several environmental groups opposed to the Bayou Bridge pipeline attempted to intervene in this case, saying their members were particularly vulnerable to TigerSwan’s security and surveillance practices should it be allowed to operate in support of that oil pipeline, but today the Louisiana State Board of Private Security Examiners denied this request.
However, during this process, it came to light that the state board denied another security license application from a TigerSwan employee who failed to disclose her employment with the firm after TigerSwan’s application was rejected.
The board's deposition of this employee, obtained via a public records request, was included in the request to intervene in TigerSwan’s case by 350 New Orleans, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, Gulf Restoration Network, L’eau Est la Vie (“Water Is Life”) Camp, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West.
“Given its track record, TigerSwan should not be allowed to come into Louisiana and use their military-style tactics to hinder the right of ordinary Louisianans to exercise their First Amendment rights,” Pamela Spees, attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is representing the groups, said in a statement. “The board did the right thing in denying them a license.”
TigerSwan Employee Tries to Set up New Security Firm in Louisiana
[pix convoy]
Part of the reason the board cited for rejecting TigerSwan’s case on July 17, 2017 was “they were denied licensure twice in [North] Dakota and are pending litigation,” according to the board’s executive director Fabian Blache III.
TigerSwan is being sued by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board for allegedly performing security work in the state without a license during and after the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline.
On September 19, 2017, the Louisiana board deposed TigerSwan employee Lisa Smith, who had applied for a license to operate her brand-new private security firm, LTSA, LLC, in Lafayette, Louisiana. While she originally said she opened the company office in August, later in the deposition Smith corrected this to say it was actually July — the same month that TigerSwan’s application was rejected. Louisiana state records indicate that LTSA, LLC was registered on August 3, 2017.
In her license application, filed August 4, Smith, a resident of North Carolina, where TigerSwan is also based, submitted a resume which did not disclose her contemporaneous employment with TigerSwan.
Instead, she listed her employer as “Metlife MSOC,” which is the security operations center where the firm had contracted her to work. In the September deposition, she confirmed that TigerSwan paid her salary but that she reported for work at Metlife.
[doc]
In Lisa Smith's deposition on September 19, 2017, she denies her company LTSA was set up in relation to TigerSwan's denied license to operate in Louisiana.
During the deposition, the board asked Smith whether or not she had ever listed TigerSwan as her employer on her LinkedIn profile. She answered that she did not remember.
However, the board supplied an email with a screenshot of a Google search result showing a cache of her LinkedIn profile, which listed her as a “Watch Officer at TigerSwan/Metlife SOC.” Her current LinkedIn profile does not list her employment with TigerSwan, and while during the deposition Smith said her Metlife contract was already expired in September, her profile continues to list “Metlife-MSOC” as her present employer.
When asked by the board about why she decided to open a security firm in Louisiana, Smith replied: “The opportunities were good.” However, she denied LTSA had any connection with TigerSwan and its failure to secure a license in the state, and further said that while she had heard of “Bayou Bridge,” she said she did not know what it was or whether she would consider applying for work related to it in the future.
Smith also denied knowing someone named Brandon Nix. According to Blache, the state board's executive director, Nix was the agent who originally applied for TigerSwan’s license in Louisiana.
“We later learned that he was the person liaising with Lisa Smith’s registers office site to secure the keys to the property leased by her company LTSA,” Blache told DeSmog via email.
[doc]
In Lisa Smith's deposition, she denied her new security company, LTSA, had any connection to her employer TigerSwan.
The board turned down Smith’s request for a license on October 4, 2017. “Denial was based on material misrepresentations in the application and during the State Board deposition,” said Blache.
TigerSwan had two lawyers representing the firm present during Smith’s deposition. It is not currently employed by Energy Transfer Partners to do security work related to the Bayou Bridge pipeline, a 162-mile-long project which will carry to Gulf Coast refineries oil originally drilled in North Dakota. So far, that security work has been performed by the firm Hub Enterprises.
Neither Lisa Smith not TigerSwan responded to multiple requests for comment.
