Saturday, March 15, 2025

Under Pressure, Nungesser

Citizens of the Gret Stet of Louisiana and residents of New Orleans aren’t used to competent government. The incompetence reached new heights when Bobby Jindal, who I always called PBJ, and C Ray Nagin were in office at the same time. They were both wreckers: one deliberately, the other out of indifference. One thing they had in common was incompetence.

That’s why the performance of Gov. John Bel Edwards and Mayor LaToya Cantrell during the coronavirus crisis has been such a pleasant surprise. They’ve been communicative without panicking like Nagin and clear without self-aggrandizement like PBJ. In a word: competent.

Cantrell’s performance has been especially surprising after the Hard Rock Hotel collapse debacle. After her inconstant and confusing handling of that and the Mardi Gras mishigas, I had given up on her. That changed when COVID-19 came to town. Not everyone agrees that she’s handling this crisis well. That brings me to our first segment.

Under Pressure: Tension and animosity between Orleans and Jefferson Parishes is nothing new. It was particularly raw during the crack epidemic of the late Eighties and early Nineties when JP Sheriff Harry Lee seemingly blamed all crime in his parish on the majority African American city next door. It was just as unfair as people who say that everyone in Jefferson is a white flight escapee from New Orleans. Some are but many have lived in Metry and Kenna, Brah for generations and I say that without Regretnas…

The latest Orleans-Jefferson dispute centers around the forceful actions taken by Mayor Cantrell to flatten the virus curve. She received a strongly worded letter from the head of the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, Todd Murphy. Essentially, he criticized her for bowing to the reality that festivals such as Essence, Jazz Fest, and Voodoo Fest cannot safely be held in 2020. All three events attract people from all over the world. Holding them this year would constitute a viral vector akin to the New York subway system.

The most irksome thing about Murphy’s epistle is the notion that Mayor Cantrell should have consulted him. They’re not equals. She’s the duly elected leader of Orleans Parish, he’s the head of a business lobbying group. Such a complaint coming from JP Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng might have some merit. Thus far, Lee Sheng has been relatively silent for most of the crisis; content to follow the lead of Edwards and Cantrell. Mr. Murphy should mind his own business.

There was another annoying epistle last weekend. It was an open letter to “Madam Mayor and our city and state elected officials” from four wealthy white boys including former City Councilman Jay Batt. The content was unregenerate Trumpism: reopen the economy, so what if we lose a few lives?

The business of American is business, so they want us to get down to business. That’s risky business as far as I’m concerned:

via GIPHY

That was Tom Cruise not Jay Batt or his actor brother, Bryan. We call him the Better Batt in my household; not to be confused with Langenstein’s Better Cheddar.

This Batty epistle was published as a full-page ad in the Sunday Picvocate. It has not aged well: our state and region depend heavily on oil and tourism. We already knew that the tourist economy is in deep shit and sinking fast; oil prices cratered the day after this letter was published. Oops. It was also published on a day in which there were 8 pages of obituaries in the newspaper. Double oops.

Despite what the Rex-Comus-Proteus crowd thinks, nobody wants the lockdown to go on forever. But a premature reopening could prove catastrophic. Are we supposed to reopen because some rich white guys have ants in their pants?

Mayor Cantrell is made of sterner stuff, declaring, “I will not be bullied.”

The last word of the segment goes to Queen and David Bowie. Who else?

I’m not sure if great minds really think alike but Bayou Brief writers seem to. My colleague, Sue Lincoln, has written a brilliant piece of satire with Lt. Gov Billy Nungesser in a major supporting role. The next segment makes it Billy Nungesser week at the Bayou Brief.

Billy’s Pandemic Apologia: I’ve had a lot of fun at Billy Nungesser’s expense over the years. I’ve called him Bordello Billy, the Bayou Buffoon, and most memorably the Gret Stet Grifter. His misadventures with Deutsches Haus played a part in my debut 13th Ward Rambler column. I hereby reiterate my apology for searing the image of the Lt. Gov in Lederhosen on your brains.

Speaking of apologies, Nungesser sat for an interview with The Hill and issued one for his showboating at the beginning of the Gret Stet’s turn in the pandemic barrel. Nungesser was harshly critical of Mayor Cantrell’s decision to shut down the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade and other events.

Missing the spotlight, Nungesser issued a pro forma apology for his earlier stance. It really amounted to saying, “I’m sorry for being wrong.”

He’s used to being wrong. He used the Lost Causer statue removal controversy as an opportunity to pander to white conservatives. And who among us can forget the time he wore “Trump hair socks” to greet the Impeached Insult Comedian.

April 20th was the tenth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Those of us with long memories will never forget how Nungesser, then Plaquemines Parish President, used the spill to get publicity. Nungesser blamed then President Obama for the spill, not BP. Yo, Billy they had something to do with it.

Not everyone has a long memory. After the interview, social media was full of people saying, “I don’t agree with Nungesser’s politics but at least he apologized.”

Billy can read the polls, which show that the Edwards-Cantrell approach to the pandemic is popular. Hell, even Jeff Landry is aboard for now, which is one reason for Nungesser’s apologia. They both want to be Governor and may run against one another in 2023. He did it for the headlines, not because he’s sorry.

The mere fact that Nungesser’s lukewarm apology was accepted by many shows how far political standards have slipped. President* Pennywise never apologizes, never admits error, and spends his waking hours seeking a scapegoat for his disastrous performance in addressing the pandemic. It reminds me of something the late, great Louisiana Senator Russell Long was fond of saying:

Long was chairman of the Senate finance committee from 1966-1981, so he applied his aphorism to taxes. But it applies to buck passing in general. And nobody is a bigger buck passer than Billy Nungesser; a man who is such a phony that he pretends to be a working-class Joe when he’s the scion of a prominent Republican family. There’s a lot of that going around today. I’m not buying what he’s selling. Neither should you.

The last word goes to The Smithereens. They’re a New Jersey based band but their late front man Pat Dinizio had a place in the French Quarter for many years:

I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, 
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, 
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, 
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, 
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, 
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, 
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room, 
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, 
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) 
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; 
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, 
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, 
I know very well I could not.

Leaves of Grass (1891-2) (1892)

Last Call for the Bayou

A shrimper traveling further out into the Gulf to find a catch; a duck hunter saddened by loss of native wildlife habitat; a member of the United Houma Nation grieving over her ancestors’ homestead subsumed by open water, and a geologist measuring 1 centimeter of newly built land – these are the compelling insights into Louisiana’s coastal erosion crisis, relayed in a five-part documentary, “Last Call for the Bayou,” airing free on Smithsonian Channel Digital Platforms in honor of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary.

The 11-minute episodes, directed and produced by filmmakers Dominic and Nadia Gill, vividly illustrate the tragic destruction of protective marshlands by oil companies and rising sea levels resulting from climate change. The Gills convey the region’s infinitely complex ecosystem through interviews and aerial photography. Specific vegetation that is visible from 50-feet above simply cannot be seen and understood from a plane, but are clear when photographed close range from a paraglider.

Ben Depp paraglides above Louisiana’s coast.

In the first episode, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” Ben Depp, a landscape photographer, has been examining the wetlands in a series of high-art aerial photographs taken from his 21-foot paragliding wing and 200HP motor driven propeller strapped to his back.

