Gentilly Girl- a part of the 99%

September 12, 2007

Sinnator Vitter Fucks Up…

Filed under: Crime,Louisiana,New Orleans,Politicians — Tags: , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 7:34 pm

It will not be a shock to my readers that I hate David Vitter. I won’t call him a pervert because many of us have some form of kinkiness (or should have) in the bedroom, but I’ll admit my little “special” things. (Mine are a little more “physical”.)
He fucked up some years ago in an interview: “Thank you for repeating all these vicious rumors that my political enemies are trying to bandy about,” Vitter had responded on the show, adding, apparently mistakenly, that “those rumors are absolutely true,” and continuing,”they really don’t belong in any political campaign and I’ve stated very clearly that they’re lies…”

Thanks to the Flaming Liberal for forcing that admission.

So Davy boy, why don’t you come to visit Momma Morwen and she will put you in nice soft nappies, some mittens and booties, a sweet little bonnet and a cute baby dress with yards and yards of petticoats so you can just be your baby self and not have to deal with your wife Wendy whilst you go Goo-goo and gaa-gaa until I fill your mouth with a passifier.

Sound good Sinnator? You know how to find me.

Justice for the Jena Six

Filed under: Civic Blogging,Crime,Louisiana,Racism — Tags: , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 3:07 pm

From the Humid Haney Rant:

http://www.colorofchange.org

I’m in on this. Are you?

Foster Campbell for Governor…

Filed under: Louisiana,Politicians — Tags: , — Morwen Madrigal @ 2:46 pm

Alright, I will admit to constantly backing dark horses when it comes to elections: maybe it’s because I celebrate the differences rather than the commonalities when it comes to governance. I love ideas as much as I crave liberty. But this time I’m really going out on a limb…

I’m voting and whoring for Foster Campbell to be Governor of the Gret Stet.

Here’s why I’m on his side:

As Governor, Foster Campbell will eliminate the state income tax, allowing Louisianans to pocket $3.1 billion each year instead of paying it to the state treasury. The increased economic activity from this tax reduction–the largest tax cut in Louisiana history–will usher in one of the greatest economic booms in the state’s history.

Eliminating both the personal and the corporate income taxes will make Louisiana a much more attractive location for business, providing a powerful incentive for new and existing employers to provide new jobs for our people.

The Campbell plan will replace the money given back to Louisianans by updating the 1921 severance tax on oil and gas produced in Louisiana. He’ll institute a 6 percent user fee on ALL oil and gas produced, processed, refined or distributed in Louisiana. Although Louisiana is now an oil and gas processing state instead of a major producing state, the system adopted 86 years ago collects a tax ONLY on minerals produced in Louisiana. But 95 percent of oil and gas produced and processed in Louisiana–most of it from foreign oil companies and companies owned by foreign nations–is untaxed. That’s unfair to producers in Louisiana and allows foreign companies to use our offshore waters and coastal wetlands without charge.

The processing fee will produce $5.5 billion each year. Even after eliminating the state income tax and the severance tax, Louisiana will gain an additional $1.7 billion in revenue every year. Foster will devote $1 billion a year to restoring coastal wetlands, damaged in part by mineral extraction and the thousands of miles of canals dug in our marshes to aid offshore exploration and production.

The remainder of the new funding obtained through the Campbell plan will be devoted to highway construction, improving our schools and other critical needs.” (From his site.)

This man brought telephone service to the last two communities in the state in 2004. He has served on the PSC trying to make the commission and the energy companies more accountable to our citizens. He has created special educational funds for schools and students.

I like this man’s vision, even though he’s from the northern part of the state.

This little swamp witch is firmly in the Campbell camp now. Check him out.

September 7, 2007

The “Shock Doctrine” in New Orleans

Well just bugger me with a tuning fork: I thought the B/S surrounding the “rebuilding” of the Gulf Coast in general, and New Orleans in particular, was just the Moron-In-Charge and the Corporate Capitalists’ way of having things their way down here. Sadly, I see that the Prophet, the architect of this insanity down here is Milton Friedman, the creator of the Chicago School of Capitalism.

