a road to nowhere

Four BILLION dollars to build a loop around Baton Rouge? I can’t wrap my mind around this massive project. If in 100 years, the inevitable happens, what purpose would this loop serve? Not to mention the impact on one of the few viable ecosystems in the state, the Atchafalaya Basin. The ultimate insult is this will be a toll road.

Northern BR loop to pass south of U.S. 190
* By GREG GARLAND
* Advocate staff writer

The group developing plans for a proposed traffic loop around Baton Rouge has decided where it wants to build a bridge across the Mississippi River for the northern portion of the loop.

Mike Bruce, of ABMB Engineers, told area public officials and an advisory committee Thursday that a possible bridge crossing a few miles to the north of the U.S. 190 bridge has been eliminated. He said environmental and maritime concerns made a river crossing there impractical. “Our plan is for the bridge to be adjacent to the existing bridge,” Bruce said. He said the new bridge would be built on the south side of the U.S. 190 bridge and link to Interstate 110 in East Baton Rouge Parish. The U.S. 190 bridge would remain for local traffic, officials said.

The thornier political question of where to build a bridge for the southern portion of the proposed 85-mile loop — at Addis in West Baton Rouge Parish or between Plaquemine and White Castle in Iberville Parish — remains unresolved. Larry Johnson, a representative from West Baton Rouge Parish serving on the loop advisory committee, said a bridge in Iberville Parish likely would be impractical for financial reasons.

The plan is for the proposed $4 billion traffic loop to be built as a toll road in a partnership with private-sector investors. Johnson suggested private investors would be less interested in a loop that swung further south, diverting fewer motorists from Interstate 10 onto the toll road.

“It seems to me if the numbers don’t fit, we should eliminate it,” Johnson said. “Why spend a lot of time on it?” Political leaders ultimately would have to make a number of key decisions, said Walter Monsour, special adviser to Mayor-President Kip Holden. “Our job as the project team is (to) put these options to the appropriate decisionmakers,” he said.

No representatives from Iberville Parish attended Thursday’s briefing on loop plans. Iberville Parish President J. Mitchell Ourso Jr. has insisted in the past the new bridge needs to be built in his parish. At Thursday’s briefing, results of a recent poll commissioned by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber were released. The survey showed 83 percent of the people polled in the five affected parishes believe Baton Rouge needs a loop.

Holden said companies from Australia, Spain and other countries, as well as in the U.S., have expressed interest in entering into a public-private partnership to help fund the massive project. He acknowledged some people would be unhappy with the routes chosen for the loop, but he said the project is vital for the growing capital region. “We’re not out here to destroy communities; we’re out to build communities,” Holden said. “We’re doing things that should have been done long ago.”

Monsour said the capital area region is continuing to grow as the New Orleans metro area has struggled to recover economically from Hurricane Katrina. “South Louisiana is continuing to move north,” Monsour said. “That’s a fact.”

Robert Schmidt, of the HNTB Corp., said plans call for construction on the loop to begin in 2012. A second round of public hearings to give residents a chance to weigh in on possible routes for the loop is scheduled for September.

redfish courtbouillion

One of those “only in New Orleans moments” happened on Sunday – as I was browsing the shelves of Academy Sporting Goods, an old friend walks up to me to say hello. After we catch up, I follow him out to his truck and he hands to me a gallon ziplock bag filled with 3 pounds of redfish and trout filets! I decided immediately it was time to make courtbouillion.

I mastered this dish years ago, and love to cook it whenever I get fresh fish. The pronunciation of the dish in south Louisiana is typically cou-be-yon. All I know is its delish over rice or with french bread and is a nice alternative to the usual deep fried fish filets. The roux of the courtbouillion makes it into a fish stew rather than a soup. I pulled out several pieces of trout to pan fry and the rest went into the pot. Here’s the recipe and the pictorial.