“When flying, I often have this feeling of overwhelming beauty with this deep sadness of what’s lost – two feelings at the same time, constantly,” Depp says.

“While the threat of damage to the natural world by industrial activity can be seen daily in the press, somehow the tragically fast disappearance of Louisiana’s wetlands remains an issue that most outside of Louisiana know nothing about,” poses Gill in his filmmaker’s statement. “Why? Possibly because there is no physical vantage point from which one can see this stunningly rich and beautiful landscape or the speed at which it is changing.” Outdoor sport photographers with social consciences, the Gills hope to alter the public perception. “We saw an absolute need to spread the message,” Nadia Gill says.

Most shrimpers don’t have large enough boats to venture far out into the Gulf and troll inside the bays.

“Swamp” is a word evoking negative connotations. Dictionary synonyms include “morass,” “quagmire,” and “sump” – none inspiring awe. But the documentary’s visuals depict the extraordinary and serene beauty of Louisiana’s marsh, as well as its delightful soundscape. The fifth episode, “The Duck Queen of Plaquemines Parish” opens before dawn with chirping birds and trilling frogs, along with the whir of an approaching airboat. Avid duck hunter and former coastal plan manager, Albertine Kimble, who used to travel throughout the parish gathering water samples explains how the unintended consequences of human engineering through construction of the levee system has prevented the Mississippi River from depositing vital nutrients and sediment along its banks. The levees enabled commerce by controlling the river, while destroying the ecosystem of the marsh.

“No wetlands equals no ducks. That’s obvious,” Kimble states.

After two floods invaded her home in tiny Carlisle, La., at the mouth of the Mississippi, she raised the structure 22-feet off the ground. Over her 30-year career, Kimble has seen the land disappear.

“This is the top wintering grounds for ducks and it’s all going away,” says Ryan Lambert, a Plaquemines hunting and fishing guide.

Two thousand square miles of land have been lost since the 1930s, but also probably 10,000 miles of habitat because of saltwater intrusion, Lambert observes. Ancient oak trees died, leaving a ghost forest.

“If we lose this area, New Orleans is next,” Kimble says. “Because we protect New Orleans.”

But there is hope. Another episode introduces Dr. Alex Kolker, a geologist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), who has been working to understand the mechanisms and impacts of coastal land loss. Kolker has studied subsistence and sea level rise to assess whether or not restoration projects outlined in Louisiana’s Master Plan will be sufficient to stem the land loss. Diversions may be able to add 1-½” of soil depth per year.

Dr. Alex Kolker (seated at right), an expert in marine and atmospheric sciences at LUMCON in Cocodrie, Louisiana, takes filmmakers on an airboat tour of the marshland.

“A fresh water diversion is a gate in the levee, and the idea of that is to restart the land-building processes,” Kolker says. Between four and 13 million people will have to move if no action is taken on sea-level rise. The state’s 2012 Master Plan predicted a rise of 1.4-feet within 50 years, but its 2017 Plan adjusted that estimate to 1.4 up to 2.7-feet, so we need to act now.

“I don’t know what else we have to do to get the attention of the world to show them how vital it is for storm surge, for commerce, oil and gas – for everything. The wetlands are vital to the nation,” Kimble asserts.

All five episodes of “Last Call for the Bayou” are available free on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, as well as multiple streamings on TV provider websites, apps and free on-demand channels and online at www.smithsonianchannel.com through April.

# # #

Films and the trailer are available to media outlets, nonprofits and companies to repost but must contain the web address www.lastcallforthebayou.com and state the project is a series.

What If? A PoliSciFi Tale From a Parallel Universe

Ever since Governor John Bel Edwards issued Louisiana’s “safer at home” executive order on March 22, it has often seemed as though the time sea we are adrift upon has been frequently roiled by waves lifting, then plunging, us into what feel like alternative universes.

A gentleman I encountered in the grocery store asked where I’d gotten my face mask (I made it), then asked if I’d like to join him somewhere, later, for a drink. When I replied that all the restaurants and bars were closed because of this coronavirus, he seemed befuddled to discover his go-to routine for dating was currently invalid.

For a couple of weeks, the biggest “hit” and accompanying buzz has been the Netflix mini-series “Tiger King.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, think of it as “Real Housewives of the Trailer Park” do “Ru-Paul’s Drag Race” wearing only animal print. Instead of fighting over who is sleeping with whose husband or wife, it’s a battle over who is treating the big cats in their private zoos the worst.

Yes, we watched this and discussed it as if it were a serious documentary investigation.

People are starting to use a phrase that’s been common in apocalyptically-themed science fiction – “the before time” – for referring to the era prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And among the word games being played via Facebook and Twitter, there’s What If? A list of musically-referenced what-if’s is proposed, and friends are encouraged to add their own. For example: What if James Brown didn’t feel good? What if Journey stopped believing? What if the Devil never went down to Georgia? What if Ozzy never barked at the moon? What if it wasn’t Fancy’s one chance?

Along those lines, and with folks who, early on in this COVID-19 crisis, were saying how glad they were to have John Bel Edwards in charge now increasingly perturbed by the compulsory pause in their profitable endeavors, and returning to their partisan protestations, let’s pose another what if.

What if, instead of re-electing John Bel Edwards as governor, Louisiana voters had chosen Eddie Rispone?

Let’s get out our telescopes and gaze at the events as they have unfolded in that parallel universe, which we will call AltLA-20.

The first indication that anything was amiss came when the honor guard of lawmakers escorted Governor Eddie Rispone into the House chamber on the first day of the session.

The 71-year-old governor was wearing a full haz-mat suit. As part of his first-ever “State of the State” address, Rispone announced AltLA-20’s first case of COVID-19 had been officially confirmed earlier that morning, coinciding with the first day of the legislative session.

Two days later, the formerly gregarious governor declared a public health emergency and transformed himself into Rispone the Recluse.

While his name and signature appeared on subsequent declarations regarding official health emergency procedures, including “stay home” orders, the day-to-day state government management is not being conducted by Gov. Rispone, but rather by the man-behind-the-curtain, Commissioner of Administration Lane Grigsby.

It’s clear that this crisis has created the ideal opportunity to implement some of Rispone and Grigsby’s wish list of pet policies.

For example, there has been the directive to shut down all public K-12 schools and preschools, because they can be Coronavirus infection vectors. Parochial schools, however, are permitted to remain open, because to close them or the churches that operate them would violate the federal guarantee of freedom of religion. Besides, as the governor’s proclamation stated, we just KNOW church-affiliated schools are safer and all around better.

That same order required the cessation of all college and university liberal arts programs, presumably because they are designated liberal, and AltLA-20, as everyone knows is a conservative state.

Meanwhile, business and career track college programs like accounting, nursing, engineering, chemistry, construction, IT, even agriculture and forestry programs, are fast-tracked, reflecting Rispone’s and Grigsby’s longstanding efforts to elevate business rights and privileges over those of people.

With Rispone in seclusion to protect his health, many gubernatorial duties would constitutionally fall to the Lieutenant Governor. Yet Billy Nungesser’s record hasn’t made Rispone or Kingmaker Grigsby very confident in Nungesser’s judgment.

