In the early 1990s, the state was under a federal court order to reduce overcrowding, but instead of releasing prisoners or loosening sentencing guidelines, the state incentivized the building of private prisons. But, in what the newspaper called “a uniquely Louisiana twist,” most of the prison entrepreneurs were actually rural sheriffs. They saw a way to make a profit and did. . . .

But in order for the local prisons to remain profitable, the beds, which one prison operator in the series distastefully refers to as “honey holes,” must remain full. That means that on almost a daily basis, local prison officials are on the phones bartering for prisoners with overcrowded jails in the big cities.

It also means that criminal sentences must remain stiff, which the sheriff’s association has supported. This has meant that Louisiana has some of the stiffest sentencing guidelines in the country. Writing bad checks in Louisiana can earn you up to 10 years in prison. In California, by comparison, jail time would be no more than a year.

This is hardly an unusual story from the for-profit prison industry. The industry spends millions lobbying lawmakers to put more people behind bars. Two Pennsylvania judges were recently convicted of a “cash for kids” scandal where they took bribes from corporate prisons in return for sentencing juveniles to lengthy sentences for very minor offenses. Meanwhile, corporate prisons pad their profits by skimping on basic services for inmates or by hitting prisoners with inflated fees. A prison corporation in New Mexico was recently hit with $1.1 million in fines for understaffing its facilities, and another corporate prison in Georgia charges inmates $5 a minute for phone calls — while paying them only $1 a day for their work.

Louisiana’s legislature is now considering a similar bill to preempt local efforts at requiring paid leave for workers, as Half in Ten and the National Partnership for Women and Families noted:

S.B. 521, legislation that would take away Louisianans’ right to enact local paid sick days policies, is about to be voted on by the House — one of the last steps to enactment. Currently, more than 600,000 workers in Louisiana don’t have paid sick days, and if this bill becomes law, cities and parishes would lose the chance ever to put common-sense paid sick days standards in place…Louisiana already prohibits municipalities from setting their own minimum wage and can’t afford another anti-worker policy.

Just a few cities in the country — Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Seattle — along with the state of Connecticut require that workers receive paid sick leave. The United States is all alone in the industrialized world in not requiring some form of paid leave as a matter of national policy. Each year, the U.S. economy loses $180 billion in productivity due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers.

Below are Traina’s most damning tweets about black people and Trayvon Martin:

We are faced with a young Black Army of Thugs who have declared War on the American Way of Life-Holding America Hostage as we speak!

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) January 14, 2012

Young Black Thugs have created an atmosphere of Fear throughout America. The Real Terrorist live among us! Not over seas! Right here and now

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) January 14, 2012

Protesters march in Florida town where Trayvon Martin was shot: Black people need to STOP shooting one another! mark a. traina

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) April 1, 2012

But Traina’s opinions go even further than personal hatred for black youth. On his Twitter account, he goes into his politics, wondering, “Can President Obama win re-election if almost two-thirds of whites are opposed to him?” He has also voiced strong support for Alabama’s segregationist Governor George Wallace, Colorlines reports:

In another tweet about the Republican presidential primaries in March, Traina wrote, “I grew up in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana – I am a Wallace Man at Heart!”

“It’s particularly alarming to have someone who works for the school system in a position of authority be pro-segregation,” Eden Heilman, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center told NOLA.com, referring to Traina’s remark about George Wallace, segregationist governor of Alabama.

The Jefferson Parish School Board is already investigating Traina’s tweets.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

Jindal said he had no problem having openly gay staffers and claimed that qualifications should be the only consideration in state employment decisions. But that position is at odds with his 2008 action ending non-discrimination protections for gay and lesbian state employees:

TODD: There’s been this controversy inside the Romney campaign about Ric Grenell feeling as if he had to resign because he didn’t feel comfortable being openly gay and the controversy that was causing with some social conservatives. Do you have any problems having openly gay staffers?

JINDAL: No. I meant that’s obviously not something we ask folks. Look, we want the most qualified people to work with us on our team and to move our state forward.

Watch the video:

Putting aside the fact that his desire to move Louisiana “forward” would seem highly offensive to right-wingers who believe that term both Marxist and Nazi — and his implied Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell-style approach to the issue — Jindal makes the important point that employees should be judged not on their sexual orientation, but on their ability to get the job done.

However, during his first year as governor in 2008, Jindal opted not to renew the non-discrimination executive order put in place by his Democratic predecessor, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Her order had banned employment discrimination and harassment of state government employees on the basis of their sexual orientation. Jindal said he didn’t “think it is necessary to create additional special categories or special rights,” so he rescinded Blanco’s already existing categories protecting nothing more than the right he today seemed to endorse.