3 pounds of redfish (or any combo of fish will do), cut into bite size pieces
bones to make 4-5 cups of stock (remnants from the fish, 6 cups water, 1/2 onion, 1 stalk celery, couple cloves garlic, salt and pepper and simmer all for a couple hours)
2 chopped onions
1 chopped bell pepper
3-4 jalapenos chopped fine
3 stalks celery, chopped
Several cloves garlic (8-10) minced
1 bunch green onions chopped (save the green tops and add those at the end of the cooking process for color)
1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato puree
Seasonings (oregano, salt, pepper, parsley, bay leaves, a couple spoons sugar to cut the acid from the tomatoes)
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oil (olive oil & butter works too)

In a heavy dutch oven or cast iron pot, pour oil and heat up. Add flour when oil is hot, and stir constantly over medium flame until flour browns. When the flour gets a nice medium brown, add in chopped onions, peppers, celery, and garlic to the roux. Cook until vegetables soften. Then add tomatoes, stock and seasonings. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for a couple hours. Add fish and green onion tops and cook for 10 minutes. Serve with rice.

I didn’t have the bones from the fish, so I bought a couple pounds of shrimp and made a stock from the heads and shells. It wasn’t as delicate as a fish stock because of the richness of the shrimp, but it worked in a pinch.

I sauteed the shrimp on the side and had a shrimp salad for lunch!

Meanwhile, I chopped the seasonings

the finished stock

for this dish, I did an olive oil and butter roux, more delicate than a cooking oil or bacon roux.

The cooking process of the roux, took about 10 minutes…

…then to stop the roux from burning I dumped in the seasonings.

I added a couple spoons of stock as the seasonings cooked down to keep them from sticking to the pan, then when they were sufficiently wilted…

…I added the tomato puree, tomato paste, sugar, stock and herbs.

I brought the mixture to a boil, then let it simmer and cook down for about 2 hours.

After it cooked down, I removed some of the sauce (to use with another batch) and the bay leaves, then added the fish…

…and the green onion tops for flavor and color.

You don’t want to overcook the fish or it will fall apart, so I cooked this for 10 more minutes, then served it with rice.

Yummy!

LSU takes the ball and is going home

ummm, no, its not YOUR credit card, its the TAXPAYERS credit card

BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana State University System Board of Supervisors today rejected the draft governing agreement for a proposed teaching hospital in New Orleans, instead endorsing a revised model that board members said would give LSU more influence over the enterprise.

The next step in the governance wrangling is not clear, given that Tulane University’s governing board approved the original draft agreement in its own special meeting Friday, one day after state Health Secretary Alan Levine pitched the deal as the product of intense private negotiations between the two schools.

LSU System President John Lombardi said, “I assume it will go back to Tulane to see if they can live with the action we took here today.”

The principal complaint from LSU board members is that the Baton Rouge-based university system would have ownership of the hospital and responsibility for its bond debt, while having just four out of 12 spots on the governing board.

“It’s our credit card, and somebody else is going to lunch on it,” Lombardi said.

LSU called for an 11-member board, with five coming from LSU. Both versions would give Tulane and Xavier University one seat each, with other New Orleans schools sharing an additional seat.

The difference comes in “non-permanent” members that would not be affiliated with any of the schools. The Levine plan that Tulane approved calls for five of those seats. LSU’s plan includes three.

Lombardi said he pitched the same model in the negotiations with Tulane President Scott Cowen. Both men, Lombardi said, made it clear to Levine that they could not guarantee final approval from their respective boards. The deal was merely to present the draft, he added: “The secretary knew that some of our board members had concerns.”

Supervisor Hank Gowen said before the vote, “We need to be in control; we are the ones who are going to borrow $400 million,” referring to the minimum bond issue that would be necessary for the $1.2 billion hospital if the state gets $492 million from the federal government for damage to Charity Hospital.

If the Charity settlement is less than the full reimbursement, the proposed hospital corporation would either have to borrow more money or scale back its plans for 424 beds in the lower Mid-City facility.

LSU officials have bemoaned before and repeated today that the business plan for the hospital depends on LSU physicians directing privately insured patients to the new facility.

Lombardi told board members he asked Tulane repeatedly to make the same commitment. “That element of equity … was not supported and did not end up in” the proposed memorandum of understanding, Lombardi said, because of a “conflict of interest” with Tulane Medical Center.

Tulane University owns a 17.5 percent share of that for-profit hospital, with the rest controlled by controlled by Tennessee-based HCA, a publicly traded hospital corporation.

“If it is a conflict of interest, they should not be in this agreement,” Gowen said.

