Environment
How a Gulf Settlement That BP Once Hailed Became Its Target | The New York Times – A 2012 settlement on economic damages related to the oil spill didn’t work out as BP intended, so they have gone on the offensive: “In full-page newspaper ads, interviews and a gusher of court filings, BP officials have insisted that their good intentions are being hijacked by greedy lawyers and underhanded claimants.”
BP refuses to pay for more research on Deepwater Horizon oil spill effects on dolphins, turtles, oysters | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – BP says marine life may have died due to natural causes, and oyster beds perished because the state diverted river water into Barataria Bay.
Will Climate Change Wash Away One of Louisiana’s Last Remaining Indigenous Tribes? | Truthout – The Biloxi-Chitimacha tribe has inhabited the Isle de Jean Charles for 170 years, but now only two dozen families remain.
Opposition growing to proposed fracking well in St. Tammany | The New Orleans Advocate – Drilling is planned on a tract near Lakeshore High School. Residents are worried about groundwater contamination.
Our Views: Turning back levee reforms | The New Orleans Advocate – Amendments to a bill that would give the governor more power over local levee boards may signal a loss of momentum for energy interests.
Government & Politics
Mayor Landrieu credit card spending a fraction of ex-mayor Nagin’s | WWL-TV – Credit card spending is down sharply since the Nagin administration. Mayor Mitch Landrieu declines a daily per diem while traveling and pays for breakfasts out of his own pocket.
Most Income Inequality: U.S. Cities | Bloomberg – According to the “Gini coefficient,” New Orleans is second highest in income inequality.
Program that provides health care to thousands in N.O. on verge of going broke | The New Orleans Advocate – According to the article “officials say there’s no clear plan” to find $9 million in funding to maintain a local health clinic network that serves tens of thousands of uninsured residents in the metropolitan area. Today’s newsletter from the Louisiana Budget Project suggests a way out of the mess:
There is, of course, an obvious solution to this problem: Accepting the billions of federal dollars available to expand Medicaid coverage to adults below 138 percent of poverty.
Schools
Louisiana reshuffling money to keep colleges afloat | Associated Press – The Jindal administration requested a $40 million loan from State Treasurer John Kennedy as it juggles money to pay for monthly bills related to higher education.
Common Core bill could spark ‘chaos’ | The New Orleans Advocate – Language in bill that would derail Common Core implementation is so broad, according to critics, that it would create widespread confusion about testing next year.
Common Core standards would leave Louisiana in charge, not the feds: Paul Pastorek | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – Pastorek, the state’s former schools chief, claims his old boss Gov. Bobby Jindal made a “false argument” about Common Core in a recent op-ed in USA TODAY.
A Walmart Fortune, Spreading Charter Schools | The New York Times – The Walton Family Foundation has massively subsidized “an entire charter school system in the nation’s capital, helping to fuel enrollment growth so that close to half of all public school students in the city now attend charters, which receive taxpayer dollars but are privately operated.” The article says the foundation’s support for charters in Washington D.C. is a “microcosm of its spending across the country.”
Land Use
Decisions just weeks away on re-opening Bayou St. John’s gate to the lake | The Lens – Human safety will remain a paramount concern, and the gate will be shut when weather poses a flood risk.
City Council bans ‘duck boats’ from French Quarter | The New Orleans Advocate – The ban effectively rules out the possibility that the transport vehicle franchise will operate anywhere in the city.
Stacy Head’s absence hangs over deadlocked Bourbon Street noise vote | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – Council member Stacy Head’s “decision to stay on a family vacation this week, rather than attend the final meeting of the current council, scheduled months in advance, took some of her colleagues, as well as advocates on both side of the sound ordinance proposal, by surprise.”
Criminal Justice
In a neighborhood that has otherwise quieted after the demolition of the St. Thomas public housing development, on this two-block stretch seven people were shot or killed between 2007 and 2012, neighbors told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
Oklahoma’s double execution set for Tuesday a rarity | Tulsa World
Oklahoma is using a new and untested combination/dosage of these [execution] drugs, which leads to questions about whether any negative effects of the combination could violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual suffering, defense attorneys have argued.