Remember, this is the guy who, along with then-chairman of the Louisiana GOP Roger Villere (a licensed florist by trade) announced to the Wall Street Journal in April 2016 they were pursuing a landmark, mega-million dollar deal for the state, which included building a new fleet of supertankers at the former Avondale Shipyard.

Those ships would then have exclusive shipping rights for all oil produced by the country of Iraq, and would transport the oil to a Lake Charles refinery for processing. Oh, and the guy Nungesser was negotiating with, the purported CEO of a medical technology firm based in Delaware, was promising to invest 100% of his profits from this arrangement into the state’s motion picture industry. The only thing missing from the alleged deal was e-mail from a Nigerian prince.

Therefore, to keep Lt. Gov. Nungesser busy (since Rispone’s March 22 “stay-at-home” order effectively suspended tourism and the Lt. Gov’s duties overseeing that industry), Rispone followed the lead of his hero, President Donald Trump. Trump placed Vice President Pence in charge of coordinating the COVID-19 response, and in AltLA-20, Rispone’s henchman Grigsby tasked Nungesser with overseeing GOHSEP, the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. So now he’s the one announcing the daily infection counts and death toll numbers at press conferences, then serving as emcee to introduce various state experts who have new emergency response details to impart.

Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin also has new duties in this Grigsby-designed realignment of statewide-elected officials. Constitutionally, the Secretary of State (SoS) is primary custodian of state records, along with being in charge of standing up elections. As the pandemic has resulted in the election process standing down – at least the opposing party’s official Democratic preference primary – Gov. Rispone has once again looked toward the Trump administration with hero-worshipful eyes, and acting on the governor’s desires, Commissioner of Administration Grigsby realigned the state Secretary of State duties to make them more analogous to those of the U.S. Secretary of State. So now AltLa-20 Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin is in charge of foreign, er, interstate policy, along with trade and treaties. Basically, he is overseeing negotiations and incentives to bring new industry to the state.

Never one to let proprieties or legalities get in the way of realizing his ambitions, Attorney General Jeff Landry has been utilizing the virus-prompted time out from business-as-usual to expand his powers, apparently with the full blessing (or at least a blind eye) from the Rispone-Grigsby administration.

After meeting U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams in the early days of the virus pandemic, General Landry (as he has insisted on being addressed) found himself wishing for greater rank.

As Surgeon General Adams is also a U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, Landry indulged in a fit of one-upsmanship. Calling the entire contingent of the Cajun Navy to his office, he deputized them en masse (in violation of the social distancing guidelines) and tasked them with patrolling the state’s waterways during the course of this health emergency. Landry then announced he would hereafter wear the title of Attorney Admiral Jeff Landry.

State Treasurer John Schroder hasn’t been idle, either. Although the pandemic-prompted worldwide economic slowdown has reduced the state’s bond-ability to a mere trickle, Schroder came up with an ingenious gimmick to bring some quick cash into the state coffers.

The health emergency directives pushed the due date for individual state tax returns back 45 days, from May 15 to June 30. The due date for corporate tax returns, on the other hand, was bumped to August 15. Yet to encourage folks to file and pay their taxes on the usual May 15 date, Schroder is offering an incentive: a complete set of VHS tapes of all five seasons of History Channel’s “Top Shot” (2010-2014). State Rep. Blake Miguez, good friend to Treasurer Schroder and Attorney Admiral Landry, competed in seasons one and five, and served as one of the show’s experts in season two.

And speaking of Miguez, he’s one of the main reasons indoor and outdoor shooting ranges were designated “essential businesses” and allowed to remain open, while many others have been required to shut down as an infection preventative. Some can credit their “essential business” designation to political influencers, too. Automotive repair shops can thank House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, the owner-operator of one such facility in Gonzales, for keeping them in the category of “need to stay open.” Furniture stores can credit Senate President Page Cortez, the owner of a LaZBoy gallery in Lafayette, with getting them named among the “essential businesses” throughout the statewide reduction in commerce.

Because the state has engaged in a layered rather than complete shutdown of social interactions, it has not been sufficient to either reduce the contagion or the fatalities from this pandemic. Doctors and nurses continue to collapse from exhaustion and their contraction of the disease while they remain on duty, struggling to find ways to alleviate symptoms and prevent patients from developing the frequently fatal complication of viral pneumonia. Hospital morgues and coroner’s morgues are exceeding their capacity for holding the bodies of victims until the funeral homes can accept and bury or cremate them. Cemeteries are running out of available plots, and there’s even been talk of converting state, parish, and city-owned golf courses into burial grounds…

Many of those who worked so hard to put the Rispone-Grigsby coalition in power are now dissatisfied with this administration’s first four months in office. They are among the loudest of those people publicly demanding an “immediate return to full normal.”

Others, who are staying home and sewing masks for first responders, sewing shrouds for the bodies soon to be tumbled into mass graves, are quietly asking, “What if we had re-elected John Bel Edwards as governor, instead?”

U.S. Supreme Court Relegates Louisiana’s Split Jury Convictions to “the Dustbin of History”

In a 6-3 decision that included three of its most reliably conservative members, including both of the justices appointed by President Donald Trump, and three of its most liberal members, the United States Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution requires states to secure a unanimous jury verdict in order to convict any defendant accused of a serious crime.

The majority opinion in Ramos v. Louisiana, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, represents a historic victory for civil justice advocates and a humiliating defeat for Louisiana state Attorney General Jeff Landry, who spent an untold fortune, estimated by one former lawmaker to be in the millions, to defend a Jim Crow-era law that was abolished in 2019 through a statewide referendum. Landry’s decision to pursue the case was entirely his own and was made without the support of Gov. John Bel Edwards and despite opposition from the American Bar Association, the ACLU, the NAACP, the Rutherford Institute, and the Innocence Project, among others.

The Court’s decision received the praise of a wide-ranging assortment of liberal and conservative lawmakers and advocacy organizations, including the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center as well as the Pelican Institute, a libertarian “think tank” affiliated with the Koch brothers.

Because the decision was about whether, constitutionally, a person can be convicted of a serious crime even if the state fails to convince all twelve members of the jury of their guilt, the factual background of this specific case is largely irrelevant in how the Court reached its opinion and played almost no part in informing the arguments made by both the plaintiff’s and the defense’s legal counsel.

That said, there is at least one remarkable aspect that deserves attention: At one point, the man whose name is now forever enshrined in legal history, Evangelisto Ramos, found himself in prison, sentenced to serve the rest of his life behind bars for a brutal crime he adamantly claims he did not commit, fluent only in a language that was not spoken by anyone in a position of authority, unable to afford a lawyer, and yet somehow still determined enough to write his own legal appeals.

In all but one other state, Ramos would have been allowed to walk out of the courtroom a free man after two members of his jury refused to find that he was guilty of ending Trenice Fedison’s life, and there’s a legitimate argument that, had Ramos been able to afford the kind of defense he needed, his trial would have lasted a lot longer than the two days that he was given.

Whether he is a hero or a villain is something that will be determined later, because the Supreme Court decided that Evangelisto Ramos is entitled to a new trial.