Here’s some snippets from the Guardian UK in their extract of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”. (Read the whole thing please.)
“One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was the late Milton Friedman, grand guru of unfettered capitalism and credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, “Uncle Miltie”, as he was known to his followers, found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. “Most New Orleans schools are in ruins,” Friedman observed, “as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity.”

And:

“In one of his most influential essays, Friedman articulated contemporary capitalism’s core tactical nostrum, what I have come to understand as “the shock doctrine”. He observed that “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change”. When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the “tyranny of the status quo”. A variation on Machiavelli’s advice that “injuries” should be inflicted “all at once”, this is one of Friedman’s most lasting legacies.”

And:

“Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed. “When I rebuild the city I feel like I’m rebuilding myself,” said Cassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans’ heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm. But disaster capitalists have no interest in repairing what once was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka and New Orleans, the process deceptively called “reconstruction” began with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphere.”

I’ve always been a Keynesian type of spirit: a Free Market with checks and balances on certain activities that affected the whole of Society. I never saw this one coming, but thanks to Ms Klein, mine eyes have been opened to Reality. That economic forces would be so brutal to an old culture just to play out their games, to justify their philosophy. My heart hurts, and mainly it hurts because we here in New Orleans may just lose this battle and become as banal a place as almost every other locality in the country is.

“This desire for godlike powers of creation is precisely why free-market ideologues are so drawn to crises and disasters. Non-apocalyptic reality is simply not hospitable to their ambitions. For 35 years, what has animated Friedman’s counter-revolution is an attraction to a kind of freedom available only in times of cataclysmic change – when people, with their stubborn habits and insistent demands, are blasted out of the way – moments when democracy seems a practical impossibility. Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture – a flood, a war, a terrorist attack – can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave. It is in these malleable moments, when we are psychologically unmoored and physically uprooted, that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world.”

Sorry you “Creators”, I don’t wish to be a part of your freakin’ experiment. I want our City back.

Fuck you Chicago School capitalism. Fuck you to the Nth degree. I don’t desire your kind of “purity”.

What A Collection of Buffoons

Well we here in New Orleans have an election coming up next month and the Council-At Large’s candidates scare the Hell out of me. Many of the freaks on the list I know only by reputation as I didn’t return to the City until 2002. Some of them I have personally witnessed after they had their “Kool-aid”, and that is a memory seared into my brain. Others are just part of a mythos to me.

So in order to shed some light on the freak show, I’ll be linking you to other Bloggers on the NOLA stage that have far more history with these nut jobs. Schroeder over at People Get Ready has a good post on some of these folks today.

There will be other links coming over the next few days as I’m finally starting to get over my illness/depression of the last two weeks. (I promise…)

September 3, 2007

Southern Decadence 2007

Filed under: Aside,Event,My Community,New Orleans — Tags: , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 8:14 pm

What can I say about Decadence? It’s very large gathering of Gay folks for the last few days in August finishing off for the Labor Day Weekend here in New Orleans. I’ve attended several since I moved back home, but this year I skipped it since the anniversary of the Federal Flood this year ate my soul, mind and body alive. (Took an “introspectional trip instead, and didn’t leave the hovel.) Also, I know that Samhain isn’t that far away and I have one Hell-of-a-good-time for that celebration.

This year the Queers showed up in force and pumped $$$$$$$$$ into the City’s coffers and did that voo-doo that only they can do. It was a little more restrained this year, but damn! Hardly any of us have our many year’s long toy chests full of wigs, toys and outfits. As far as I know it was also fairly peaceful.

Here’s a pic from the T-P that I thought was really tres kewl (Can you guess what it’s about?):

Here’s the article.