Perhaps it’s time for Jindal to revisit his 2008 decision — and for Romney to re-evaluate this campaign’s commitment to inclusion.

Cassidy was asked by a constituent in Thibodaux on April 10 whether there was any difference between Mitt Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts and Obamacare. Though Cassidy claimed Romney’s had evolved differently, he conceded that the two were “very similar.” “The fact is that the president plan depends upon that Massachusetts plan as a model,” said the Louisiana Republican:

CONSTITUENT: Is there any difference between the Massachusetts medical care program and Obamacare?

CASSIDY: One of the differences between the Massachusetts medical program and the president’s health care program, the president’s health care program closed its heart and soul to how the Massachusetts program has evolved. Its heart and soul is based on that. In fairness to Governor Romney, he points out that it’s evolved differently than he originally planned. That’s a fair statement. But the fact is that the president plan depends upon that Massachusetts plan as a model. And they’re having all the problems that we can imagine we’re going to have as a country.

CONSTITUENT: Were they very similar?

CASSIDY: Very similar. Very similar.

Watch it:

Indeed, Cassidy is correct that they are quite similar. As ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky has shown, the two plans are similar in nearly every respect. The White House even consulted Romneycare advisers when they were designing the outlines of Obamacare.

However, Cassidy is mistaken in implying that the Massachusetts plan is riddled with problems. Since it was enacted six years ago, health care costs have gone down as health care access has gone up. Now, nearly all nonelderly adults in Massachusetts have health insurance and access to care when they are sick.

The demonstrators used a mic check to denounce the auction taking place, calling it immoral. “The sale of blighted property is the city’s attempt to remove poor homeowners who have already suffered tremendously from economic and natural disaster. Blight has become an excuse to gentrify,” they said. “Charging poor homeowners outrageous fees in order to steal their homes is an underhanded way to keep people displaced.” Watch the demonstrators disrupt the auction:

Bridging The Gulf explains what happened after the disruption began: “The sale was scheduled to begin at noon. At approximately 1:45 pm, after several potential buyers had already left, the police arrived and threatened the nonviolent protestors with arrest. Before declaring that the remainder of their protest would be silent, the protestors announced their intention to physically defend any properties sold: ‘We will be in court. We will be in the streets. We will be in the houses–defending them, boarding them up, and occupying them.’”

Jindal said he couldn’t understand why anyone would oppose the bill, comparing the new notices to Miranda warnings for women who receive abortions — a constitutionally protected procedure — to criminals:

“When officers arrest criminals today, they are read their rights,” he said. “Now if we’re giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion.”

The analogy, however, may be somewhat apt, since Louisiana already has some of the harshest anti-choice laws in the country. According to NARAL, the state still has an unconstitutional and unenforceable measure that prohibits abortion by anyone other than the woman unless necessary to preserve the woman’s life or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. Louisiana outlaws second-trimester abortion procedure with no exception to protect a woman’s health and in 2006 “enacted a near-total ban on abortion, to become effective if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.”

Under the state’s Right To Know law, abortion providers in Louisiana are already required to distribute pamphlets with information about pregnancy, termination, and alternatives. Women must also sign a statement that they have received the state information and are not being coerced into an abortion before undergoing the procedure.

There will be no fireworks this year exploding over Fort Sill in Lawton. The U.S. Army base’s Independence Day celebration and concert will go on as planned Saturday, but its fireworks have been canceled. A fire that started on a base firing range last week burned across 5,500 acres before it was contained. Thirteen homes were destroyed and 1,500 people had to be evacuated.

Firework shows from Texas to Massachusetts have been canceled because of the deadly climate conditions:

In Oklahoma, 36 counties suffering from extreme to exceptional drought have issued burn bans, which include a prohibition on fireworks except for public displays.

In Kansas, fireworks have been banned in Dodge City and surrounding rural areas due to the extreme drought.

In Louisiana, fireworks have been banned in Shreveport and neighboring Bossier because of extreme heat and drought.

In Texas, 170 counties have fireworks bans, including all of metropolitan Houston. Nearly all of Texas has burn bans as well. Because of the extreme drought, Fourth of July fireworks displays have been canceled in Texas towns large and small: San Antonio, Austin, Amarillo, Lubbock, Plainview, Magnolia, Tomball, DeSoto, Woodlands, Roman Forest, and Patton Village.