Instead, in an effort to win today’s case, Louisiana embraces the idea that everything is up for grabs. It contends that this Court has never definitively ruled on the propriety of nonunanimous juries under the Sixth Amendment—and that we should use this case to hold for the first time that nonunanimous juries are permissible in state and federal courts alike.” – Justice Neil Gorsuch, Ramos v. Louisiana
Liz Murrill and Jeff Landry appear together on an evangelical television program. Image source: YouTube

Ultimately, Landry, a former one-term congressman whose brand of conservative politics is extreme and often outlandish, even for Louisiana, mustered only one amicus -or “friend of the Court”- brief, a rambling exposition on Anglo-American legal history that the Court almost completely rejected, filed by Utah’s attorney general and endorsed by a dozen other state attorneys general, all of whom, like Landry, are Republicans, as well as Isias Sanchez-Baez, the Solicitor General of Puerto Rico. (Puerto Rico has its own complicated history of allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts).

Landry is the immediate past president of the National Association of Attorneys General, and the fact that he was only able to corral a dozen or so of his conservative colleagues is telling. So too is the fact that the only public official in Louisiana who formally lent his name in support of Landry’s position was embattled Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro.

New Orleans City Councilman Jason Williams, who hopes to oust Cannizzaro from office this fall, praised the Court’s decision and specifically commended state Sen. J.P. Morrell, the Unanimous Jury Coalition, and the Promise of Justice Initiative for leading the successful statewide referendum that resulted in the law’s abolishment. “The result of today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is truly momentous, as it creates a more equitable opportunity to achieve justice in a historically slanted system,” said Williams. “Even very conservative judges weighed in strongly, noting ‘evidence that the racism that spawned the split verdict law 120 years ago in Louisiana remains embedded within it today.’ The decision is also a reminder that we should not blindly rely on old, broken policies and systems to achieve the goal of real public safety.“

Perhaps ironically, Calcasieu Parish D.A. John DeRosier, who had supported the state’s non-unanimous jury law when it was debated in the legislature, is also mentioned in a brief, but it wasn’t one filed to bolster Landry’s case. It was to ensure the Court knew that DeRosier defended the law, even while openly acknowledging its racist intentions.

Separately, Oregon’s attorney general, Democrat Ellen Rosenblum, filed an amicus brief that cautioned the Court against issuing a ruling that could overwhelm her state’s justice system. After Louisiana voters abolished its non-unanimous jury law in 2019, Oregon had been the only state in the nation in which the practice was still allowed. The Court’s decision on Monday effectively stuck down Oregon’s law, which, like Louisiana’s, was a vestige of Jim Crow.

Rosenblum largely ignored the convoluted historical arguments that were at the center of Landry’s defense, a fact that was not lost on any of the Court’s nine members. Indeed, her arguments were taken far more seriously and persuasively than those made by Jeff Landry and his deputy Liz Murrill. (Shortly after his first election, Landry declared Murrill as the state’s first-ever “Solicitor General,” an office that has never been statutorily authorized and a title that has never been recognized as a matter of custom).

Murrill’s presentation of the case during oral arguments was so exasperated and tortured that, at one point, it generated laughter loud enough to merit mention in the transcript. Murrill claimed, among other things, that if the Court were to allow Ramos with the opportunity to have a new trial, then it would effectively jeopardize the convictions of more than 32,000 people. No one took her wild estimate seriously, and when pressed, she was forced to admit that it was pure conjecture.

“Have you any idea?“ Justice Breyer asked her. ”Is there — with all the work gone into this, has anybody got any rough idea of what percentage of those people who are convicted are convicted by non-unanimous juries?”

”There’s just no reliable data,” answered Murrill, an assertion that Breyer politely suggested he believed to be absurd.

Jeff Landry’s deputy legal aide, Liz Murriil, who has written dozens of petitions and briefs in ideologically divisive and deeply controversial cases, to courts across the country, often when Louisiana’s interest in the case is either non-existent or irrelevant. In het work, Murrill reveals herself to be s far-right ideologue who enthusiastically uses her public office to advance legal positions some would characterize as unusually petty and highly partisan. Murrill, much liken her boss, typically argues against laws or bills that expand civil rights and access to justice for marginalized communities.

The real number, it turns out, was 36; today, it’s 44.

It is also worth noting that while Oregon, which had already been expected to strike down its non-unanimous jury law at the time the Court decided to hear the Ramos case, it was also concerned with the possibility of retroactively invalidating convictions. But unlike Louisiana, it wasn’t arguing that its statute was sensible or good, and it never denied its racist provenance.

Rather, it cautioned against an overly broad opinion that failed to consider the ways in which its courts had relied on the fact that the law had never before been disturbed. The majority opinion accounts for those concerns, and while the approach it outlines will almost certainly be tested and was criticized by the dissent, the Court’s decision only voids convictions against defendants who have not yet exhausted the appeal’s process.

The unusual alignment and the interaction between the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions on the issue of stare decisis ensures that Ramos v. Louisiana will become required reading for the nation’s next generation of lawyers and has already generated dozens of articles from legal scholars and Supreme Court watchers.

The six justices who compromised the Court’s majority represent both sides of the ideological spectrum, but the three justices who dissented- Kagan, Roberts, and Alito- are also notable for their ideological differences. But what is less likely to receive attention, at least nationally, is the fact that the nearly all of the arguments made by Jeff Landry were rejected by all nine of the Court’s members.

The case wasn’t about whether or not Louisiana’s law was sensible. In fact, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas all found that not only was the law unconstitutional, it was definitively, undeniably rooted in racism.

Only Justice Alito bought Landry’s specious argument that the state had somehow washed away its racist intentions merely because it hadn’t been abolished in 1973 during the state’s Constitutional Convention. Alito, presumably, skipped over The Advocate’s brilliant and thorough reporting that revealed the Jim Crow-era law continued to disproportionally affect black defendants. As a result of its reporting, the paper won its first-ever Pulitzer Prize. (Incidentally, the paper is all but certain to be considered for another Pulitzer for its reporting on Landry’s dubious business dealings).

At its core, the case was about whether a concurring opinion written in 1972 by Justice Lewis Powell- and that failed to earn the support of any other member of the Court- should be considered valid legal precedent. The Court’s answer, put simply, was “of course not.”

Landry and Murrill attempted to convince the Court that the Framers of the Constitution had never intended to require unanimity in jury verdicts because the word “unanimous” appeared in an earlier draft of the Sixth Amendment but was edited out of the final version. Presumably, theIr approach was strategically designed to win over the affections of Justice Thomas, who considers himself to be an “Originalist” (that is, he claims his opinions are based on the original meaning of the words used in the Constitution) and the two acolytes of the late Justice Antonio Scalia- Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Scalia referred to himself as both a Textualist and an Originalist, which he often used interchangeably.

Ultimately, none of the three men were persuaded at all by Landry’s argument. The word “unanimous” wasn’t t removed because the Framers rejected the concept of unanimity, but because it had been self-evident that verdicts needed to be unanimous, a concept that had been well understood in the common law for at least two centuries. “Unanimous” was edited out because it was redundant.

There is another significant difference between the position taken by Oregon’s attorney general and the one taken by Louisiana’s. After the Court announced its ruling on Monday, Rosenblum enthusiastically praised the decision. “This is good news!” she exclaimed (exclamation point included).“It is an embarrassment to our otherwise progressive state that we are the only state in the country with a law in our constitution that allows criminal convictions without juror unanimity.” Jeff Landry, on the other hand, declined comment.

