Big Pimpin’, spending cheese…
17th May 2021 · 0 Comments
Every pimp isn’t hanging out in the street patrolling the stable of women who make money. They don’t all wear deep purple, pink or green suits and big hats.
There are Gorilla pimps, flashy dressers and violent types depicted in the movies; Romeo/lover-boy pimps, who convince a woman he loves her, protects her, and cares about her before turning her out; and CEO pimps, entrepreneurs of the sex trade. They’re traditional pimps.
Non-traditional pimps hide behind legitimate businesses: poverty pimps (cash advance entrepreneurs, lenders that charge high-interest rates), and pulpit pimps (‘pass your offering in the name of Jesus, not that change you dig out of your couch’).
Wait. There’s more.
The most dangerous pimps are political pimps. They’re the ones we elect to represent us, but they only represent themselves and donors. They write bills that take money and power from institutions that serve the public. They rob the poor to pay the rich.
They especially like to take over state-empowered, Black-led institutions in New Orleans.
The Republican-dominated, primarily white legislature has a track record for singling out New Orleans for takeovers.
Their most recent takeover effort, HB 586, is a partisan bill sponsored by State Representative Tanner Magee, who represents Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. The attorney’s bill “Creates the Office of the State Public Defender and Justice Investment and provides for the ‘relocation of certain court-related service providers and related funding,’” Legiscan.com reported.
Magee’s bill would abolish the existing Louisiana Public Defender Board and vests all power over the public defenders in one appointee of the governor.
This bill is nothing more than a hostile takeover. While it portends to apply to Louisiana’s 64 parishes, the Orleans Public Defenders Office (OPD) is the real target. The governor’s appointee would control the Public Defender Office’s money, how much experts and public defense attorneys earn, and OPD staff’s court assignments.
The OPD director called the legislation “radical,” and Tanner introduced it with “zero” input from impacted communities or public defender leaders.
“HB 586 destroys local control and input regarding representation for the poor and overwhelmingly Black and Brown people who depend on the service. By abolishing the Louisiana Public Defender Board, it essentially destroys avenues for community and professional input on public defense,” the OPD said.
In short, Tanner and his fellow Republicans want to create a Public Defender Czar to rule over public defenders in Orleans Parish.
Attorney Joseph P. Raspanti supports HB586. He went on WVUE-TV and accused the Orleans Parish Public Defenders Office of being “mismanaged” after pointing out that the OPD budget went from $2 million to $10 million.
We didn’t hear a peep about the OPD before we elected a Black DA and Black director of the OPD.
The Orleans Parish Defenders Office is just the most recent victim of the state’s political pimps.
They used the same playbook when taking over the Orleans Parish Public School System and its $800-million budget. New Orleans became the first all-charter school district in the nation. Once vested in the elected Orleans Parish School Board, the power was vested in one person, the superintendent, a de facto Education Czar.
Thousands of teachers were fired and told to reapply for their jobs. Meanwhile, our dedicated education tax millage – paid for by Orleans Parish residents, was redistributed to private and non-profit companies awarded charters to run the schools.
Most insulting was that the law permitted the charters to operate “autonomously,” without oversight or accountability. Parents and stakeholders couldn’t hold anyone accountable for ensuring that children got the ‘minimum education foundation’ (which is a ridiculous law, in and of itself) required by the state. So now we have an education czar.
That education coup happened several years ago, but it was not an anomaly, as you can see from the current hostile takeover bill.
These acts are by people who are pimping the legislative process. They are, indeed, predominantly white Republicans – although two Black Democrats, women no less, took the lead in sponsoring the bills that became law and destroyed our public school system.
Isn’t that what white officials do when they want to play whack-a-mole on Black people? They get a Black person to push their agenda. Think of U.S. Senator Tim Scott and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.
Louisiana State Senator Karen Carter Peterson and former State Senator Ann Duplessis sponsored the takeover bills that destroyed our public school system.
Five years ago, using the same playbook for taking control of the public schools’ power and money, state legislators wrote a law that led to the takeover of the New Orleans-based Health Education Authority of Louisiana (HEAL).
HEAL is a “quasi-public” agency that promotes various public and private organizations’ medical and health education activities and provides bonds for the construction, renovation or enhancement of those facilities.
The legislation increased HEAL’s bonding capacity from $400 million to $800 million. It expanded the bonding agency’s service area from a 10-mile radius in New Orleans and Shreveport to all graduate medical education institutions.
The results of a state audit of HEAL contained adverse claims about the executive director.
A new board was appointed, the director’s contract didn’t get renewed, and the takeover was complete.
Legislators control the distribution of tax dollars, much like a pimp. It’s no mystery why New Orleans, which generates the most tax revenue in the state, doesn’t get a fair share of the tax dollars.
New Orleans hosts millions of tourists who spend billions. Still, we get stuck holding the bill for extra police and fire personnel, street repairs and other amenities tourists enjoy while visiting the Big Easy.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell launched a Fair Share campaign to get the state legislature to return the tax revenue owed to New Orleans. The city gave up the hotel room levy to help build the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, a state authority. The Convention Center was supposed to turn over surplus revenue once it was open for business. That didn’t happen.
It is telling that the state’s Republican-led, mostly white legislature is constantly pimping New Orleans.
Why is that? Is it because they view Black people through the stereotypical lens of their forefathers? Are these smash and grab acts a product of the plantation mentality, white superiority ideations, implicit bias or greed?
Whatever their motivation, young Black and Brown voters and civil rights lawyers aren’t sitting by idly. We must stop the racial gerrymandering that allows a minority of whites to rule the majority.
This article originally published in the May 17, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