TigerSwan Connections in Louisiana
Even before the Louisiana board rejected TigerSwan’s application, the private security firm already appeared to be working its connections to the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
In February 2017, retired Major General James “Spider” Marks testified in support of this pipeline at a Louisiana Department of Natural Resources permit hearing and published an op-ed endorsing it in a local newspaper. In neither of these instances, however, did Marks disclose that he was chair of TigerSwan’s advisory board, not unlike the way Smith also failed to share her ties to the firm. (Marks is no longer listed on TigerSwan’s website.)
[video]
This seems to be a trend for Marks, who has a history of appearing on TV as a military pundit without disclosing his ties to military weapons companies.
TigerSwan appears determined to succeed in gaining access to perform security work in Louisiana.
As Julie Dermansky has previously reported for DeSmog: “A few days after TigerSwan’s permit was denied in Louisiana, the company filed an appeal and hired five lobbyists who work for the lobbying firm Southern Strategy Group.”
The firm is currently awaiting a hearing with the Louisiana State Board of Private Security Examiners appealing its denied application.
Louisiana Proposes Harsher Punishments for Pipeline Offenses
With implications for future protests against the Bayou Bridge pipeline, this week the Louisiana State Legislature introduced House Bill 727, which proposes as a criminal offense the “unauthorized entry of and criminal damage to a critical infrastructure.”
The bill seeks to include oil and gas pipelines and their construction sites among the definition of “critical infrastructure.” For those convicted of damaging this infrastructure when a threat to human life is “foreseeable” or the action “disrupts” the infrastructure's operations, the bill stipulates a sentence of imprisonment and hard labor for between six and 20 years, up to $25,000 in fines, or both.
It also includes separate “conspiracy” charges, with similar criminal penalties, except that the maximum possible fine is $250,000. The bill both amends the Louisiana criminal code, which currently deals only with “unauthorized entry of a critical infrastructure” and creates the new crimes for damaging those facilities and conspiring to either illegally enter or damage them.
Several other states, including Wyoming, Iowa, and Ohio, have introduced similar laws in recent months which would criminalize the type of activities of past oil and gas pipeline protesters. Oklahoma already passed into law parallel legislation which has served as a template for other state proposals.
Some state lawmakers have specifically cited the Dakota Access pipeline protests as inspiration for these “critical infrastructure” bills and likened actions by pipeline protesters to “**terrorist activities.”
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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/13/critics_of_bayou_bridge_pipeline_in
in Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show theLouisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners. This comes just one week after a U.S. district judge in Baton Rouge ordered a temporary injunction against construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in order to “prevent further irreparable harm” to the region’s delicate ecosystems, while court challenges proceed. For more, we speak with Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church. We also speak with Pamela Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigad
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/04/concerned-citizens-st-john-louisiana-cancer-alley-pollution-fight
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https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-refinery-catches-fire-2505402070.html
Exxon Refinery Catches Fire Day After Government Settles Over Pollution From Other Gulf Plants
By Julie Dermansky
Early morning skies Wednesday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were alight from a fire that started around 2:30 a.m. at an ExxonMobil refinery. The blaze, though contained before the sun came up, is a reminder to the surrounding community of yet another danger of living next to refineries and chemical plants.
Exxon's refinery is located along the stretch of Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as "Cancer Alley" due to the high number of chemical plants and refineries—and illnesses possibly connected to emissions—along the river's banks.
Exxon issued a statement to CBS affiliate WAFB while the fire smoldered, saying the community was not impacted by emissions from the refinery fire and that air quality readings were "below detectable limits."
Mary Lee Orr, executive director of The Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), questions the possibility of making such a determination so fast. Her group has been working with Cancer Alley communities, helping to reduce their exposure to pollution from the area's oil and petrochemical industry.
Exxon's Baton Rouge refinery is adjacent to one of the company's eight facilities named in a settlement reached with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) and announced Oct. 31.
Last year LEAN filed a lawsuit against an Exxon chemical facility in Baton Rouge, next to the refinery that caught on fire Wednesday. That suit alleges the facility has been violating the Clean Air Act by failing to report pollution releases correctly. Lisa Jordan, director of Tulane University's Environmental Legal Clinic and representing LEAN in this case, said it is too early to say how the recent agreement between the federal government and Exxon will impact their own case. Jordan said LEAN's case encompasses a broader range of issues than those in the one recently settled.