A Tale of Two Cities: New Orleans Under Quarantine

Illuminated balconies on Barracks Street in the French Quarter, beneath the clouds under a Super Pink Moon. The largest Super-moon of the year thrilled skywatchers on Tuesday, April 7th, 2020.
The Royal Street Inn, aka R-Bar, glowing bright red but shuttered under the Quarantine, an unfortunately quiet time during an otherwise vibrant social season, often full of neighborhood activity on a night like this.
Frenchmen Street in New Orleans, Louisiana – An abandoned set for a film: missing a cast and a crew, absent of actors and extras.
All activity has come to a full-stop under the worldwide pandemic. A police car is stationed where one might expect to see brass bands entertaining large crowds that often converge on the corner of Chartres and Frenchmen Streets.
A single pedestrian makes their way across a familiar thoroughfare, usually a hopping intersection between the lower French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny. On the left: the Old U.S. Mint, now home to The New Orleans Jazz Museum, illuminated in its iconic location.
Elysian Fields, while desolate and deserted, also serene and surreal – yet looking less like a road to paradise than usual.
A praise-worthy letter carrier on foot braving the world on our behalf in the Bywater Neighborhood of New Orleans: working cheerfully amidst an international pandemic, and happy as ever their weekend is about to begin.
An aerosol artist in the Bywater reinventing her bicycle from the ground up – making the most of the moment, since thieves made off with the wheels this past week.
Backed by fresh graffiti, one masked neighbor is taking the situation more seriously, out with his friend, Sergeant Speckles, on a brief adventure during the golden hour.
A Dynamic Duo: neighbors take to collaboration to combat the quarantine and prescribed social distancing. Here on Royal Street folks gets an impromptu show while a canine friend looks out from behind a locked gate, perhaps pondering how we got to this point.
Social Distancing Warriors taking the opportunity to go the long way around during the coronavirus pandemic.
A feeling of being together but while also all alone: a theme of the moment under the quarantine.
Neighbors intentionally scattered along the levee of the Industrial Canal: social distancing in respective cells, all the while everyone enjoys the epic weather on the waterfront.
Graffiti artists have serendipitously embraced a WWI Era military base as their most extent canvas.

Hell Of A Spell

My original intent for this column was pure comic relief. Things are grim enough in the Gret Stet of Louisiana without obsessing over the pandemic. That hope was forlorn, alas. One can always find humor in every situation, but some things are not funny: death is at the top of the list.

It is, however, funny to see Trumper Attorney General Jeff Landry on stage with the Governor at his pandemic pressers. You know things are dire when a creep like Landry is acting responsibly unlike the Republican Governors of most Southern states; most notably Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Florida’s Ron DeSantis both of whom think a nice walk on the beach is the cure for what ails us. There’s a special place in hell for those who delay action because they fear the wrath of President* Pennywise.

I wake up every day grateful that John Bel Edwards was re-elected Governor. I was a clothespin voter in 2019 but he’s the sort of leader produced by West Point: cool, calm, and collected. In contrast, it’s easy to imagine Eddie Rispone dancing to the tune played by his master, the Impeached Insult Comedian. In 2020, that tune is a funeral dirge. Trumpism is hazardous to your health.

I was raised Greek Orthodox but I’m not religious. I think of myself as an agnostic, not an atheist, because I can’t prove that there’s no God. But I’ve seen too much lunacy in the name of religion to be a believer. It’s a pity: faith would come in handy now. But blind faith is never a good idea. That brings me to the first segment of this edition of the 13th Ward Rambler.

Hell Of A Spell is the title of a 1980 song by the brilliant Texas musician Doug Sahm. Doug is no longer with us, but his words ring true in Baton Rouge 20 years after his death. I think you know where I’m going with this.

I’d never heard of Reverend Tony Spell until he decided to dis, defy, and disobey Governor Edwards’ ban on large public gatherings. He’s the pastor of something called the Life Tabernacle Church in Red Stick. His insistence on holding services in the face of the worst public health catastrophe since 1918 has rendered his church’s name ironic. If there is a God, I suspect he/she/it would want their flock to live to spread the gospel. Spell has conclusively proven that irony is not dead, but his parishioners may end up dead as a result of his ignorant arrogance.

I admit to flinching when Spell was arrested for violating the Governor’s orders. I’m a firm believer in all aspects of the First Amendment and arresting even the most errant biblebanger is bothersome. Spell, however, asked for it with his reckless endangerment of his congregation. Hell, even Tony Fucking Perkins agrees:

“If I thought this was an attack on religious freedom, I’d be right there with him,” says Tony Perkins. “It’s a directive for the sake of public health not to meet.”

Hell has officially frozen over. I agree with the head of the Family Research Council on something. Even dipshit wingnut Advocate op-ed columnist Dan Fagan has called Spell an “attention-seeking fool.” And Fagan is intimately acquainted with fools being one himself. I’ll resume disagreeing with the semi-literate columnist directly.

Spell, of course, sees himself as a modern Christian martyr. He hopes to build a national reputation with his defiant stance, which is why he brought in the dread Roy Moore to defend him. I hope the defrocked Alabama Supreme Court Justice and failed Senate candidate stays away from the Mall of Louisiana. It’s shouldn’t be hard for Judge Pervert: all the teenyboppers are on lockdown.

I’m no expert on the teachings of Jesus but I don’t recall him urging his followers to become a death cult. And I thought Christians like Spell were pro-life instead of members of a death church. If Spell doesn’t relent, his congregation should be renamed the Death Tabernacle Church. Here’s hoping the spell is broken and he will choose life. How’s that for a nifty piece of political Ju-Jitsu?

The last word of the segment goes to Richard Thompson:

I promised comic relief. Let’s pay a visit to the Tweeter Tube to see if we can score some.

Tweets Of The Week: Both Tweets were fired off by former editors of the Gambit Weekly. The first  involves our old pal Senator John Neely Kennedy and comes from Herriman biographer and parade route book signer Michael Tisserand:

Neely looks like death warmed over. Four years of shilling for the Impeached Insult Comedian has taken a tremendous toll on him. A friend commented that he looks like he’s been hollowed out from within. It reminds me of something John Lennon wrote in 1971, “one thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside.”

The Neelyisms have dried up. I haven’t seen one worth adding to my compendium of his folksy cornpone sayings in quite some time. It’s what happens when you’re a phony relentlessly defending the indefensible. Neely is a well-educated man who, in General Russell Honore’s memorable phrase, has been “stuck on stupid” since the advent of Trumpism.

Our next tweet comes from former Gambiteer Kevin Allman. Kevin is vexed by the continuing MSM focus on Mardi Gras 2020 as the root of all coronavirus evil; every time Governor Edwards or Mayor Cantrell appear on national TV, they’re asked why they didn’t cancel Mardi Gras. It’s gotcha question syndrome run amuck.

