Acid Tongue
Lizz Gardner from Alexandria, Louisiana:
Archive for January, 2010
Jan 31
Fuzzy Math
Update: As someone who helped to build the entire process behind this initiative and who has worked, on a daily basis, with all of the principal players involved, I can state definitively that the numbers presented by Mr. Aymond aren’t just heavily inflated; they’re egregiously inflated. Period. He can say whatever he pleases about me as a person. He is perfectly entitled to his opinion. (And I can take it. I know I’ve been critical of him too).
But the facts are the facts. And the fact is: He’s wrong, and he is misleading his readership.
Re: The Downtown Hotels Initiative in Alexandria.
Considering this was picked up by a local talk radio station and has been covered by another local blogger, I think some clarification is in order. A handful of people have asked me why I even pay attention to this; it’s simple: Apparently, a few folks in our local mainstream media actually believe this.
From Greg Aymond:
What the Town Talk actually wrote was that “The initial phase, Roy said, will be a project in the range of $50 million to $60 million, with more than 80 percent of that funding coming from the private sector”. (See: “$50 million-plus downtown plan will cost Alexandria at least $9.5 million“). The opposite of “private” is “public”, which I thought that the “public” meant us. If my math isn’t wrong, that comes to up to $12 million in “public” funds.In addition to what Hospitality Initiatives Partnership (H.I.P.) has to put up, or not, (the $12 million in “public funds”), we taxpayers of Alexandria will also be out of an additional $10 million in infrastructure improvements plus an additional $2 million — and use that as “gap financing” for the project through a long-term lease or sale at a reduced cost. id. That is, also if my math serves me correctly, is $12 million from us citizens of Alexandria.So the total costs to us taxpayers is a total of $24 million. I apologize for stating that it was $15 million.
You see what he did there?
He extrapolated numbers based exclusively on a single media report. The Town Talk reported the project could represent between a $50M – $60M investment in Alexandria, which is absolutely true, and the Mayor said the public component would represent less than 20% of that investment. Remember: The public already owns and/or operates two of the three pieces of the project, both the Fulton Hotel and the Riverfront Center, and the public investment would be, almost exclusively, in public infrastructure. (By the way, last I checked: Public dollars were also used to pave the roads and build the infrastructure in and around Mr. Aymond’s law office, but I guess that is beside the point).
Anyway, Mr. Aymond used the high end ($60M), determined that 20% of $60M would be $12M, and proclaimed that we’d be spending $12M on the deal. I know for a fact: He has NEVER spoken with any of the principals on this deal; he’s never seen any numbers; he is basing his assumptions, exclusively, on ONE story in the newspaper.
(I know: He’s a lawyer; therefore, he’s an expert, at least in the mind of at least one, very local talk radio personality).
Then, Mr. Aymond doubled that number. I’m not sure why he doubled that number, but make no mistake about it: He is using the same exact, inflated numbers TWICE, numbers he extrapolated from a single quote from a single article in the newspaper.
The best thing about this: He is now polling readers on whether or not taxpayers should be on the hook for his invented number.
So:
Jan 29
Can you recognize everything?
There was a comment posted a while back saying that Alexandria could never be used as a filming location for anything but scenes needing small southern town Americana sort of stuff.
Alexandria Film Maker Marshall Woodworth has this video:
Camera angles and lighting obviously do a lot, but it doesn’t look terribly small town’ish to me.
Jan 28
Seriously?
Once again, I know I’m going to get lambasted; I know I’m going to be called, yet again, some variation of a “rich, liberal, petty, spoiled, little brat” by Mr. Greg Aymond, who will, more than likely, put my name in bold capital letters in his headline and may also choose to litter his response with profanity, because that really drives home the point.
I’ve been reading Mr. Aymond’s insights on government and politics for nearly four years now. Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting to such, but unlike New Orleans, which has a vibrant and diverse blogosphere, Alexandria only has a handful of bloggers, of which Mr. Aymond is easily the most prolific.
