Yes, I don’t post enough here. That will change when I am not mired in other projects.But occasionally I find stuff not covered by the more popular NOLA blogs that I feel should be posted for the record. The Haiti earthquake has a Louisiana angle. I am posting this from the Rachel Maddow Show. Normally I try to avoid advocacy commentary (basically anything originating from MSNBC or FOX), but I make an exception here because what’s important is what the Haitian ambassador says.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

. . . so I decided to post it:
Dana Milbank in today’s WaPo writes about Sen. Landrieu’s “yes” vote on the health care bill:

“‘I am not going to be defensive,’ she declared. ‘And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.’ It was an awkward moment (not least because her figure is 20 times the original Louisiana Purchase price).”

I’m sorry Mr. Milbank, but $300 million in 2009 dollars is not “20 times” $15 million in 1803 dollars.

$15 million based simply on inflation would make it $295 million in 2008 dollars. (So Milbank could have said that the “$300 million fix” was equivalent to what the US paid for the Louisiana Purchase adjusted for inflation.)

However even that is wrong. If we were making this purchase today it would cost more than just the value of $15 million adjusted for inflation — Napoleon was desperate; the US was not the economic powerhouse it is today, etc.

$15 million in 1803 was equivalent to $8.5 billion in 2008 in terms of nominal per capita GDP. And if you  look at the so-called relative share of GDP: $15 million to the 1803 national GDP is equivalent to $449 billion in 2008.

PS: I’ve been neglecting this site. I hope to find time to post some NOLA-related stuff here soon, and perhaps a re-vamp.

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve updated. I should get back into the swing of things, including a re-vamp of the site. I couldn’t help but comment on this weeks NOLA City Biz commentary on the disparity between income and cost of living.

Leave it to NOLA City Biz to take a subject that sounds like some thing you’d read in the The Nation and turn it into a preposterous definition of quality of life.

The article begins by saying a family of four (parents and two kids) earning a total income of $37,348 would pay 33% in taxes not counting property taxes. That just seems like an off estimate to me, but I quibble!

The article then defines a typical family as this:

* They should be paying nearly $1,600 a month on a mortgage for a $215,0000 house;

* They should be paying $333 a month in homeowner’s insurance and property taxes;

* They should be paying $833 a month for private school for two children;

* They should pay about $167 a month to insure two cars;

* They should pay $276 a month on groceries;

* They should pay $141 a month on clothing;

* They should pay $296 a month for utilities;

* They should pay $210 a month in gas;

* They should pay $200 a month to eat out four times;

* They should average $125 a month for two-person krewe membership;

* They should average $54 a month for the four season tickets to Saints games;

* They should avergae $9 a month for those two JazzFest tickets;

The total monthly cost for this mythical family of four is:

$4,244

For an annual net income requirement of

$50,928

To cover that alleged 33% would then require a gross income of about $75,000 a year.

To be fair, the article actually concludes that perhaps people are living beyond their means and should consider renting and sending their kids to charter school.

But I can’t help wonder: If NOLA City Business considers the “average household” of four in the city to be mortgaging a $215,000 home and sending two kids to private school — who’s reading NOLA City Business to give NOLA City Business such an image of the average NOLA household??

Hi ya’ll. I have put this blog on hold for quite some time. Due to more imminent demands I will not be updating for a while. However, this blog will remain active and you are welcome to click on subject-related links to the right. I have written a lot about the import-substitution of foreign temporary labor that has siphoned a lot of the benefits of the economic prosperity of New Orleans in the post-Katrina rebuilding boom. I look forward to getting back to NOLA issues, but unfortunately I also have a full-time job. Rest assured that I will be back after I budget time to do so.