Kevin has been on a crusade to refute this nonsense. He’s even offered to write a piece for the outlets pushing this story. It’s Kevin’s version of Swift’s A Modest Proposal:

Remember the good old days when I called it The Cursed Carnival? Trust me, LaToya Cantrell would have cancelled it if she thought it was hazardous to our health. She likes yelling at people. It’s high time for the MSM to focus on the chicanery of Jared Kushner and Donald Trump instead of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

We have one more segment that should tickle your fancy as well as your funny bone.

Sign Of The Times: Nobody’s talking about the removed White Supremacy monuments anymore, we have bigger fish to fry. But the presence of Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans remains irksome as you can see from this Facebook post by my friend Chef Chris DeBarr:

The odds of it becoming Angela Davis Parkway are slim and none and slim just moved to Bunkie. But I promised comic relief and I like to keep my word.

That concludes this edition of the 13th Ward Rambler. The last word goes to Doug Sahm:

No Playbook For This

The Louisiana’s Revenue Estimating Conference was supposed to be meeting this Wednesday in order to officially adopt the state’s income forecast for the next fiscal year, so there would be a target number for crafting the state budget. That meeting has been put off till the end of April, beginning of May – at the earliest.

Senate President Page Cortez offered a partial explanation when the Legislature reconvened briefly last week, saying, “The April 8 REC meeting will be rescheduled because we have no clear or real idea of what the COVID-19 economic effects will be.” And he added, somewhat ominously, “There probably will be no clear picture before late fall.”

Traditionally and usually, the four-member panel – comprised of the Senate President, the Speaker of the House, the Commissioner of Administration, and an economics professor – adopts new revenue projections by the end of a calendar year, for the next fiscal year which starts the following July first. This allows the governor’s administration to prepare a budget proposal which – traditionally and usually – the Legislature modifies when they meet each spring. Politically partisan machinations the past two winters have intentionally caused a deviation from the norm, as legislative members of the REC have refused to approve the projections. Since the state constitution requires unanimous agreement by the panel, that puts a halt to the entire process.

As of right now, the “official” revenue numbers for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2020, were calculated and adopted one year ago this week, on April 10, 2019. The budget proposal offered by Gov. John Bel Edwards was crafted from that starting point. It also included a wishlist of additional spending, based on the previously positive projections of state economists, which were pending official adoption by the REC.

It was generally expected that, like last year, when the REC held this April meeting, the Republican lawmakers who’d been saying no to acknowledging the increased revenue would go ahead and agree to one of the sets of numbers proposed by state economists – the “most conservative” set, of course. Yet on the very day the legislature convened for its annual session, Louisiana saw its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus – and in the past four weeks that number has surged exponentially. The state currently has more than 16,000 cases, and nearly 600 people have died.

To slow the spread, people have been told to stay home, and the majority of businesses in the state have shut down. For how long? At least through the end of this month, and possibly longer.

Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project

What will the short and long-term effects of this be? As Louisiana Budget Project director Jan Moller said last week in a webinar presentation on the state budget, given to the Greater New Orleans Foundation, “We don’t know a lot, but we are certain that the budget we were dealing with a few weeks ago is not what we’ve got now.”

When the REC last met on January 31, the state economists’ projections were for 170-million additional state income dollars in the current fiscal year, and $103-million more for FY21, which begins July 1. At the time, Speaker Clay Schexnayder, whose non-legislative business is as the owner/operator of an auto repair shop, offered his own lower numbers, which were voted down as being not only “arbitrary” (as Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said), but unconstitutional.

Perhaps the Speaker wasn’t just playing partisan games, as a Republican attempting to thwart the Democratic governor. Maybe Schexnayder had a “gut feeling” about what was coming. Well before COVID-19 became pandemic, there had been recession predictions for later this year. Last October, Moody’s issued a report predicting the effect on each of the states from a possible general recession. That report said Louisiana was expected to take a $2.5 billion state budget hit if the general recession manifested.

As LBP’s Jan Moller explained it during his webinar, “When the economy goes south, the need for state services goes up, and most states are poorly positioned to deal with the usual types of recessions. Louisiana as the nation’s third highest poverty rate, and about half the state’s population falls below what the United Way categorizes as the ‘ALICE threshold’.”

ALICE stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” – and the most recently updated report shows 48% of Louisiana households can’t afford one or more of the average basic expenses of housing, food, transportation, child care, health care, cell phone access, and/or taxes.

Not only are far too many of our residents poorly positioned to withstand the effects of the measures put in place to slow the contagion rate of this virus, but Louisiana’s entire revenue structure makes our state, as Moller phrased it, “among the worst-prepared for this particular fiscal shock.”

Here’s why.

Sales tax and personal income tax make up more than two-thirds of Louisiana’s revenue income.

Tourism and retailing comprise large parts of Louisiana’s overall economy, but now people have been ordered to stay home. No tourists. No hotel/motel taxes. No shopping. No sales taxes.

Oh sure, people are still buying groceries, but the state doesn’t collect sales tax on food.

At least 100,000 residents are presently unemployed, and when they don’t receive a paycheck, the state Department of Revenue doesn’t receive those regular payments of their payroll withholding taxes. Additionally, Goldman Sachs issued a report on April first that states unemployment numbers are expected to remain high through 2021.

The due date for filing state income tax returns has been pushed back from May 15 to July 15. Those who have refunds due are still filing and drawing their dollars out of the state Treasury. But those who have taxes owing likely won’t be paying them before the new due date – which means those revenues previously expected in the current fiscal year won’t be realized until after the start of the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

No gaming revenue. Casinos and racetracks, bars and restaurants with video poker machines are closed. That’s costing the state approximately $60-million per month in revenue.

Then there’s oil and gas – designated as “mineral revenue” for state income and budgeting purposes. The state has been receiving more than $550-million per year in mineral revenues, but that’s based on average oil prices just shy of $60 per barrel. Yet with Saudi Arabia and Russia engaged in an international game of chicken to see which can outlast the other as oil prices plummet, crude oil futures are trading for less than $25 per barrel today. Each one-dollar drop in the average annual price of oil lowers Louisiana revenues by between 11-million and 12-million dollars, according to legislative fiscal analyst Greg Albrecht.

Further, once the price per barrel drops below $35-40, most of the exploratory, new drilling and production sectors of the industry go idle. No money, no work, no taxes paid.

As LBP’s Moller observed during last week’s webinar, “When we have a disaster like a hurricane, there’s usually an economic bounce afterward. But nobody’s going to be buying a new fridge or hiring contractors to hang new drywall to rebuild from the virus. There’s no playbook for this.”

Do you recall the Moody’s report from October 2019, mentioned earlier, and that it predicted a $2.5-billion recessionary hit to Louisiana’s budget? Let’s look closer at what that would mean.

The total state budget is approximately $32-billion, with the vast majority of that coming from the federal government. Of that $32-billion, the State General Fund – state revenues – make up about $9.4 billion. Of that $9.4-billion, $6-billion is non-discretionary, meaning it must be paid in certain amounts – no matter what. These are things like the state’s bond payments and the MFP, items we, the people of Louisiana, have voted to constitutionally dedicate our taxes to, first and foremost.

That leaves about $3.4-billion in state revenue which can be classified as “discretionary.” This is the part of the budget state lawmakers argue over every year. 90% of it goes to health care and higher ed, meaning legislators are only “playing with” $340-million.