Anyway, after four years of reading his blog posts- some with which I agree and many with which I disagree, I have arrived at a few conclusions. My personal opinions:
1) He is a bully:
Setting aside his crusade against Rich Dupree and the entire e-mailgate controversy, which, thus far, has resulted in the expenditure of thousands of taxpayer dollars and nothing definitively damning or felonious, Mr. Aymond has also publicly crusaded against Ed Hooper, the blogger behind WeSawThat, and has disclosed that he is now suing Mr. Hooper for defamation because of a series of posts in which Mr. Hooper labels Mr. Aymond as “unethical.” For the record, I don’t believe Mr. Aymond is unethical. I think he is a bully, and being a bully is not necessarily against the law. I enjoy a good argument and an informed debate. But after suing Mr. Hooper, Mr. Aymond then proceeded to publish a series of posts that, I believe, were intended to personally and publicly insult Mr. Hooper’s intelligence. To me, there seems to be some cognitive dissonance here. Personally, I think Mr. Hooper is a little reckless (and his whole Zionist conspiracy stuff is really off-putting), but Mr. Aymond undercuts his “I’ve been defamed” argument every single time he publishes rants against the very person he claims defamed him. I have noticed that since Mr. Aymond announced his decision to sue Mr. Hooper, Mr. Hooper has stayed away, while Mr. Aymond continues to bully. I’m not attempting to stick up for Mr. Hooper; I’m just calling it as I see it.
He has publicly insulted me, repeatedly, and most of the time, frankly, I don’t care. I don’t know Greg Aymond. I’ve never met him. A year or two ago, I spoke with him on the telephone on a few occasions, and he was always courteous. I don’t consider him to be a journalist, no more than I consider myself to be one. He writes a blog about his personal opinions, and he is absolutely entitled to that right, as am I.
When I express my opinions, contrary to what he may say, I am not carrying water for anyone. I am an unclassified employee of the Mayor. I predict that, after this post, Mr. Aymond will imply, as he has in the past, that because I derive a portion of my income from taxpayer dollars, I should be ashamed for expressing my own opinions. To him, I would ask this: As a disabled American, I have to wonder: When you say that you draw a disability check, who, exactly, pays for that check? Is your disability check funded entirely by private-sector dollars? What about your health care?
2) We give him far too much attention:
He is prolific, and I take the blame for drawing even more attention to him. But I think there is a good reason the Mayor didn’t want to interview with him on his blog. He employs racial epithets and then claims he is simply championing free speech or channeling rap music. Most intelligent folks simply don’t buy that, particularly when it’s delivered from a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Sorry.
3) Most importantly, he doesn’t seem to understand the role and function of government:
Mr. Aymond, you imply that you somehow understand the details of the Downtown Hotels Initiative more than anyone involved. Yet you have never met or even spoken with any of the principal deal-makers. You don’t know their numbers. You don’t seem to understand that people have to purchase tax credits, and you don’t seem to understand how the whole project works.
You’re ignorant about this project, and your ignorance begets ignorance.
One day, maybe you’ll be interested in the truth, but until then, people should understand that you don’t actually know what you’re writing about.
So sue me, because, to me, that is all you seem to know how to do whenever anyone confronts you, and frankly, you’ve set yourself up for a slam-dunk counter-suit.
Jan 27
Pelican Institute: Not in Good Standing with LA Secretary of State
Link (Search for Pelican Institute)
| Name | Type | City | Status |
| PELICAN INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY | Non-Profit Corporation | NEW ORLEANS | Active |
| Business: | PELICAN INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY |
| Charter Number: | 36615065 N |
| Registration Date: | 12/17/2007 |
| Domicile Address | |
| 400 POYDRAS STREET, 30TH FLOOR | |
| NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130 | |
| Mailing Address | |
| 400 POYDRAS STREET, 30TH FLOOR | |
| NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130 | |
| Status | |
| Status: | Active |
| Annual Report Status: | Not In Good Standing for failure to file Annual Report |
| File Date: | 12/17/2007 |
| Last Report Filed: | 9/10/2009 |
| Type: | Non-Profit Corporation |
| Registered Agent(s) |
|
| Officer(s) | Additional Officers: No |
|
| Amendments on File (1) |
| Description | Date |
| Domicile, Agent Change or Resign of Agent | 6/18/2008 |
Jan 27
Yet Another Gannett FAIL
Here is The Town Talk‘s complete coverage of a story that has led much of the national news today:
Imagine if the story were, instead: ACORN Employee and Son of Assistant (Democratic) US Attorney Arrested for Attempting to Wiretap Senator Vitter’s New Orleans Office.
Now, that’s a story!
To be fair, I’m sure their story tomorrow will be much more detailed.
Jan 26
REPOST: The Pelican Institute: Louisiana’s First AstroTurf Think Tank
This is what a real grassroots institute looks like:
The Pelican Institute, a far-right Louisiana quasi-think tank, brought O’Keefe to town last Thursday to speak about investigative journalism at a luncheon in his honor. They spoke very highly of him:
“James has been a pioneer in the use of new media to drive these kinds of important stories. He will discuss the role of new media and show examples of effective investigative reporting.