In Arizona, authorities have banned fireworks from Flagstaff in the north to Tucson, Douglas and Sierra Vista in the south.

In New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez (R-NM) has said that there is “absolutely no reason to buy, sell or use personal fireworks.” She has declared a “state of emergency in New Mexico regarding the use of fireworks.” Albertson’s, WalMart, and Smith’s stores have stopped selling fireworks in the state. Taos, with wildfires raging nearby, has canceled its fireworks display.

In Joplin, Missouri, where a devastating tornado hit on May 22, officials have banned fireworks because of the amount of combustible debris in the tornado’s path.

In Massachusetts, the historical recreation site Old Sturbridge Village has canceled its fireworks display because its fireworks launch site was flooded and alternative launch sites were damaged by tornadoes.

Austerity budgets are also killing Fourth of July celebrations, with fireworks displays canceled at Jones Beach in New York, in Chicago, Illinois, and in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Today, the Louisiana House will debate a bill that would make abortion “a prosecutable crime for doctors who perform” a constitutionally-protected service or prescribe drugs with the intent of ending a pregnancy. Originally planning to prosecute women as well, the bill — introduced by state Rep. John Labruzzo (R) — now allows for medical exceptions but no exception for rape or incest. Labruzzo, who once suggested sterilizing poor women to lower welfare costs, was joined by a Personhood USA lawyer in a recent committee hearing to defend his radical efforts.

During the hearing, a fellow lawmaker noted LaBruzzo’s bill will have “unintended consequences when we do that broad brush” and questioned whether the bill would cause a “dramatic decrease on the abortion rate.” Sitting beside the Personhood lawyer, LaBruzzo dismissed her concerns and launched into a comparison between reproductive rights and drug abuse. To him, a woman who seeks an abortion is just like a heroin addict:

LABRUZZO: I can assure you if abortion is illegal, it will have a dramatic decrease in the number of abortions that take place. Now the opponents in the opposition argue that whether we make it illegal or not, people are going to get abortions. Well, we’ve illegalized [sic] murder and drugs for a long long time, and yet those crimes continue to take place. And it’s not our stance here to say that “just because people smoke pot and break the law or use heroin and break the law, then we should legalize it.” There are many who say we should. But we don’t agree, we don’t think so. We think it’s wrong and it’s best to keep it illegal…This is the pro-life bill. And I think you’d be in a difficult situation if you voted against this bill and tried to convince everybody that you are ardently pro-life.

Watch it courtesy of the Florida Independent:

As Planned Parenthood’s Julie Mickelberry noted, the bill could “go well beyond abortion” and end up denying women access to birth control, “both conventional prescriptions and emergency contraception.” Under this bill, gynecologists could refuse to prescribe birth control, pharmacists could refuse to fill legal prescriptions for such birth control. Such refusals, Mickelberry adds, would be particularly harmful to “women in rural areas with limited health care options or fro women, regardless of where they live, whose insurance allows limited office visits.”

“We found the ad to be totally abhorrent and shocking, and I’m going to use the ‘R’ word and say racist,” said Darlene Kattan, of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana.

Kattan said her issue is not with the senator’s position on border security, but rather how he presents his message. “In this ad, he has these Hollywood stereotypes, caricature-types portraying Latino workers,” Kattan said. “First of all, he uses the word ‘illegal’ so many times.” [...]

“To Sen. David Vitter, we are saying you owe us an apology, we are offended, we expect an immediate apology and we expect this ad to be yanked from the airwaves immediately,” Kattan said.

Watch the ad:

Kattan also noted that “No one seems to be objecting to the cute little blond-haired, blue-eyed cocktail waitress with her darling little eastern Europe accents serving cocktails in downtown New Orleans, but everyone has a problem with the workers who have come here to rebuild this city.”

In fact, Latino immigrants — many of them undocumented — have helped Louisiana get itself back on its feet. While half of New Orleans’ residents abandoned their decimated city after Hurricane Katrina hit and rebuilt their lives elsewhere, Latino workers were directly responsible for making 86.9% of households habitable after Hurricane Katrina in six parishes surrounding New Orleans in 2008. Almost 50 percent of the hurricane-repair workers in the New Orleans were Latinos and 54 percent of them undocumented. A study found that that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Louisiana, the state would lose $947 million in expenditures, $421 million in economic output, and approximately 6,660 jobs.

Melancon’s campaign denied the allegations in the ad, citing local newspapers that have already called it “distorted,” “misleading,” and “untrue.”