Remembering that disasters like hurricanes and – yes – pandemics are when the need for state services goes up, how do you cut $2.5-billion from $3.4 billion? Or more realistically and accurately, how do you cut $2.5-billion from $340-million, and still make the budget balance?

The math doesn’t work.

Moller put it succinctly.

“We cannot cut our way out of this one.”

At the very least, the tax reforms that have been recommended and discussed, rejected and disgustedly placed on the dusty shelf with all the task force and good government reports insisting that Louisiana’s present overall taxing scheme makes no sense, will have to be batted about and battled over yet again.

Maybe this time they’ll care enough about who and what has been lost, and vote to make the changes.

No Telling When They'll Be Back

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Sunday, March 29, President Trump extended the federal recommendations for social distancing to combat COVID-19 to April 30, and suggesting restricted activity might need to be continued for another month after that.

On Monday, during what have become regular press conferences updating Louisiana’s state of emergency, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Louisiana will be prolonging its emergency orders to stay home, as well..

“Federal mitigation efforts are now extended through April 30, sending the message that we are nowhere near over the hump. By the end of this week, I will issue an additional proclamation extending mine to be in line with that, and it may extend beyond, depending,” the governor stated.

When the Louisiana Legislature reconvened the morning of Tuesday, March 31, with barely more than a quorum in each chamber, legislative leadership made it abundantly clear there’s no road map for this.

“Many of you have asked about the plan for when we reconvene,” House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said, near the start of the day’s business. “At the end of our required business, we will have a motion to adjourn upon the call of the presiding officer. We need to keep it open-ended until we see a clear path to come back.”

Louisiana’s first COVID-19 case was announced on Monday, March 9, the first day of the 2020 session. One week later, state lawmakers reluctantly adjourned for two weeks, hoping this would help in slowing the spread, and they could safely return to work. Unfortunately, this coronavirus, like spring flowers, was already prepared to burst into bloom. As of Tuesday, March 31, Louisiana has 5237 confirmed cases in 60 of the state’s 64 parishes. 1355 state residents are hospitalized, and 239 people have died.

Lawmakers had to come back on the 31st, in order to meet the deadline for first reading of bills for the regular session. The Senate added 91 new proposals to their docket, with 28 of those set to address issues resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The House read in 146 new bills, with 23 of those clearly being filed as a direct result of COVID-19.

The bills prefiled to deal with this health emergency include measures to let local government groups conduct public meetings electronically, as well as extension of deadlines for filing taxes, lawsuits, and TOPS applications.

Yet one has to wonder whether some of these lawmakers are seeing and living through the same virus epidemic as the rest of us, based on bills they felt necessary to file right now.

For example, there are bills by freshman Reps. Reggie Bagala and Charles Henry. Bagala (R- Cut Off) has HB 765, to authorize “LSU National Champions” license plates. Henry (R-Metairie), Congressman Steve Scalise’s former chief of staff and the brother of now-state Senator Cameron Henry, has HB 773, to authorize New Orleans Pelicans license plates.

How crucial is this, right now?

Is HB 831 by Rep. Tanner Magee (R-Houma), to permit the use of blowguns for hunting truly needful at the present juncture?

And speaking of weapons, the purported logic behind a couple of emergency-specific bills is equally baffling. Rep. Beryl Amedee (R-Houma) and Rep. Blake Miguez (R-Erath) have each filed bills to remove the governor’s ability to suspend gun and ammunition sales during a declared emergency.

Miguez’s HB 781 specifically states “Firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers and retailers are essential businesses and operations for purposes of safety and shall not be prohibited or restricted from operating or conducting business during a declared emergency or disaster.”

In the aftermath of a hurricane, tornado or flooding disaster, a firearm might be needed to “for purposes of safety,” but this is a health emergency. Do you find people wearing surgical masks threatening? And what are you going to do, shoot the virus so it can’t get in your lungs?

Speaking of taking shots, let us hope the seriousness of this pandemic is sufficient to eventually defer Rep. Amedee’s package of bills based on her anti-vaxxer beliefs. The quartet of proposals – HB 467, 468, 642, and 667 – endeavor to increase parental fear regarding the safety of immunizations and vaccinations, ban requiring immunizations as a condition of employment, and would prohibit health insurers from using incentive programs to encourage health providers to get more patients vaccinated and immunized.

One of the new bills filed, however, is particularly poignant. HB 848 renames Act 833 of the 2014 session, a law that provides alternative paths for special education students to be promoted and graduate, the “April Dunn Act.” April Dunn, who served as a member of the staff in the Governor’s Office of Disability Affairs and chaired the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council, passed away from COVID-19 complications on March 28. The author of HB 848, honoring Dunn, is Rep. Ted James (D- Baton Rouge), who is himself presently hospitalized fighting COVID-related pneumonia.

We wish him speedy and complete healing.

As for when – if ever – lawmakers will be able to begin again working through the nearly 1500 bills and resolutions now filed for this session, Senate President Page Cortez was clear that the way ahead is completely foggy.

“Normally, we would set a time to return. Some ask if committees meet before recovene. It’s very fluid. If mandated to meet, we will, according to CDC guidelines. Some meetings are allowed to be done by teleconference. According to constitution, statute and rules, we are not allowed to do so.

“Normally, we would set a time to return, but this is all changing so rapidly that – literally – an email from last night is no longer accurate this morning. The one thing we must do is pass a budget, but all the business cessations, combined with the steep decline in oil prices make revenue estimates entirely uncertain – so much so that it looks now that the April 8 REC meeting will be rescheduled,” Cortez told members of the upper chamber. “We have no clear or real idea what the effects will be, and in fact, there will probably be no clear picture before late fall.”

And with that, Louisiana’s Senate and House stand adjourned until their Speaker and Senate President call them back to work.

Calogero Minacore and the Making of Carlos Marcello

Originally, I had intended to include a short installment about Carlos Marcello, the notorious New Orleans mob boss, as a part of the Bayou Brief’s retrospective on the 40th anniversary of the Brilab indictments. But then, like nearly everyone else on the planet right now, I suddenly found myself with more free time than I’d anticipated and the opportunity to tackle the whole story.

This three-part series (the Bayou Brief’s “Godfather Trilogy”) relies on thousands of pages of declassified government records, phone transcripts, court documents, multiple news reports published in the national and Louisiana media over the span of nearly 50 years, and more than a dozen academic essays and books, including Frenchy Brouilette and Matthew Randazzo’s raucous but admittedly unreliable Mr. New Orleans: The Life of a Big Easy Underworld Legend, Thomas Hunt and Martha Sheldon’s Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia, Mike Fawer’s From the Bronx to the Bayou, and Vincent Bugliosi’s definitive tome, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

I also considered three of the most notable works in the pantheon of JFK and Mafia conspiracies: Mafia Kingfish by John Davis, which in 1989 presented itself as the first comprehensive biography of Marcello’s life, Stefano Vaccaro’s Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind the JFK Assassination, and Lamar Waldron’s book The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination. The latter two books were both published in 2013, when the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination spurred renewed interest.

In the first part of the trilogy, we focus on the early years of Carlos Marcello from his birth in 1910 to his incarceration in 1938 for trafficking marijuana, and we trace the beginning of organized crime in New Orleans, which is widely acknowledged as the home of the original Mafia in the New World, as well as the two seminal events that would indelibly alter the way Italian immigrants were perceived in the Crescent City: The assassination of David C. Hennessy in 1890 and the lynchings of 11 Italian-Americans in 1891.

