Preparing For The Digital TV Transition

Chris Lawrence | Saturday, May 24, 2008

On February 17, 2009, most analog television broadcasting in the United States will cease, with the exception of some “low-power” television stations and stations physically located in Canada and Mexico that broadcast to U.S. audiences.

After that date, most televisions bought before 2005 will not be able to tune into most over-the-air TV channels without a digital converter box; the proceeds from the FCC auction of the TV frequencies to be vacated as part of the transition are being used, in part, to provide a coupon program for consumers to buy low-frills converter boxes for their old TVs. Of course, more advanced converters and devices with digital tuners are also available, with features such as high-definition output, video cassette/DVD recording, and digital video recording, but these are not eligible for the coupons; virtually all new televisions sold in the U.S. and Canada also include a digital tuner, but again are not eligible for the subsidy program.

Over at my other blog-home, I’ve been posting brief reviews of the coupon-eligible digital converter boxes I’ve tested personally so far; as the earliest-issued coupons are nearing their expiration dates, hopefully these reviews will be helpful to others. Other perspectives and further information on many models is available at the AV Science Forum’s CECB discussion board.

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Deep South Blues for the GOP

Chris Lawrence | Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Democrats have picked up their second Deep South congressional seat in as many weeks, with Travis Childers defeating Republican candidate Greg Davis by a substantial margin in the special election contest to replace Roger Wicker, now serving as the interim junior senator from Mississippi, in the House of Representatives:

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004. …

Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University, called a Democratic victory potentially “a huge upset, and an indication of a terrible year ahead for the Republicans.” He added, “In theory, this should be an easy win for them.”

Mimicking a strategy that proved successful in 2006, Democrats ran staunch conservatives in both this and the Louisiana race, forcing their Republican opponents to attack national party figures as surrogates.

While Childers’ victory is somewhat surprising, despite Mississippi’s reputation as a “deep red” state it has never returned a Republican majority to the House since Reconstruction–the closest the GOP has come to any form of dominance is parity from 2003 (after the 2000 census led to a court-ordered redistricting plan that left Democratic incumbent Ronnie Shows as the odd man out when the musical chairs stopped) through Wicker’s resignation in late 2007, holding two seats against the Democrats’ control of the majority-black 2nd District (currently held by Bennie Thompson) and the south Mississippi 4th District held by yellow dog Democrat Gene Taylor.

I remain skeptical that Childers will survive in the strongly Republican 1st District past November, when he will face reelection on a ballot headed by John McCain and longtime incumbent Wicker after serving six months in a Democrat-controlled House, but stranger things have happened. And, as Ole Miss professor Marvin King observes the GOP’s “go-to” strategy of associating Childers and similarly conservative Democratic candidates with the national party (in particular, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and speaker Nancy Pelosi) isn’t working, as NRCC chairman Tom Cole tacitly acknowledged Tuesday evening.

Tags | Chris Lawrence Southern Politics

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Barr: McCain Bane or Obama Obstacle?

Chris Lawrence | Monday, May 12, 2008

As Alex reports below, former Republican congressman Bob Barr has thrown his hat into the Libertarian Party nomination contest. Assuming Barr does secure the Libertarian nomination–a big assumption, given that the LP isn’t exactly known for picking the most electable presidential candidates–how much of an impact will Barr really have in November, and if so, on whom? Certainly the conventional wisdom is that LP candidates generally draw from Republicans more than Democrats, but would that hold in this election year?

One of Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder’s correspondents suggests that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama may face more of a challenge from Barr than John McCain will:

There is a line of thought to which i am tempted to subscribe at this early hour that Barr actually hurts Obama more than McCain. Most of the libertarian voters would probably be tempted to vote against McCain and the horrible Republican record on [the Iraq war and civil liberties] and if Obama was the only choice, Obama could get it (since he has actually pretty good on the narrow subject of civil liberties) which would be a way to secure those margins in the West to the Democratic party for quite a while.