- nolation.com

(Antoinette K-Doe) worked as a seamstress and as a welder’s helper on offshore oil rigs.
- New York Times obituary

I’ve written a lot here about how the workforce climate in Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina has profoundly changed. In 2005, Louisiana employers petitioned for about 2,200 legal, temporary foreign non-agricultural laborers, mostly in the sugar and seafood in rural parts of the state. (Though a couple of the larger NOLA hotel chains have regularly and increasingly cycled in these foreign temps, too. I’m talking to you RITZ CARLETON, MARIOTT, and — until it was sued for abusive practices — DECATUR HOTELS.) In 2007, that number exploded to nearly 40,000, led by the construction industry, for jobs such as basic construction laborers, marine welders and, you guessed it, the welder helper job that Miss Antoinette once took to make ends meet when she lived down in Plaquemines.

One wonders today how much harder it might be for a local to get a welder helper job if she’s competing with “at will” foreign temps from places like India and Mexico, who can be fired for any reason, not to mention detained and deported if they protest or complain and don’t simply get on the plane at their own expense to fly home to the debt they incurred paying for the privilege of working in America, often under false pretenses. These workers also work under a regime used by Saudi Arabia — the sponsorship program. These workers can only work for the people who recruit them, which makes them indentured to their sponsors, just like in the Persian Gulf.

Wages are a concern as well. While the pro-business community says there are no workers available for these jobs, the pro-labor folks (and not all of them are Commie Pinko scum) argue that this not only leads to labor abuses of foreign temps, but also displaces American workers and puts downward pressure on wages. (I’ve found evidence that this is the case with entry level positions, such as the one Miss Antoinette once held as a welder helper.)

This is a growing issue, especially in post-disaster reconstruction. Recently CBS4 down in Miami put a spotlight on how this issue affects its local labor market. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in this issue.

Keep in mind that this issue is a little different than the one regarding the small number of Pinoy workers coming in on H1-B visas, mostly as teachers. The H2-B visa is for basic laborers, blue-collar workers. The H2-A visa is for basic agricultural workers. Although, it has to be said: Why can’t Louisiana recruit teachers form other states? The answer is probably found by exploring: a.) the wages paid teachers in Louisiana and other under-educated states, and b.) the fact that right-to-work states cannot compete in the labor market because states that pay prevailing wages generally have higher wages for their workers. Why come to Louisiana if you get paid more in Minnesota?  This says a lot about the good American teachers who have foregone better wages elsewhere to come to Louisiana. And by saying that I do not disparage the Filipino teachers, who I have no doubt are committed and highly qualified. From what I know about Pinoys (I have worked with a few) they tend to be good and responsible workers who are an asset wherever they go, either as maids, oil rig workers, merchant marines, nurses or teachers. And of course the same can be said of any immigrant workers in America — but I think it incumbent of state policy to favor locals, especially low-income workers in crime-ridden cities like New Orleans and educationally and financially deficient states like Lousiana.

There may be a labor shortage in Louisiana in some areas. I think there is some legitimacy to the H2-B program when it comes to the industries that have traditionally relied on this labor, such as small seafood plants in rural southern Louisiana. But what’s alarming is how the construction industry has moved in forcefully in utilizing this program.

I have no issues with people going anywhere for work, even illegally. I also have no problem with states enforcing immigration laws; this is the risk one takes when one chooses to cross borders illegally for whatever reason.

What bothers me is this concept that there aren’t enough people in Louisiana who can work as welder helper’s, construction laborers, pipe fitters, landscapers, etc. I find that to be very cynical. If Louisiana needs to train-up its population, it should do so.

But as I expressed in an earlier post, I don’t see much effort so far in the Louisiana Workforce Commission — which openly advertises helping employers recruit foreign workers.

If these are, as George W. Bush said, “jobs Americans won’t do” then Americans deserve the race to the bottom for important jobs that nobody should look down upon, especially not privileged, pro-business Republicans like Bush or the Good Old Boy Yahoos (GOBYs!) that run the state of Lousiana.