Board member Alvin Kimble said, “If Tulane has 200 out of 500 residents (in the new hospital), I’d like them to come up with 40 percent of the money. If we’re going to be on the hook for the money, we’ve got to have the ability to control the direction.”

System attorney Ray Lamonica told board members that the LSU System may not be legally on the hook for future bond debt, which would be issued in the name of the proposed hospital corporation. But, he said, “It’s certainly a moral and practical obligation if LSU ever intends to issue bonds again.”

Lombardi said he does not have a specific time frame in mind for the next step in the hospital planning process. LSU Board Chairman Jim Roy called the vote “the beginning of a dialogue.” Lombardi modified that to “a new beginning.”

Lombardi declined to speculate whether today’s vote will send lawmakers into a mad scramble to settle the issue through legislation before Thursday’s final adjournment of the regular session.

House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, earlier this year introduced House Bill 830 that would have stripped LSU’s control of the hospital altogether. Tucker abandoned the bill last week when Levine announced the draft governance deal.

levee-busters

Maybe the Ouchley brothers are on to something…

New York Times
By CORNELIA DEAN

In the 1960s, a group of businessmen bought 16,000 acres of swampy bottomland along the Ouachita River in northern Louisiana and built miles of levee around it. They bulldozed its oak and cypress trees and, when the land dried out, turned it into a soybean farm.

Now two brothers who grew up nearby are undoing all that work. In what experts are calling the biggest levee-busting operation ever in North America, the brothers plan to return the muddy river to its ancient floodplain, coaxing back plants and animals that flourished there when President Thomas Jefferson first had the land surveyed in 1804.

“I really did not know if I would ever see it,” said Kelby Ouchley, who retired last year as manager of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, which owns the land. He pursues the project as a volunteer consultant in coordination with his brother Keith, who heads Louisiana operations for the Nature Conservancy, which helped organize and finance the levee-busting effort.

The idea goes against the grain in Louisiana, where people have battled river flooding since colonial days. European settlers were often required to build levees to establish homesteading claims; in recent decades, landowners built levees to create farmland by the hundreds of thousands of acres. Hurricane Katrina brought a clamor for more and stronger levees to protect people and buildings farther south.

Yet at the same time, there is a growing awareness that Louisiana’s levees have exacted a huge environmental cost. Inland, cypress forests and wetlands crucial for migrating waterfowl have vanished; in southern Louisiana, coastal marshes deprived of regular infusions of sediment-rich river water have yielded by the mile to an encroaching Gulf of Mexico. Some scientists have suggested opening levees south of New Orleans so the Mississippi River can flow normally into the swamps.

The parcel that the Ouchley brothers plan to restore, known as Mollicy Farms, was added in the 1990s to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service’s Upper Ouachita (pronounced WASH-it-tah) holdings in a series of purchases assisted by the Nature Conservancy and totaling $6.6 million. The brothers and their organizations have since worked on several environmental projects there, including a 10,000-acre tree-planting operation, Kelby Ouchley said.

The workers replanted cypress and tupelo in low areas, then oaks and green ash, and then sweetgum and pecans — “life-sustaining, system-supporting diversity,” as Kelby Ouchley called it in an essay. Eventually, he predicted, the restored landscape would be home to black bear cubs, largemouth bass, fireflies, crawfish and “gobbling wild turkeys and cottonmouths with attitudes.”

Still, the brothers felt dissatisfied. A few years ago, Keith Ouchley said, “I was standing on the giant levees with my brother and I said, ‘Well, there is one thing missing here. The big challenge is restoring this floodplain.’ ”

Environmental scientists say the very notion of undoing levee construction may be the most important aspect of the Ouachita project. “The idea that we can take levees down — that’s a good thing,” said Denise J. Reed, a coastal scientist at the University of New Orleans.

Dr. Reed is also among those advocating levee-opening on the Mississippi south of New Orleans, a proposal that she says is under review by state officials. The more rivers like the Ouachita are again permitted to flood, she said, “the more they function like rivers and the more we get what we need out of them in terms of habitat.”