It is difficult to know for sure where those voters would have gone but when a Republican constituency goes from swing voters with two choices to third-party leaners, it is a loss opportunity for Obama at the very least.

It seems more likely to me, however, that Barr’s appeal will largely be to social conservatives who remember his behavior in Congress more than his (partial) conversion to libertarian orthodoxy. That said, the continued acrimony in the Democratic primaries could drive at least some of the rump Clinton campaign’s supporters, who decades ago we might have called the “Reagan Democrats,” into Barr’s camp in November to Obama’s detriment, at least if the polls in states like West Virginia are to be believed.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Bob Barr, John McCain

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State Dept. Contractors Caught Snooping Obama Records

Chris Lawrence | Thursday, March 20, 2008

Via Marc Ambinder and reporter Bill Gertz of the Moonie Washington Times, three State Department contract employees were recently caught sneaking peeks at Barack Obama’s passport records. The relevant particulars from Gertz’s piece:

The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department’s consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama’s passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was notified of the security breach today, and responded by saying security measures used to monitor records of high-profile Americans worked properly in detecting the breaches.

Mr. McCormack said the officials did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.

“As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity,” Mr. McCormack told The Washington Times. …

One administration official said the FBI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into the officials involved in the unauthorized access incidents related to Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat. An FBI spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Government records of political candidates are tightly restricted because of concerns they could be used against candidates or the data could be altered as part of campaign dirty tricks. …

Each time an employee logs on to the passport-records network, they are informed that the records are protected by the Privacy Act and are “available only on a need-to-know basis,” he said. But no technical bar prevents a person, once he is in the system, from gaining access to Privacy Act-protected records to which he has no “need-to-know” rights.

But the network has an electronic monitoring system that is tripped when an employee accesses a record of a prominent person, like Mr. Obama. The alarm then triggers an inquiry into the incident, and “when the answer is not satisfactory, a supervisor is notified.”

More paranoic quarters of the blogosphere have leapt to the conclusion that the lookups represent Republican dirty tricks.

However, given both that the GOP presumably has people in the bureaucracy with access to the records who aren’t low-level contractors doing data-entry work, the timing of the incidents following news events (rather than months or years ago, when any opposition researcher worth his or her salt would be scouting potential targets like Obama), and the fact that any professional dirt-digger would know that searches like these in government databases raise red flags automatically, I strongly suspect that Sean McCormack is right to attribute these actions to “imprudent curiosity” or, as Mark Kleiman suggests, lame independent efforts to find some dirty laundry that could be shopped to opposition candidates or the media. Since the records in the application system appear to be very limited (basically, just what the was on the application form submitted to the State Department, with the only travel records being the optional “plans” disclosed thereon) I doubt you’d find much dirty laundry there even if you tried.

All that said, the FBI should continue its investigation to ensure that these were simply incidences of bad judgment by the contract workers. Presumably the fired employees are subject to criminal prosecution for violating the Privacy Act, subject to prosecutorial discretion; given the negative publicity the case has drawn, I’d imagine the chances of the employees being brought up on charges are quite high, even if they were just being willfully stupid.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama

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Obama, McCain Prevail in Mississippi

Chris Lawrence | Tuesday, March 11, 2008

To the surprise of virtually no one, Barack Obama has won the Mississippi Democratic primary, the last contest before Pennsylvania’s primaries in late April. To even less surprise, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain also prevailed in his party’s contest.

Perhaps more interesting than the primary victory are the exit poll numbers, which may suggest some serious problems for the Democrats if Clinton does emerge to be the eventual nominee. For starters, only 51% of Democratic primary voters said that Clinton was “honest and trustworthy” — and, even among that group, Clinton only prevailed 55-44%:

As in Texas, Clinton may also have benefitted from the “Limbaugh effect”: her support in the primary clearly came from conservatives in the Magnolia State, who are unlikely to vote for any Democratic nominee when November rolls around:

These exit poll fundamentals put aside the numbers that have attracted the most attention among the commentariat:

The rift in the party widens: Obama voters by and large would NOT be satisfied (55%) with Clinton as their nominee, while 7 and ten Clinton voters would NOT be satisfied (72%) with Obama as theirs.