I recently spoke of Jindal’s anecdote about how his parents came to Baton Rouge when Jindal’s mother was four-and-a-half months pregnant with him. With that Howdy Doody schick he recounted that his mother couldn’t see an obstetrician because he was, gosh golly, what the insurance industry today calls a pre-existing condition. So, Jindal goes on to say, his pop pulled out the Yellow pages and found himself a job and worked out a payment plan with “the doctor” — I guess this was a time when you actually negotiated payment plans with doctors rather than faceless hospital groups and customer service representative and insurance claims adjusters and hospital administrators. (Where for 15% of America, the health care system resembles Burkina Faso’s Third World pay-as-you-go health care system.)

It all sounds so sweet. Poor immigrant family comes to America, daddy get a vegetable cart and works long and hard hours to pay the nice family doctor that agreed to a payment plan. You see? You can make it in America without that meddlesome evil democratically elected government gettin’ in the way with that high-fallutin’ Commie health insurance!

By the way, does this Jindal anecdote about his immigrant family make any difference if you read this from Frank Rich?

Listening to Jindal talk Tuesday night about his immigrant father’s inability to pay for an obstetrician, you’d never guess that at the time his father was an engineer and his mother an L.S.U. doctoral candidate in nuclear physics.

Rich also points out that Jindal’s homey, Gov. Sanford of South Carolina, who often weaves an image of him growing up on a farm: some big-ass plantation built on the backs of slavery, no doubt:

Sanford’s first political ad in 2002 told of how growing up on his “family’s farm” taught him “about hard work and responsibility.” That “farm,” the Charlotte Observer reported, was a historic plantation appraised at $1.5 million in the early 1980s. From that hardscrabble background, he struggled on to an internship at Goldman Sachs.

BS alert!

I don’t have time to figure out the easy way to post the video of Jindal’s Howdy Doody reply to President Obama. (Easy to find and definitely worth watching.) But I found it amazing that he opened with an anecdote of his pregnant mother being denied access to pre-natal health coverage because he was “a pre-existing condition.”

When they arrived in Baton Rouge, my mother was already 4-½-months pregnant. I was what folks in the insurance industry now call a “pre-existing condition.” To find work, my dad picked up the yellow pages and started calling local businesses. Even after landing a job, he could still not afford to pay for my delivery, so he worked out an installment plan with the doctor. Fortunately for me, he never missed a payment.

Jindal is saying the health care problem in America can be solved by the generosity of individual doctors working out a payment plan for hard-workin’ folks. This is basically the GOP’s stance right now: the private sector can solve the health care problems in America, and the costs can be driven down by crackin’ down on frivolous lawsuits and cutting taxes so that responsible Americans (you know, the ones who carry credit card debt and buy homes they can’t afford?) will responsibly place their savings in an accruing account and to pay for their own health case.

If I remember correctly, John McCain pretty much sums up the GOP’s solutions: $2,500 a year in a health savings account and $5,000 year for families.

This doesn’t even come close the real costs: an average family of four would pay about $1,000 a month on health insurance, right? The typical PPO for a self-employed person would be about $450 a month. Do the math.

Everyone with skin in the game claims they would reduce costs. Bush didn’t do it with his wasteful Medicaid plan, which was a violation of a basic rule of capitalism: economy of scale (also called “bulk”) purchases from the pharmaceuticals industry. You know that thing? That thing where if you buy 12 eggs the price-per-egg is lower than buying one egg. And if you buy 1,000 eggs, the price-per-egg is even lower? And so on?

This is called economy of scale and it is basic driving mechanism of capitalism. The US government is the largest purchaser of drugs (legal or otherwise, by the way) on the planet. It has negotiating power against the pharmaceutical industry.

The GOP’s strategy is to blame “frivolous lawsuits” for the high cost of health care in America today, then it turns around and sets limits on the ability to negotiate with manufacturers of drugs? That’s just silly.

PBS Frontline did a wonderful report on health care in the world. I reocmmend watching the report.

Here are some basic primers:

HOW FIVE CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES HANDLE HEALTH

US HEALTH STATS AND HOW THEY COMPARE WITH JAPAN, GERMANY, THE UK AND SWITZERLAND

Americans pay the highest percentage of GDP on health care.

Americans’ life expectancy compared to these countries is the lowest.

Infant mortality in America is disturbingly higher than it is in these other countries.

THE FOUR BASIC MODELS

“For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India, with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you’re sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.”

I wrote recently about how the issue of “state’s right” has come up in relation to Jindal’s opposition to taking some of the economic stimulus money (nearly a third, I think) because it would require him (and governors in about a dozen states) to change state rules on who is eligible for unemployment benefits to include part timers and those who leave jobs due to medical or personal emergencies.

Apparently the Good Old Boy’s Network (GOBoN? The GOB? The GOBN?) in Louisiana has conjured this tired old straw man about whether fat cats in Washington are strong-arming their way into changing the state policies that deny unemployment benefits to part-timers who are laid off or people who have to quit due to a major medical or personal emergency.

Seems to me the, uh, GOBONELA (the Good Old Boy’s NEtwork of LouisiAna??) have swallowed Jindal’s claim that taking this economic stimulus money would automatically and quickly cause him to raise taxes on business. OK, well, that would be Jindal’s solution to a hypothetical issue that might not even be raised during his office.

Besides, Louisiana is a welfare state in the impoverished Deep South. Yes, Jindal claims that Louisiana is a donor state for oil and natural gas, but that’s misleading. In the end, it get more than that back in federal disbursements, not counting the $35 billion or so in disaster aid. (How that money has been spent is an entirely other matter.) As a welfare state wanting to take some more federal dollars, you really need to understand the relationship between the person in the water and the person in the rescue boat.

If you want autonomy, stop taking ALL of the money and see how far your bootstraps carry you as 20 percent of your “third world” state sinks into Gulf of Mexico and your people continue to live in social conditions that consistently rank at the bottom of the national ladder.

For some reason I don’t think the level of benefits has much to do with creating more crappy minimum wage jobs for people living in the murder capital of America or anywhere else in poor, rural, conservative Louisiana.

So, GOBONELA, please shut up. You’re giving me a migraine with this stupid “state’s rights” issue? You know who has a legitimate issue with state’s rights? Massachusetts, which consistently pays more in federal taxes than it gets back in federal disbursements — forcing the locals to raise their taxes to make up for the difference.

The hippieliberialJewyhomoelitistwinedrinking New York Times has a good editorial today on the Jindal/Sanford/Barbour/Perry coalition against any requirement that they expand unemployment benefits to part-timers and those who leave jobs due to medical or personal emergencies (like, say, a woman who is beaten by her husband and ends up in the hospital).

Right now about a dozen states are not eligible for some of the federal economic stimulus (the money aimed at getting more cash into the pockets of the recently unemployed) without making some policy shifts that Jindal said on MTP yesterday would require tax increases on businesses.

I can see both sides of the issue. It’s the typical thing. There are people that simply reject the entire notion of unemployment benefits, and they typically vote for people who are strongly in favor of any measure that lowers the cost of doing business in their states. It’s the supply-side thing again: this idea that lowering costs = increasing jobs. I’ve never swallowed that pill, because — as the son of a pair of semi-successful entrepreneurs — I have seen first hand that it’s far more nuanced than that. Increased production (or service) = more jobs. Lowering costs = higher margin, but not necessarily more jobs. If it’s cheaper to do business, but you aren’t increasing production, you will not hire another worker. Period.

But not everyone agree with me on that. They’re wrong, but they have a right to be wrong and they have a right to vote for people like Jindal who would be happy to completely eradicate unemployment benefits and privatize social security (removing the burden of the 6.5% employer provided FICA “tax”).

Anyway, I think this excerpt from the editorial makes a point. Whether you agree with it or not is another matter.

To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic violence or gravely ill children.

. . . Unemployed workers are worst off in the Deep South, where relatively few people are eligible to receive payments. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas stand out.

The governors are blowing smoke when they suggest that the federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state taxes. No one knows what the economic climate will be when the federal aid has been used up several years from now. But by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus could help the states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.

But even if new taxes are required at some point, the new federal standards would protect more unemployed workers than ever before and bring states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas into the 21st century.