As experts warned, Bobby Jindal’s “obvious” response to the BP oil disaster is failing. Since the beginning of May, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has pushed a crash effort to build artificial “barrier islands” from dredged sand to prevent BP’s toxic oil from reaching Louisiana’s fragile coastline. He and other Louisiana politicians excoriated the federal government for waiting until June 3 to authorize the $360 million project, even though “categorically, across the board, every coastal scientist” questioned its wisdom. In mid-May, Jindal justified the barrier-island construction by saying it was the “obvious” thing to do:

It makes so much sense. It’s so obvious. We gotta do it.

“We know it works, we have seen it work, but if they need to see it work, they need to do that quickly,” argued Jindal. On May 27, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attacked President Barack Obama, calling his administration’s caution “absolutely outrageous“:

Here the president doesn’t seem to have a clue. His decision on the emergency dredging barrier island plan is a thinly veiled ‘no.’ Approving two percent of the request and kicking the rest months down the road is outrageous, absolutely outrageous.

In fact, the first artificial island project is already showing serious signs of erosion, with heavy equipment sinking into the ocean. Photographs released by Louisiana scientist Leonard Bahr and the US Army Corps of Engineers show that the artificial island E-4, intended to reach an 18-mile length, is struggling to survive at 1,100 feet:

Berm E-4, June 25	Berm E-4, July 7
Berm E-4, July 8

“You don’t want to destroy the village to save the village,” Tom Strickland, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, explaining on June 23 the federal government’s decision to only provisionally approve the construction of forty miles of sand berms along the Chandeleur Islands. Strickland estimated the berms would last “probably no more than 90 days.”

Jindal is pressing for the federal government to approve the emergency construction of 125 miles of sand berms, arguing the 0.2 miles constructed are “are doing what they were intended to do.”

Nungesser said that a private contractor blocked Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) entrance to a contaminated area, and tried to do the same with Nungesser and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA). The contractors hired to run the decontamination of wildlife — possibly the oil-industry-funded International Bird Rescue Research Center — are leaving oiled pelicans to sit in sludge for days before cleaning, Nungesser charged. They’re “making up their own rules,” he said:

We had a meeting here yesterday because the person that BP hired for the animal thing refused David Vitter entrance. He tried to keep me and the governor out with the coach of the LSU Tigers, and I took the chain and said, “Get out of the way. We are coming in.” He just said, you know, they want to keep you out. It is a contractor by BP. What’s happening is they are making up their own rules. I was out there with Anderson Cooper the other night. They let him on the grounds. When I showed up they said, “If we knew he was coming, we would not let you in.” It’s my land. They can’t stop us. It’s the parish land. They’re making up rules, like taking these pelicans, and they’re saying, well we leave them for five days with the oil so they calm down. I’m like, “Show me where that’s a rule, it’s not true.”

Watch at C-SPAN.org.

Nungesser and the members of the New Orleans City Council agreed that the state and federal government needs to take more direct control of BP’s army of contractors, and establish a more responsive command-and-control structure. The Center for American Progress has outlined practical plans for how the government can step up and protect our nation from the BP oilpocalypse.

Transcript:

NUNGESSER: We had a meeting here yesterday because the person that BP hired for the animal thing refused David Vitter entrance. He tried to keep me and the governor out with the coach of the LSU Tigers, and I took the chain and said, “Get out of the way. We are coming in.”

ARNIE FIELKOW: How are you doing? Nice to see you. Hi, how are you?

NUNGESSER: He just said, you know, they want to keep you out. It’s a contractor — talking about the bird place. The state and federal wildlife people — to find out that it is a contractor by BP. What’s happening is they are making up their own rules. I was out there with Anderson Cooper the other night. They let him on the grounds. When I showed up they said, “If we knew he was coming, we would not let you in.” It’s my land. They can’t stop us. It’s the parish land. They’re making up rules, like taking these pelicans, and they’re saying, well we leave them for five days with the oil so they calm down. I’m like, “Show me where that’s a rule, it’s not true.” You might want to leave them for hours or overnight if they’re really upset. But five days is not …

PATRICIA CLARKSON: There are hundreds of people waiting to come and help, wildlife experts waiting to come to our shores. Why are they not here?

NUNGESSER: There was a group from Australia told to come, we need your help. They got to Venice, they walked up, and well we don’t need you, go home. From Australia. And the guy came to see me. Here’s what they’re doing. They’re expanding. We asked them to add another bird place in the Myrtle Grove place it’s shorter. You don’t have to transport the birds for forty minutes.

What’s happening is they’re trying to keep their amount of work spread out. An area might get inundated, they bring in a hundred birds and they clean them up as short as possible then they’re out of work for three days. And or they don’t want to work long hours.