It’s going to be a long six weeks for the Democrats in Pennsylvania…

UPDATE (James Joyner): It’s a little early in the morning for math but I’m at a loss as to how Clinton won did as well as she did. Her margins with conservatives of 14 and 10 percent are smaller than Obama’s with liberals of 44 and 28 and even his 19 percent among moderates. Either the exit polls are not reflective of the actual vote or conservatives absolutely dominated the turnout.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Southern Politics

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Flat Tax? No, Fat Ban

Chris Lawrence | Friday, February 1, 2008

Radley Balko finds lard of a different nature than pork spending on the menu of the Mississippi legislature: a state legislative bill sponsored by two Republicans and one Democrat that would effectively ban all restaurants in the state from serving the “obese.” Lest you think the sponsors are kidding, blogger Sandy Szwarc contacted the main sponsor of the bill (a Republican from the Memphis suburbs) and he’s quite serious:

He kindly took a moment to answer my question while the legislature was in session. He said that while, regrettably, he doesn’t believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the “urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action.” He hopes it will “call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system.”

I am literally at a loss for words.

Tags | Chris Lawrence, Health, US Politics Southern Politics

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Political Scientists Say Obama Might Be More Liberal Than Hillary

Chris Lawrence | Friday, February 1, 2008

As James and Alex discuss below, the National Journal just released its 2007 rankings of Senators and found that Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record based on 107 “key votes” in the Senate in 2007. As legislative politics scholar Sarah Binder notes, this does not comport with Poole and Rosenthal’s NOMINATE scores, nor does it correspond with Lewis and Poole’s more recent Optimal Classification technique (via Kieran Healy), both of which show Obama to be much closer to the median Democrat.

Just to throw more fuel on the fire, I ran Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers’ item-response-theory-based ideal point estimator (sorry, it doesn’t have a fancier name–we in the biz just call it “CJR”) on all 433 non-unanimous rollcalls for the 110th Congress. The results suggest that Obama has the 9th most liberal voting record in the Senate, with rival Hillary Clinton in 11th place and very little daylight between them. Statistically, we can say that there is a (very slim) chance that either Obama or Clinton is the most liberal senator, as the 95% credible boundaries for both senators’ voting records overlap those of New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, who is nominally the “most liberal” according to the means. Both, incidentally, are slightly more liberal than John Kerry according to the procedure.

The most liberal senators (click for the full 110th Senate).

On the Republican side, John McCain appears in the middle of the GOP pack, as the 20th most-conservative senator, with no credible chance of being the “most conservative” (a rating that South Carolina’s Jim DeMint runs away with). McCain is, however, more conservative than GOP stalwarts like Orrin Hatch, Thad Cochran, Sam Brownback, and Lamar Alexander.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain

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Obama Thumps Clinton in S.C.; Edwards Takes 3rd

Chris Lawrence | Saturday, January 26, 2008

Barack Obama has bracketed his Iowa win in one of the whitest states of the Union with a victory in South Carolina, one of the nation’s blackest, in what appears to be a 2-to-1 rout over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Despite an apparent late surge by John Edwards in polls in the his home turf, it appears that he trails behind Clinton to take third place.