According to the DOJ, the settlement "resolves allegations that ExxonMobil violated the Clean Air Act by failing to properly operate and monitor industrial flares at their petrochemical facilities, which resulted in excess emissions of harmful air pollution."
It requires Exxon to install and operate air pollution control and monitoring technology to reduce air pollution from 26 industrial flares at five facilities in Texas and three in Louisiana, at a cost of about $300 million. In addition, the company must pay a civil penalty of $2.5 million.
Some environmental groups have described the fines as a slap on the wrist, but LEAN'S technical adviser Wilma Subra believes the settlement is substantial. "The amount of money to be spent on air pollution improvements is a positive step in the right direction," she told me.
However, Subra is concerned that the air pollution monitoring devices in the agreement will only monitor benzene, which is known to cause cancer. In her view, Exxon should be required to monitor a whole host of other potentially harmful chemicals it is emitting.
The instances of pollution cited in the recently settled suit do not include emissions from any of Exxon's Texas facilities affected by Hurricane Harvey. Subra pointed out that the pollution incidents at Texas refineries and chemical facilities following the hurricane show that industry has no method for controlling pollution when hurricanes hit, something she hopes industry will change soon.
Exxon's Baytown, Texas, operation was among the eight industrial facilities included in the recent settlement. It was also one of the plants that reported pollution releases due to Hurricane Harvey. In this case, the refinery's roof sank due to the storm's heavy rains, which resulted in the release of hazardous gases—including volatile organic compounds and benzene above permitted levels, according to the New York Times.
Or also sees the agreement between Exxon and the Trump administration as a positive step toward protecting Cancer Alley communities. But "sadly, in the short term, the agreement won't help the community," she told me. "It will take time to implement the new pollution reduction devices."
And though EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stated that "this agreement shows, EPA is dedicated to partnering with states to address critical environmental issues and improving compliance in the regulated community to prevent future violations of the law," the agency under Trump has been racing to undo its previous work. Recently Pruitt announced a measure to repeal former President Barack Obama's EPA policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, a plan Trump's EPA has concluded would have substantial health benefits.
:{:{}:
}:
Furthermore, a list of potential names for the agency's Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee includes a sizable increase in industry representatives and consultants, as reported by the Intercept. On that list are two scientists who have worked for Exxon, indicating the oil and gas giant could have greater influence over EPA science and policies in the future.
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https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/louisiana-sheriff-horrifyingly-explains-why-good-prisoners-should-stay-jail
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activist suppress
On June 19, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards signed a bill into law which will enter his state into the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).
EMAC is the compact which last year gave out-of-state cops the legal authority to flood into North Dakota during the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners. The Louisiana bill, SB 151, was signed as Energy Transfer Partners has another pipeline proposed to run through Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge pipeline. Bayou Bridge is an extension of Dakota Access, set to run from Nederland, Texas, to refinery markets and export terminals in Louisiana.
The compact, signed into existence by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was created in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew with the intent of expediting and bolstering natural disaster response efforts. But the federal legislation creating the compact also has language allowing for a governor of a state to issue an emergency order in the case of the rise of an “insurgency or enemy attack.”
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/oil-industry-has-abused-louisiana-decades-local-resistance-movement-soldiers-against
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http://www.ecowatch.com/louisiana-sea-level-rise-2178631264.html
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pub def
http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-bill-of-rights-is-hanging-by-a-thread-in-louisiana/
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big floods 8/16
http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-louisiana-flooding-1999926306.html
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092016/faster-attribution-studies-scientists-zero-climate-change-role-louisiana-floods-downpours
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pain index
Hurricane Katrina hit 11 years ago. Population of the city of New Orleans is down by over 95,000 people [3] from 484,674 in 2000 to 389,617 in 2015. Almost all this loss of people is in the African-American community. Child poverty is up, double the national average. The gap between rich and poor in New Orleans is massive, the largest in the country. The economic gap [4] between well-off whites and low-income African Americans is widening. Despite receiving $76 billion in assistance after Katrina, poor and working people in New Orleans, especially African Americans, got very little of that help.
Here are the numbers.