The Pelican Institute claims to be focused on Louisiana public policy, but regularly brings in activists and scholars from outside the state. Almost all of their Louisiana policy work is conducted by conservative writers on the east coast.
By contrast, we at Louisiana Progress believe that the best pragmatic solutions to Louisiana’s challenges come from Louisiana people. So, you’ll notice that the progressive policy work conducted by Louisiana Progress comes only from Louisiana scholars, practicioners, and policymakers. We wouldn’t have it any other way. And, just so you know, we’re going to focus on finding real solutions that help Louisiana – we’ll leave the crime drama and cloak-and-dagger escapades to the guys at the Pelican Institute.
And here’s what a fake one looks like, one that, we know now, employed a young man- Robert Flanagan- who thought it would be a good idea to attempt to bug the telephone lines of Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office.
From August 1, 2009:
A few days ago, The Pelican Institute for Public Policy published a report titled Why Louisiana Should Not Build High-Speed Rail by Randal O’Toole of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. (Apparently, the days of high speed rail have already come and gone, even though we have never had a national high-speed commuter rail network, and besides, no one is going to want to ride a train, even though most of us have never had the option. Oddly enough, Mr. O’Toole’s report does not include the words “hurricane,” “evacuation,” “New Orleans,” or “Baton Rouge;” it’s almost as if this is a boilerplate, fill-in-the-blanks diatribe against rail in general).
The Pelican Institute is a Louisiana-based think tank founded last year by native New Yorker and Tulane grad Kevin Kane. Jeb Bruneau, son of former State Representative Peppi Bruneau, is its Vice President. (Peppi, as some may recall, was accused of timing his retirement announcement to maximally benefit Jeb’s campaign for the seat. Jeb lost anyway). Though it labels itself as “non-partisan,” the Pelican Institute is undeniably bent toward conservative and libertarian political philosophies, with a concentration on limiting government. Last year, in an article in The Wall Street Journal, the Pelican Institute was described as a group of up-and-comers confronting the entrenched corruption of Louisiana through serious policy research. Quoting:
“Having a think tank under Edwin Edwards would have been meaningless,” says Stephen Gele, a member of the Pelican Institute’s Board of Directors. “You could have done a 50-page paper, but who would have read it? Edwards would have made up his mind over a game of Bourré” — a Cajun gamblers’ pastime, similar to Spades — “and that would have been the end of it.”
Fighting words, to be sure.
Earlier this year, the Pelican Institute, along with Citizens Against Waste in Government, published the 2009 Louisiana Pork Report, a 36-page report that reads more like snarky opposition to government than serious policy analysis.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for calling out wasteful government spending, but there are numerous problems with the Pork Report.
It’s not even worth the time or energy nitpicking through everything in this ridiculous report. To me, its credibility is immediately undermined by its criticism of the Alexandria Zoo:
The Alexandria Zoological Park was built in 1926, near its present location. It started with discarded pets such as rabbits, goats, and deer. In the late 1960s, the US Department of Agriculture threatened to close it down. A full-time zookeeper was hired and the city started making some improvements.
Today, the zoo has a larger variety of animals than when it first started, and it is a major tourist attraction. But the question is whether taxpayers or visitors have to support it. People pay for entertainment all the time such as movies and eating out, and those activities are supported by the money they spend. That’s how businesses stay alive. The zoo should not be any different. Yet lawmakers approved $175,000 for the zoo in 2008.
News flash to the New Yorker and the DC-based CAWG: The zoo is not and has never been a private business, and it’s not simply an “entertainment” option. It’s a habitat for over 600 animals, including nearly 30 endangered species, and it’s one of only three accredited zoos in the State. It’s a major quality of life destination in Central Louisiana, and there is absolutely no doubt that our zoo adds value to the entire region.
Regarding that $175,000: I’m sure that the good men and women of the Zoo and the non-profit Friends of the Alexandria Zoo will be thrilled to have the support of the State.
Unfortunately, the check must still be in the mail.
The report lambastes Mayor Cedric Glover for spending $4,475 to attend the United States Conference of Mayors and the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C., yet it says absolutely nothing about the tens of thousands of dollars taxpayers have spent to send Governor Bobby Jindal across the country for campaign fundraisers. It criticizes Shaw Group for utilizing $210 million in state incentives, but instead of telling us what, exactly, those incentives were for, it focuses on Shaw CEO Jim Bernhard’s political affiliation. Even though Jindal approved those incentives, the spending is labeled “wasteful” because Bernhard donated to Kathleen Blanco’s gubernatorial campaign.