As Steven Taylor indicates, the exit polls being reported by CNN and MSNBC indicate that Obama received over 80% of the black vote but only 25% of the white vote in the state (with Edwards and Clinton getting roughly 37% each). One question going forward is whether the racial breakdown in South Carolina carries forward to subsequent primaries; if so, we would expect Obama to win primaries with Democratic electorates that are least 20% black, and be competitive in states that are more than 10% black. The other question is whether the Edwards vote, which is likely to be on the wane, is a vote for substantive change–essentially an “anti-Clinton” vote–or reflects voter skepticism towards black candidates, the apparent “Obama ceiling” noted by my fellow political scientist Philip Klinkner; so far, neither Obama nor Clinton seem particularly interested in cutting a deal to get Edwards out of the contest, suggesting that even the campaigns aren’t sure what the effects of Edwards’ departure from the competitive tier of candidates will be.

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Paul Beats Romney in Louisiana, Trails Dropout Thompson

Chris Lawrence | Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The first part of the headline is what the Ronulans want you to take away from the results of last night’s Louisiana Republican Caucuses, where in actuality the rump of Fred Thompson’s state organization was able to secure backing for a “pro-life uncommitted” slate of delegates; delegates pledged to John McCain (who had no active precinct organization) did the best among committed delegates to the state convention, followed by the Ronulans and the Romneyites, once again demonstrating the Paul campaign’s singular ability to motivate devoted core supporters but precious few others. Interestingly enough, the candidate who one would expect to most appeal to Louisiana’s socially conservative and fiscally populist GOP base, Mike Huckabee, apparently made no showing at the caucuses, although he is on the upcoming primary ballot and might get some “pro-life uncommitted” votes nonetheless; meanwhile, Giuliani continued his streak of being a non-factor in the results.

Under Louisiana’s positively byzantine caucus rules, these delegates will go to the state convention where they will choose some, but possibly not all, of the delegates to the national convention (who are nominally uncommitted), depending on whether or not a single candidate receives an absolute majority of the vote in the presidential preference primary on Saturday, February 9th, by which time hopefully the denizens of the state will have sufficiently recovered from Mardi Gras (or “Super Duper Tuesday” as its known to political junkies) to cast ballots; should some candidate receive a majority, 20 of the state’s 47 national convention delegates will be pledged to that winner.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani

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Giuliani in Florida Freefall

Chris Lawrence | Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Rudy Giuliani, despite putting all his eggs in his Florida basket, has dropped to third place in two recent polls (one conducted before Fred Thompson’s withdrawal, one after) even after considering the former poll’s whopping 5.1-point 95% confidence margin, suggesting that Rudy’s strategy of saturating the state with ads before any elections elsewhere had taken place has seriously backfired as events on the ground have rapidly reframed the race as a Romney-McCain contest.

Further complicating things for Giuliani is that the January 29th ballot will also include Amendment 1, a state constitutional amendment that would increase the property tax homestead exemption for most Floridians, which is likely to help drive up turnout in the primary among Florida anti-tax voters who are likely to be social conservatives as well. All-in-all, it looks very likely that Rudy will be joining Duncan, Tom, and Fred in the loser’s lounge before the month is out.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Here are the five most recent polls via RealClearPolitics:

Giuliani’s in the mix, certainly, but it’s noteworthy that he’s no better than 2nd in any of them. More telling, the trend lines aren’t exactly going his way:

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Rudy Giuliani

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The Good People, Then and Now

Chris Lawrence | Monday, January 21, 2008

As we commemorate Martin Luther King’s life today, here is what I think may be the most important passage from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, written to the clergy of Birmingham who counseled against the SCLC’s protests in that city in 1963:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. [emphasis mine]

It seems oddly appropriate that this letter to clergymen speaks so directly to the actions of an ordained minister in the past week. Mike Huckabee had a chance to do the right thing in a circumstance where it almost certainly wouldn’t have cost him any votes, like two of his fellow Republican presidential candidates did. Instead, he did the cowardly thing and, echoing the “outside agitators” rhetoric of the opponents of civil rights, said the following:

South Carolina people know true conservatism when they see it. You don’t like people outside the state telling you how you ought to raise your kids, you don’t like people from outside the state telling you what to do with the flag. In fact, if somebody came down to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ’em where to put the pole.