They keep three or four pens for the pelicans. They will keep them up for a week, that is inexcusable. And that is what they’re doing. They’ve got pens there, and you can see the pelicans that have not —

P. CLARKSON: covered with oil for days …

NUNGESSER: For four or five days so they calm down. They can’t move because they’re covered in oil.

P. CLARKSON: Covered with oil for days? who made that decision?

NUNGESSER: That’s a contractor.

P. CLARKSON: That is a BP decision. That is not a wildlife expert. What about the young man on Anderson’s show, I cannot remember his name, but he was saying that they’ve got teams of people waiting.

NUNGESSER: We’ve asked that it be taken away from the contractor, and put the federal and state wildlife over.

JACQUELYNE BRECHTEL CLARKSON, New Orleans City Council Vice President: You remember this. State Fish and Wildlife have one of our best experts, they were performing better than most of the state probably put more into their hands when it was Mitch [Landrieu] that mobilized him.

NUNGESSER: the problem as.

J. CLARKSON: BP is controlling it.

NUNGESSER: They are not trusting them. and there’s nobody on the ground with BP saying, no, that is the wrong way. we’re going to do it this way.

P. CLARKSON: How you actually get someone to finally move BP out of the way? Is that forthcoming?

NUNGESSER: Yesterday’s with the meeting with state wildlife, we started the ball rolling. Now they realize they’re not in control.

P. CLARKSON: Can Obama make that official, that BP no longer has control of your parish?

NUNGESSER: It’s the Coast Guard that’s supposed to be in control right now, but it’s still sitting at the table. I will love to be sitting around the table working for every issue with them. I would much rather be cleaning up the oil than yelling and screaming. And I have done that for a couple of weeks in between, and just like right now, and there are a lot of Coast Guard people here and the local BP people are great. But we have got to get to a point where when something needs to be done, I can grab that person by the arm and say, let’s fix it. And it is not to that point yet.

ARNIE FIELKOW, New Orleans City Council President: It’s a command-and-control standpoint. You got four states being affected directly right now. Why is there not a single point person with Coast Guard, BP, for each of the four states so that when you as a parish president, or Orleans Parish has an issue, there’s one single person that can clear all of this, whether it’s a wildlife issue, or a boat issue, it doesn’t seem that difficult to create.

NUNGESSER: Sam is a great guy. Sam can pick up the phone. Sam does not have the authority that Thad Allen says that he does. It sends up the chain of authority. But he never gets an answer back. I feel like — I don’t blame them — a lot of the BP people on the ground do not have the experience or are relying on contractors that to me are more interested in putting bodies out there to make money than they are in cleaning up the oil.

FIELKOW: From both the BP and Coast Guard standpoint, whoever is the local, statewide contact for you not only needs to be named but they need to have authority and decision-making power so that they can make some calls. So that you do not have to go to that person and they have to wait for Coast Guard or BP. There needs to be more of a controlled decision-making process created here to get things moving faster.

On Wednesday, ThinkProgress spoke with Scalise about his change in rhetoric, and asked if BP’s spill has changed his perception of the role of government. Scalise saw no cognitive dissonance in likening proactive government policies to Nazi Germany, while complaining that not enough government action is a lack of “leadership.” Scalise instead said merely that everyone wants “competent government”:

TP: You criticized the federal government for, you know, not doing enough given the spill in the gulf. But just a couple of months ago, you were saying that the EPA bureaucrats are like the Gestapo. Has the spill changed your perception of the role of government?

SCALISE: Well what it shows is that you’ve got incompetent government right now. MMS, who is the federal regulator, has not been doing their job. What we’re asking is, whether you’re for bigger government or smaller government, we ought to be able to expect competent government. And unfortunately we haven’t gotten that. People need to do their jobs.

Watch it:

One might question whether Scalise himself — who believes the “Climategate” conspiracy theory about the world’s scientific community, and voted against the stimulus but touted the jobs it created in his district — meets the standard of “competent government.”

Scalise is hardly the only anti-government critic now demanding government action in the wake of BP’s spill. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) warned her constituents that living in D.C. placed her “behind enemy lines,” and that people should get “armed and dangerous” to prepare for clean energy policies. But now, Bachmann is ranting that the government didn’t do enough, and that Obama should have “commandeered” boats to deal with BP’s crisis. In March, Sarah Palin decried Obama’s “transformation of America into some kind of socialized country.” Now she wants a government that “regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable” and federal criminal investigations to end “oily corruption.”