That’s what The Pelican Institute is: A group of partisan ideologues masquerading as an objective, intellectual “think tank,” outsourcing their “analysis” to established conservative think tanks like Citizens Against Government Waste, the Reason Foundation, and the Cato Institute because they don’t actually employ any real scholars themselves.
The Pelican Institute. Neither pelicans nor an institute. Discuss.
According to the Ying Yang Twins, “Crunk” is a Synonym for “Hyper”
This is ridiculous.
Either way, I hope we hear this song frequently today, particularly after 5:40PM.
Jan 21
Rocket Man
One of my favorite covers of all-time:
Jan 21
While I’m At It
Maybe I’m being mean, but…
I have to admit to Mr. Greg Aymond of the website CentralLaPolitics that, even though I removed his website from my blogroll because of his penchant for (what I consider to be) incendiary, divisive posts about African-Americans, I’ve still been following his blog.
Forgive the inside baseball jargon here, but for those engaged Alexandrians paying attention, I think some clarification is in order:
Mayor Roy ran on a platform of increasing government transparency and pledged to increase access to the Mayor’s Office. He has definitely lived up to that promise. He constantly corresponds with the media. He gives a media briefing every week, never pre-scripted or screened (and contrary to what Mr. Aymond implies, the Mayor isn’t hosting a regularly-scheduled TV show; it is simply a media briefing, something Mr. Aymond’s never attended).
The Mayor didn’t pledge to give interviews to bloggers like Mr. Aymond, who, in the past, has compared the graduating class of the majority African-American Peabody High School to the KKK and who has labeled a handful of African-American elected officials as “n**** street thugs,” while suggesting that because he misspelled the n-word, he somehow was not being racist. Whenever he makes these remarks, it’s difficult for his readers to forget that he was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and that he has admitted to being attracted to the organization by none other than David Duke.
The truth is, of course, that all of questions Mr. Aymond submitted to the Mayor have been answered, publicly and often on television. He continues to pretend as if his questions haven’t been answered, but they have. His problem, I believe, is that the answers weren’t specifically directed to or intended for his blog.
Sorry about that. I’ll take the blame, Greg. Chalk it up to my competitiveness as a blogger. Call me a jerk and impugn my character, if it helps.
Paul Carty of The Town Talk may champion the guy as a Freedom of Information Act specialist, even though Aymond himself admits that such a description is inaccurate. There’s a difference between FOIA and State Public Records laws, and I guess one would presume that the editor of a major statewide newspaper should know that.
Maybe he does.
But what gets me is this: Mr. Aymond has never fully revealed that he’s an attorney for a man currently being sued by the City (for… umm… ask Mr. Aymond…) and that at least one of the records requests about which he has written was actually filed by this very client.
Mr. Aymond also seems to neglect the fact that the Mayor invited all interested and credentialed media to review and analyze the Cleco case. The ironic thing is that Mr. Aymond actually posted the radio interview in which the Mayor first made the offer, yet neither Mr. Aymond nor anyone else, in the media or otherwise, requested the access.
Yet somehow, Mr. Aymond suggests “deception.”
I think it is a conspiracy of complacency.
Remember this, fellow Alexandrians: For better or worse, the City didn’t hire a local blogger to represent them in the Cleco case. The City, instead, put together a team of legal experts.
Again, sorry Greg, and I am particularly sorry to your de-facto expert, distant cousin, and dude-seeking-a contract-for-professional-services-from-the City, Mr. Patrick Lacour, who just so happens to be a former employee of Cleco.
I can’t blame you, though, Greg, for indulging. I remember when Mr. Lacour’s “family” e-mailed me to argue that I should write about group homes for the disabled. I think they wanted me to write about how terrible it would be if yet another home full of disabled people lived near them. Even though I live one block away, I was supposed to be convinced this would pose major problems for the entire neighborhood.
This is the very first correspondence I have ever received from Mr. Lacour. It’s from October of 2006, months before the Mayor was sworn in:
Jan 20
Shedding Some Light
From Sherri Jackson of The Cenla Light, we learn:
Mayor Jacques Roy participated in the (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) parade but didn’t attend the program. Sykes said an apparent mix-up resulted in Roy’s name not being on the program. Several people, including the Rev. Joe S. Green, tried to get Roy to come in to the program, but he didn’t come.
I didn’t attend the parade or the prayer breakfast, but my sources say that Ms. Jackson’s reporting is, well, a little light, if you will. The Mayor didn’t attend the program, because he wasn’t on the program. Simple as that. It would have been inappropriate to wedge himself into a program, and even though many people were offended by the exclusion, including at least one person on the program who threatened to leave, the event was about honoring the life’s work of Martin Luther King, Jr., not about politics.
At least it should have been.