Next, we consider Marcello’s political influence in Louisiana, his connections to notorious mafiosi figures like Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky, his protracted legal battle over his citizenship, and the wild story of his deportation to Guatemala.

Finally, in the last part of this series, we unpack the theories that place him at the center of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, his arrest in 1966 for assaulting an undercover FBI agent, his conviction in 1981 in the Brilab sting, and the final years before his death in 1993.

Prologue

“Let’s see what else I got,” Carlos Marcello told Loretta, his secretary at the Town and Country Motel, on the morning of July 18, 1979. She wasn’t surprised he had called into the motel’s five-room front office. He’d been more paranoid than usual lately and stopped talking about business inside of the office because, as he put it, “You never know.”

“You got the newspaper there?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got it.”

“Okay, cut that uhh…” he muttered.

Loretta tried to cut him off before he finished his sentence, hoping to spare her boss, the boss, the indignity of describing the story that had appeared on the front page of the Times-Picayune.

“Yeah, I know.” Of course she did. Almost everyone in the country would have been able to figure out which story Carlos Marcello wanted clipped out of the paper that day.

“That Kennedy thing,” he finally said. “Put it in the mail.”

He was approaching 70. His salt and pepper hair had brightened to white, but he was still shaped “like a bottle opener standing upright,” having gained back all of the weight he shed a decade before, during his five-month vacation in the federal penitentiary. His sartorial sensibilities hadn’t diminished either. And he still spoke in his own unique, nearly indecipherable, expletive-laden jive. But he was softer and more patient than he’d been back in his heyday, when U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee made him an instant celebrity by mistakenly labeling him “one of the principal criminals in the nation.”

It’s not entirely clear why he wanted the story in the Times-Pic mailed to him, but obviously, it wasn’t for sentimental reasons. There had been a little rain earlier in the day, so it’s possible the copy that was tossed at his doorstep had gotten ruined. But in all likelihood, he’d impulsively thrown it away and now realized it’d probably be a good idea to know what, exactly, was being said about him in his hometown newspaper.

The day before, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had finally released their report on the murders of civil rights icon Martin Luther King in Memphis and President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The committee had spent more than two years and nearly $6 million investigating claims that the assassinations, particularly Kennedy’s, were a part of some type of conspiracy, a belief that was held by a wide majority of Americans. Ultimately, though, the report was a confusing, rambling mess, resolving nothing.

James Earl Ray, the committee concluded, had acted alone when he fired a single shot in the direction of the second floor of the Lorraine Motel, killing Martin Luther King. Yet, confusingly, because Ray falsely believed he’d be rewarded and celebrated for his actions and because his two brothers had lied about their contact with him, the HSCA also found that King’s death could be considered part of a conspiracy, though not a very meaningful one.

With respect to the assassination of President Kennedy, however, the committee determined that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only gunman at Dealy Plaza that day in Dallas. Relying on an analysis of radio recordings from the Dallas Police Department, it concluded that a fourth shot had been fired by a second gunman in the “grassy knoll,” the sloping hill sandwiched in between the Texas School Book Depository Building and a triple underpass.

Who was this second gunman? The committee couldn’t say, though it did rule out the possibility of a plot by the U.S. government, the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro, or organizations opposed to Fidel Castro. That left only one likely candidate: the Mafia. And while the HSCA was willing to raise some questions about Florida mob boss Santo Trafficante, they honed in on the owner of the Town and Country Motel in Metairie, Louisiana: Carlos Marcello.

He was the only person specifically identified by the committee as having the “motive, means and opportunity to have President John F. Kennedy assassinated.” Of course, the committee also found there wasn’t any real evidence of his involvement, but that wasn’t the part of the report that interested the media.

So yes, when Carlos Marcello asked whether she had a copy of the morning paper, Loretta immediately knew why he was interested.

The Town and Country Motel on Airline Highway in Metairie was, for many years, Carlos Marcello’s primary headquarters.. In 1997, the motel was demolished, and today, the land on which it once stood is a part of a small gated neighborhood.

Twenty years after the House Select Committee on Assassinations published its report, a jury in Memphis would unanimously rule that James Earl Ray had not acted alone. In fact, he hadn’t even been the one who fired the fatal shot, confirming a theory that Martin Luther King’s children had eventually come to believe as well. And two years after the verdict in Memphis, Dr. Don Thomas, a scientist and JFK enthusiast in Weslaco, Texas, published a peer-reviewed article in Science & Justice that conclusively proved the audio analysis on which the HSCA had relied was bogus. There hadn’t been a second gunman, and there wasn’t a fourth shot, just a jammed transmitter in the midst of complete pandemonium and panic.

But the theory that Carlos Marcello had orchestrated the assassination was never dependent on the presence of a second gunman in the grassy knoll, and so, it endures.

****

Nearly three decades since his death in 1993 and 40 years after he was indicted in the Brilab sting, Carlos Marcello still beguiles us.

Was he nothing more than a petty drug dealer who leveraged his connections in the underworld to build a real estate empire? An uneducated dolt who accumulated power by terrorizing and murdering anyone who stood in his way or a criminal mastermind who operated the most successful subsidiary of the biggest business in the world? Or was he none of those things?

Is it really possible that he was responsible for ordering the assassination of a beloved President, or in a nation that needed a villain, was he just the most convenient person to blame? How much of the lore about him is real, and how much of it was just concocted by sanctimonious politicians on a phony moral crusade or by fraudsters and hacks hoping to make a quick buck?

Marcello is an especially challenging subject because of the attention he continues to receive from conspiracy theorists and fans of pulp fiction, Mafia melodramas, and movies about gangsters. A significant amount of the information about him online is either wholly inaccurate or riddled with incorrect details, tall tales, and baseless speculation. Nearly every biopic and TV news program about him suffers from an overdose of sensationalism.

To some in New Orleans, he was a benevolent and avuncular man, “The Big Daddy of the Big Easy,” “King Midas of Jefferson Parish.” To most of his contemporaries, though, both friend and foe, he was always “The Little Man” or “The Little Big Man,” a reference to his pint-sized stature. It’s a moniker that would seem like a pejorative unless you were familiar with the lexicon and the idiosyncrasies shared by those in the Family Business. The nickname didn’t bother him much. Self-effacing humor was a trick of the trade, a way of deflecting attention, and to be successful in organized crime, it was best not to throw too much attention to yourself.

To the best of my ability, I’ve tried to separate fact from fiction and to approach the subject dispassionately and without any preconceived opinions.

Ultimately, I discovered a man who wasn’t nearly as nefarious or as cunning as he is often portrayed to have been. This is not to suggest he was a good man, only that the legend of Carlos Marcello is largely an invention of the public’s imagination and his own thirst for wealth and notoriety, which shouldn’t be confused with a desire for fame and power.

Before we consider the reasons why he will forever be connected to the events of Nov. 22, 1963, we must better understand how a diminutive Sicilian immigrant from New Orleans became a villain and then a myth.

Next page: Little Palermo and the Sicilian Quarter.