It also tickles my tush that the Black Men of Labor had a good showing for their Parade. Yesterday is just another example of how two supposedly disparate communities can live here and have a party at the same, within sighting distance and still be smiling and enjoying each other’s parties. It’s just another aspect of the special form of Magic that lives here. In most things we get along or at least let each other be when it’s party-time.

Now I’m getting ready for All Hallows Eve, and not pulling punches this year… (and no, I’m not telling about the outfit.)

September 1, 2007

HANO is “Assaulted”!

Filed under: Civic Blogging,New Orleans,Racism,Rebuilding — Tags: , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 2:41 am

Tonight there was an article in the T-P (my favorite news source…. ), and there were dozens of very vile comments concerning the topic.

Here’s my response lest the T-P wipes me of expunges the article:

“A badly written article and the Racists come out in force with their simplistic, scripted writings learned only by rote.

For me it’s always, “So many Racists, so very little time”.

Get off your lily-white horses that so closely look like you. Understand that most of the people of the Projects worked hard for their low standard of living. Know that many White people in SE LA will not hire a Black person for a higher position, but they will hire them to sweep the stables. Do you read me?

And for those of you that believe that ,”They should work two jobs… I have to”. Well babies, these folk don’t really desire dual Lexus’, a McMansion, and the Golf Club fees and the horses and other “toys” that you can’t live without and that a showplace kitchen or $2,000 toilets aren’t their style.

They live and work for their lives and sensibilities… what they desire and not what you desire. They want their connections, their community back. (The criminals they DO NOT want back.)

As the whitest little Black girl you’re likely to meet, I am greatly upset by the actions of some of my Black relatives, but I am totally appalled by my White “family”s” vitriol towards others.

Since when are the Whites the ne plus ultra? They are a minority in this world (I’ve been half-way around the World twice in my days, living and learning about others.), except to when it comes to the money side of things. (And a minority WILL always find another minority to demonize. It’s a pseudo-superiority type of thing.)

New Orleans is a collection of Cultures, and all should be allowed to survive with their Cultural beliefs intact. Ya’s want white-bread land, go to the suburbs, unless you didn’t run there over the last forty years.

If you want your kids to be educated with their own kind, pay for it because the Founders considered universal education to be to a benefit to the Nation. Ya’s only want White and upscale neighbors, find a private community and pay your fees.

Do you wish to live in the Real World, join the whole of Humanity? Then the best of that possibility lies here in New Orleans, and we need all the good souls that we can find to create an equitable Society, grounded in fairness and understanding.

Racists please, leave those of us here trying to rebuild alone. Stop spewing your venom that you believe is thought. You are already gone from our city, or you will be soon. (Your hatreds will see to that.) Have a good life, and good riddance.

For those of us who love and cherish this city and our fellow citizens, leave us alone. Just because our city was bought and sold two centuries ago, we ARE citizens of the Nation, and as such are a part of the Social Contract, and said Contract is sacrosanct under the Constitution. “All of Life is as a chain, and when one link is harmed, we all feel the pain”.

Let us just be ourselves in our City, the city so many of you abandoned because of your basic thought-patterns. We will get things worked out, rebuild, put a halt on most of the crime… find a way to keep things going and just be New Orleanians. (The surrounding Parishes we have nothing to do with… that’s your job folks.)

There are many different kinds of folk that are back in the city, some oldies, others newbies, but we are here to rebuild. Those of us that lived here before want the other folks back. They are also an integral part of the City.

Most of my various ancestors were here at the founding of this city or soon thereafter. Their tombs are in the cemeteries. None were famous… they just worked and lived. Their lives are all mine, and what they all helped to build here is a part of what I must defend and improve upon. This city and the Spirit of it’s Cultures must not be lost.

So please, stop the Racist poop on these forums. Ya’s never know who you might be related to. Might even be considered under the 1/32 Rule. (If so, “Hi there! Welcome to the family!”)”

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress