The Daily Slab – March 29

Eagles flew through Pass Christian’s War Memorial Park Saturday after Marlin Miller of Fort Walton Florida finished his latest work of art which was dedicated to the late Col. Lawrence Roberts and the Tuskegee Airmen. Besides Miss Lucimarian daughters Dorothy, Sally Ann and Robin were at hand for the dedication.

The Roberts women celebrated their hometown with neighbors, many of whom had walked to the park.

“We were strangers but you took us in,” Lucimarian Roberts said.

“She and my father, they taught us about the three Ds — discipline, determination and da Lord,” said Robin.

“We are so grateful and so proud to call Pass Christian home.”

Next up is stuck on stupid as the Democratic Leadership Counsel is taken to task by WSJ columnist Thomas Frank. Evidently the heart of the DLC philospohy is a burning desire to hop in bed with the crooks that brought us this latest Wall Street disaster. We saw this play out in Mississippi last election with the State Dems putting up a crooked insurance lawyer they could control over a more populist candidate in Ronnie Shows they couldn’t. Is there any wonder the 90% of this country wanting true change have little patience for Obama and Geithner talking contract sanctity with Ed Liddy while paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to the AIG Financial Services employees that brought us this mess to begin with? The simple truth is this bunch on Wall Street and their enablers in DC won’t stop until the last penny is drained from the treasury and nothing but bleached bones and massive debts are left for the rest of us:

Still, none can doubt the DLC’s success at pushing “third way” humbug in elite Democratic circles. Many of the rhetorical gestures we associate with centrism — for example, the habit of dismissing liberal policies as “industrial age” relics — got their start in Mr. From’s shop.

The theme that matters most these days, though, is the DLC’s war with populism, a term that is supposed to summarize everything that is wrong with class-based discontent. Not only is populism mulishly wrong-headed, according to the DLC, but it is a sure-fire electoral loser — a whiff of populism, the group once concluded, is what cost Al Gore the 2000 election.

The group’s attacks on populism resonate in D.C., I suspect, because the commentariat has always thought “populism” to be faintly ridiculous, a thing of mobs and pitchforks and windbag leaders more demagogue than CEO. (For an illustration of what I mean, look at the cover of the latest issue of Newsweek.)

This way of thinking has not served the Obama administration well in recent weeks. Think of Larry Summers repeating, on program after program, his outrage with the AIG bonuses, but then immediately moving, as you would with a naughty child, into a discussion of the rule of law — which I guess is what you call the years of de facto de-supervision that allowed this disaster.

One of these days it may dawn on our leaders that the public, in this case, is right; that this time the mountebanks and charlatans are not the populists but the responsible-looking CEOs who ran the country’s financial institutions into the ground — and who the administration apparently wants to leave in charge of many of those institutions. The public outrage about performance bonuses isn’t just mindless resentment; it is directed at exactly the instruments that steered the economy into the ditch and the executives who built the system — and who will demand to do business the old way as long as they have breath to bellow.

What’s more, it is only thanks to populist members of Congress that we know our bailout of AIG sluiced billions to foreign banks, and it’s only thanks to public outrage that the administration feels any pressure at all to exert a firmer hand on the institutions it has rescued from bankruptcy.

St Thomas Church in Long Beach finally breaks ground. Meantime parishioners in Waveland still attend service in a tent while rebuilding plans in the Pass remain in shambles. On a more personal level its all backlog to me.

Speaking of coastal construction, rumors of Harbor Town rising like a phoenix from the ashes were very premature. In fact that story is so far out from what I’ve consistently heard I wondered immediately if we had wishful thinking passed off as news. I am also reminded of the definition of a “developer” I heard at the 2004 National Construction Industry Conference: “Someone with no money that wants to build something”.

I’ll end my portion with of the daily slab with a question from Jeff Duncan’s mailbag. Who would have thought some of the best analysis on the current state of the newspaper industry would come from the Saints beat writer for the Times Picayune.  I know this, when I think newspaper of the future, NOLA.com where news is reported real time in “blogs” before showing up the next day in the print edition is what comes to mind. As for “Pluck”, discriminating slabbers think it sucks:

Q: Jeff, with the alleged death march of newspapers taking place every day, have you seen a change in the way the Saints are dispensing information? Are they allowing more access to try and keep up the free form of ‘advertising’? Are they trying to manage what comes out of Airline Drive more so they can get their message across? Do they allow bloggers to cover them now? Has there been no discernable change?……….Ben Gerber, Atlanta, Ga.

A: Interesting question, Ben, and a refreshing change from all of the draft speculation. We don’t have enough space here for me to elaborate fully on this subject but I will tell you that the changing landscape of the media business and newspaper industry is having a dramatic effect on the way we cover the Saints and the NFL on a daily basis. When I started covering the Saints in 2000 my work was done exclusively for The Times-Picayune’s print operation. Now my work is about 75 percent online for nola.com. This mailbag is a prime example. We didn’t even have this forum a year ago and now it’s one of the most popular features on nola.com.

Nowdy may be along later to add a few more links and our readers can leave their newsworthy links in the comments.

sop