35.The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority reported that 62 percent of pre-Katrina service [5] has been restored. But Ride New Orleans [6], a transit rider organization, says streetcar rides targeted at tourists are fully restored, but bus service for regular people is way down, still only at 35 percent of what it was before Katrina. That may explain why there has been a big dip [7] in the number of people using public transportation in New Orleans, down from 13 percent in 2000 to 9 percent now.
44.Over two of every five children in New Orleans lives in poverty—about double the national rate. The current rate of 44 percent is up 3 percentage points from 1999 and up 12 points from 2007 [8]. Overall, there are 50,000 fewer children under the age of 18 living in New Orleans than there were in 2000. In 2000 there were 129,408, and the latest numbers have dropped to 79,432 according to the census figures reported by the Data Center [8].
50.Since Katrina, home values have risen 54 percent and rent is up [9] 50 percent. The annual household income needed to afford rent in New Orleans is $38,000, but 71 percent of workers earn on average $35,000. The average yearly income for service workers is $23,000 and only $10,000 for musicians. New Orleans has only 47 affordable [9] rental units for every 100 low-income residents. Thirty-seven percent of households in the city are paying half of their income for housing, which is much higher than recommended. 36 percent of renters pay more than 50 percent [7] of their income for housing, up from 24 percent in 2004. The New Orleans metro area ranks second in the top 10 worst [10] metro areas for cash-strapped renters, according to the Make Room Initiative. Government leaders bulldozed over 3,000 apartments [11] of occupied public housing right after Katrina but now say there is a critical immediate need for at least 5,000 [12] affordable low-income apartments.
93.Ninety-three percent of New Orleans’ 48,000 public school students are in charter schools [13], the highest percentage in the U.S. Before Katrina, there were over 65,000 students [14] enrolled in New Orleans public schools, less than 1 percent in charter schools. There are now 44 governing bodies for public schools [15] in New Orleans. There are seven types [15] of charter schools in Louisiana. The public schools are 87 percent African American [14]. Widespread charter school problems for students with disabilities are getting a little bit better according to a federal court monitor report [16]. The public has very mixed feelings about the system reflected in the most recent poll [17], which shows 43 percent of whites think the schools are getting better, compared to 31 percent of African Americans; while 23 percent of African Americans thought schools were getting worse, in contrast to 15 percent of whites.
2,000. Black median income in New Orleans [18] rose from $23,000 in 2005 to $25,000 eight years later, while white median income rose by $11,000 from $49,000 to $60,000 during the same time.
6,811. White population of New Orleans is down from 128,871 in 2000 to 122,060 in 2015 according to the Data Center [19].
7,023.Hispanic population in New Orleans grew [19] from 14,826 in 2000 to 21,849 in 2015. There has been significant growth in the Hispanic population in metro New Orleans area [19] from 58,545 in 2000 to 109,553 in 2015, mostly in Jefferson Parish.
64,000. Over 64,000 working women [20] in New Orleans earn less than $17,500 per year. One source of good jobs, working for the school board, was eliminated when 7,500 employees were terminated [21] right after Katrina.
95,057. The population of the City of New Orleans is 95,057 less in 2015 when it was 389,617, compared to 2000 when it was 484,674, according to the Data Center [3].
95,625. There are 95,625 fewer African Americans living in New Orleans (Orleans Parish) now than in the 2000 census, according to census figures reported by the Data Center [8]. The percentage of New Orleans that is African American has dropped from 66 percent to 58 percent. Overall African-American population in New Orleans dropped from 323,000 in 2000 to 227,000 in 2015. Black residents of New Orleans continue to be unfairly and disproportionately stopped and searched [22] by police and also more likely to be arrested for marijuana [23] use than other residents. That situation is even worse for other New Orleans metro residents as Gretna Louisiana, just across the Mississippi River, was recently cited as the arrest capital [24] of the nation.
2,800,000.The U.S. Department of Justice reported Louisiana has 2.8 million people [25] in its criminal database. There are 4.6 million people [26] in Louisiana.