I think at least in this case Dr. King would have found silence less appalling. The good people of South Carolina, however, spoke with their votes on Saturday and have effectively eliminated Huckabee as a viable contender for the presidency. Perhaps the good people of that state will this Saturday speak again in opposition to the charlatan spouse of “America’s first black president,” a man whose tenure in the Oval Office was long on lip service to the black community but short on deeds, and in support of the candidacy of the man who is Dr. King’s dream made manifest, Barack Obama.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, Race and Politics Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John McCain

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Unelectable “Electable” 2004 Candidate to Endorse “Unelectable” 2008 Candidate

Chris Lawrence | Thursday, January 10, 2008

That would seem to be the gist of the news that John Kerry, whose sole apparent qualification for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination was his “electability,” will endorse Barack Obama today, the latter of whom currently faces the “electable” Hillary Clinton as his major opponent. Presumably the Kerry message is that Obama is the more electable candidate, because Kerry was the most electable candidate in 2004, even though he lost by a wider margin than Al Gore did in 2000. The endorsement is expected to come in Charleston, South Carolina, begging the question of who exactly is likely to be swayed by the endorsement in a state John Edwards won handily in 2004, which repudiated the Kerry-Edwards ticket 58-40 in the general election, and which has a Democratic primary electorate that one would think has nothing in common with the patrician New England constituency Kerry represents.

Don’t think about this one too hard, or your head will pop right off your shoulders.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards

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Ron Paul: Harbinger or Next Year’s Has-Been?

Chris Lawrence | Wednesday, December 26, 2007

GWU political scientist John Sides is the latest individual to dispute the thesis that Ron Paul is a revolutionary figure in American politics. My working guess (given the givens about social scientists generally, but not knowing him personally) is that Sides is less sympathetic to Paul’s agenda than a libertarian (on the big L/little l boundary) like me, but all of his points about Paul’s prospects are in line with my thoughts; in brief:

1) He is introducing few new ideas that are gaining any traction, which I will define as “earning the support of a substantial fraction of the American public.” His opposition to the Iraq War and immigration already tap into healthy veins of American public opinion and indeed the views of many Democrats (re: Iraq) and Republicans (re: immigration). So it is unclear that he is having any independent impact. His opposition to federal government programs is in line with Americans’ skepticism of government, but this general skepticism tends to give way to broad support for many specific programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and most forms of gun control. The American public is not consistently libertarian and Ron Paul’s doctrinaire species of libertarianism is unlikely to win favor. …

2) His ideas and electoral support are not causing the other Republican candidates to change their strategy. Independent candidates and third parties can sometimes force the two major parties to tack in their ideological direction. If so, even if they lose, as they almost always do in American politics, they can still have an effect. Paul is if anything, having the opposite effect. His opposition to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act only encourages his fellow Republican candidates to defend Iraq and the War on Terrorism by beating up on Paul. If Paul runs as an independent, this could change, but I suspect that either party’s nominee can respond effectively with cheap talk — i.e., they will minimize defections to Paul with rhetoric rather than with any substantive shift in their goals or issue positions.

3) Most importantly, he is not building any infrastructure that would ensure his impact can survive the 2008 campaign. By infrastructure, I mean a formal organization, and one that is committed to something other than Paul himself. Indeed, he is doing the opposite. His campaign is driven by grassroots supporters, who, taking advantage of the Internet’s ability to lower transaction costs, raise money and organize events. Such a “bottom-up” campaign is a noteworthy departure from traditional campaigns, but different does not mean better in this case. What will remain when his campaign folds? Little, it would appear, unless he is planning a new political organization or party. Will his supporters constitute a political force? If he is not going to lead an organization of some kind, then likely they will not, especially those of his supporters who are otherwise politically alienated or inactive.