Last. Louisiana continues to rank dead last [27] in poverty, racial disparities and exclusion of immigrants. But New Orleans has plenty of wealthy people; in fact, Bloomberg ranked New Orleans the worst in the entire country in income inequality [28]. Louisiana also ranks last in national rankings [29] of the quality and safety of school systems. Louisiana incarcerates [30] more of its citizens than any of the other 50 states at a rate double the national average. And Louisiana has the highest health-care costs [31] because of high rates of premature deaths, diabetes, and obesity. In a welcome but too rare piece of good health news, Louisiana’s new governorexpanded Medicaid coverage [32] and enrolled 250,000 additional people in the health-care program in July 2016.
$76 billion [33] came to Louisiana because of Katrina. This information makes it clear who did not get the money.
Special thanks to the Data Center [34].
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He is also a member of the legal collective of School of Americas Watch, and can be reached atquigley77@gmail.com. [35]
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [36]
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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/katrina-pain-index-2016-numbers-race-and-class-gap-widening
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-quigley
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/population-by-parish/
[4] http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-orleans-economy-ten-years-after-katrina-1440628953
[5] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/25/new-orleanians-see-tourism-bias-in-post-katrina-public-transport.html
[6] http://rideneworleans.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/sots2015new.pdf
[7] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/who-lives-in-new-orleans-now/#housing-costs-and-affordability,-housing-stock,-and-commuting
[8] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/who-lives-in-new-orleans-now/
[9] http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/new_orleans_affordable_housing.html
[10] http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2016/01/new_orleans_ranks_as_2nd-worst.html
[11] https://nextcity.org/features/view/10-years-after-katrina-new-orleans-public-housing-still-in-limbo-iberville
[12] http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/politics/article_cefaa8d6-96f6-50e1-9230-674489f509ee.html
[13] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/us/charter-driven-gains-in-new-orleans-schools-face-a-big-test.html
[14] https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/katrina/final-louisana-believes-v5-enrollment-demographics22f9e85b8c9b66d6b292ff0000215f92.pdf?sfvrsn=2
[15] http://www.coweninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Governance.Brief_.2015.pdf
[16] http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2016/06/special_education_new_orleans.html
[17] http://www.coweninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cowen-Institute-2016-Poll-FINAL.pdf
[18] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-state-of-black-new-orleans-is-overwhelmingly-worse-than-it-was-pre-katrina_us_55dd57a7e4b04ae49705064c
[19] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/who-lives-in-new-orleans-now/#race-ethnicity
[20] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/reports_analysis/new-orleans-kids-working-parents-and-poverty/
[21] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2015/05/justices_decline_to_hear_appea_1.html
[22] http://www.nola.gov/nopd/policing-data/data/stop-and-search-(field-interview-cards)/2015-stop-and-search-annual-report/
[23] http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_f40d201a-47c6-11e6-a91e-af0c15c753d3.html
[24] http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_19caee50-16bf-5134-b066-0346a20bc26c.html
[25] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/249799.pdf
[26] http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/22
[27] http://www.loyno.edu/jsri/indicators-map
[28] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/the-10-most-unequal-big-cities-in-america
[29] https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/
[30] http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_eed2cfcc-9d87-5246-acea-477688152ed0.html
[31] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2016/05/28/states-highest-obesity/85041028/
[32] http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2016/07/medicaid_expansion_250000_sign.html
[33] http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/federal_governments_120_billio.html
[34] http://www.datacenterresearch.org/
[35] mailto:quigley77@gmail.com
[36] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Katrina Pain Index 2016 by the Numbers: Race and Class Gap Widening
[37] http://www.alternet.org/
[38] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/intense-louisiana-rains-another-example-whats-store-global-warming-video
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Louisiana Attorney General’s office coordinates behind the scenes with Koch lobbyists Hunton & Williams o In January 2015, representatives of the Koch connected lobbying firm Hunton & Williams as well as George Mason Law & Economics Center independently emailed Louisiana Assistant Attorney General Trey Phillips to invite him to a briefing entitled “Clean Air Act: Clean Power or Power Play?” featuring presentations from Peter S. Glaser, Robert L. Glicksman, Jason S. Johnston, Roger R. Martella, and Richard O. Faulk about the Clean Power Plan. Glaser, Johnston, Martella, and Faulk do not believe the Clean Power Plan is on firm legal standing. George Mason University has also accepted millions of dollars in funding from Koch brothers foundations and Charles Koch is a member of the George Mason Mercatus Center’s Board of Directors.
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