I think the third point in opposition to Paul is the most salient to many libertarian-leaning voters. We’ve consistently seen libertarian presidential candidates run for office without leaving behind any infrastructure for the future success of the movement; arguably the only libertarian figure of any stripe to have a meaningful impact on national politics in modern history is Barry Goldwater, and the support infrastructure he and his supporters built was hijacked by the statist-conservative Richard Nixon in the late 60s and the Christian Right in the 70s after Nixon’s fall from grace. Paul has shown none of the wherewithal in his past Libertarian Party presidential run or during his two decades of congressional service, other than building a reputation as “Dr. No” and having his snout at the trough for his district like all 534 of his other colleagues.

On another (related) Ron Paul note, I think those conservatives who took Paul’s comments on Meet the Press about the possibility of Iran invading Israel as coming from ignorance about Iranian military capabilities miss the point; it’s not that Paul doesn’t think Iran is a threat to Israel, it’s that Paul doesn’t care whether or not Iran is a threat to Israel. If nothing else, his isolationism is consistent. Oh, and he’s at best a neoconfederate sympathizer too. What’s not to love?

Tags | Asia, Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, Middle East, US Politics Ron Paul

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New Orleans to Demolish 1940s-Era Projects

Chris Lawrence | Thursday, December 20, 2007

The New Orleans city council today defied protestors and voted unanimously to tear down the first of four remaining major housing projects in the city to make way for mixed-income housing that will accommodate some, but not all, of the pre-Katrina public housing population. Needless to say, the self-appointed community activists were displeased:

The scene outside New Orleans’ City Hall boiled on the brink of a riot Thursday as protesters stormed the gate and were met with police spraying mace and firing Tasers. Protesters broke through the gates outside City Hall shortly after 11 a.m.

A woman identified by bystanders as Jamie Bork Laughner, was sprayed and dragged away from the gates.

She was taken away on a stretcher by emergency officials on the scene. Before that, she was seen pouring water from a bottle into her eyes and weeping.

Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

“I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting,” said the woman, Kim Ellis.

Arrests were made as officers tried to establish order.

The first brawl of the day broke out in the New Orleans City Council chamber shortly after the council convened to take a vote on demolishing a group of local housing projects Thursday.

After a few minutes of chanting and clapping by the audience, a melee ensued and police waded into the fray. Shortly after the scene calmed down, the city cut a televised feed from inside the chamber.

It’s a rare day when I’m in agreement with the editorial pages of both the Times-Picayune and Washington Post, but the latter correctly recognizes the disconnect between the rhetoric of public housing advocates and their supporters like lightweight Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Democratic leadership in Congress, and presidential candidate John Edwards and the reality of the city’s projects, even pre-Katrina:

Corruption and mismanagement led to a federal takeover of the city’s housing authority in 2002. The Department of Housing and Urban Development moved quickly to break up these concentrations of poverty and dysfunction. Redevelopment of five of nine complexes into mixed-income communities is well underway. The remaining four complexes — B.W. Cooper, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete and Lafitte — hang in the balance. The City Council must vote for demolition.

Preservationists and advocates wax poetic about the historical and architectural significance of the barracks-style structures, which were built in the 1940s. Yet their romantic vision doesn’t jibe with the gritty reality faced by the people who lived in them. These residents survived in cramped quarters in apartment buildings that were cut off from the flow of life in the city and were incubators of crime. They didn’t have showers. They had to choose between running the water in the bathroom sink or the tub. They didn’t have central heating in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. Returning residents deserve better. …

What makes no sense is perpetuating a housing policy that trapped people in poverty. As the saying goes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Maintaining New Orleans’s failed public housing would be a prime example of that.

Of course, demolishing one empty housing project is relatively easy; the real question is whether the council will maintain its resolve when it comes to tearing down the still-occupied projects elsewhere in the city that must also go to make the firm break with the decades of failed federal and local urban policy that public housing residents–and, more generally, the people of New Orleans–can finally have as one of the few positive legacies of Hurricane Katrina in the city.

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