The Nature Conservancy has already taken part in levee-busting projects on Klamath Lake in Oregon and the Emiquon Preserve on the Illinois River in Illinois to help restore wetlands. But the Ouachita project is far larger, people involved say, both in its size — roughly 25 square miles — and the effort required to remove each levee, roughly 30 feet high and 120 feet wide at the base.

The plan, designed by hydrology experts whose work was financed in part by $250,000 from the Nature Conservancy, was originally to use bulldozers to chew away at the levees in five places and then wait for spring floods to level them gradually, said George Chandler, the project leader for Fish and Wildlife Service projects in North Louisiana.

The effort was to have begun last fall, he said, but heavy rains forced a delay until May, when unusual rains delayed it again. On May 23, the swollen Ouachita seized the initiative, breaking the levee and flooding the Mollicy acreage.

At first, Mr. Chandler said, people involved in the project feared that the flood would smother the newly planted trees with sediment from the river and dirt from the levee itself. But they emerged unscathed.

The plan now, he said, is to start bulldozing in late July or early August. “We expect that next fall or winter whenever the river comes back up we will have normal flows of water that will return to these bottomlands out there,” Mr. Chandler said. “It will rise and fall with the rhythm of the river.”

The work is expected to cost more than $4 million.

Cristina Mestre, a spokesman for the conservancy, said her organization would monitor the site for four years. The conservancy hoped its work there would serve as a model for other restoration projects, Ms. Mestre said.

Project planners worry that the project could have unintended effects. For example, Kelby Ouchley said, it is theoretically possible that opening the levees could alter water flow enough to force the river into a new course. On the other hand, Keith Ouchley says, planners hope the project will reduce flood threats downstream “by providing more storage capacity in the river’s flood plain, like it normally would have.”

Mr. Chandler said recent events suggested that this hope was well founded. After the levee was breached in May, a flood threat to the downstream city of Monroe subsided. In any event, Kelby Ouchley said: “If we make mistakes, other people will learn from them. It’s recognized here as a win-win thing.”

its official

WHO declares H1N1 swine flu a pandemic

World now at the start of 2009 influenza pandemic
Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization

Ladies and gentlemen,

In late April, WHO announced the emergence of a novel influenza A virus.

This particular H1N1 strain has not circulated previously in humans. The virus is entirely new.

The virus is contagious, spreading easily from one person to another, and from one country to another. As of today, nearly 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries.

This is only part of the picture. With few exceptions, countries with large numbers of cases are those with good surveillance and testing procedures in place.

Spread in several countries can no longer be traced to clearly-defined chains of human-to-human transmission. Further spread is considered inevitable.

I have conferred with leading influenza experts, virologists, and public health officials. In line with procedures set out in the International Health Regulations, I have sought guidance and advice from an Emergency Committee established for this purpose.

On the basis of available evidence, and these expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met.

I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6.

The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.

We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch.

No previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely, in real-time, right at the very beginning. The world can now reap the benefits of investments, over the last five years, in pandemic preparedness.

We have a head start. This places us in a strong position. But it also creates a demand for advice and reassurance in the midst of limited data and considerable scientific uncertainty.

Thanks to close monitoring, thorough investigations, and frank reporting from countries, we have some early snapshots depicting spread of the virus and the range of illness it can cause.

We know, too, that this early, patchy picture can change very quickly. The virus writes the rules and this one, like all influenza viruses, can change the rules, without rhyme or reason, at any time.

Globally, we have good reason to believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate severity. As we know from experience, severity can vary, depending on many factors, from one country to another.

On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.

Worldwide, the number of deaths is small. Each and every one of these deaths is tragic, and we have to brace ourselves to see more. However, we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.

We know that the novel H1N1 virus preferentially infects younger people. In nearly all areas with large and sustained outbreaks, the majority of cases have occurred in people under the age of 25 years.

In some of these countries, around 2% of cases have developed severe illness, often with very rapid progression to life-threatening pneumonia.

Most cases of severe and fatal infections have been in adults between the ages of 30 and 50 years.

This pattern is significantly different from that seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza, when most deaths occur in frail elderly people.

Many, though not all, severe cases have occurred in people with underlying chronic conditions. Based on limited, preliminary data, conditions most frequently seen include respiratory diseases, notably asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and obesity.

At the same time, it is important to note that around one third to half of the severe and fatal infections are occurring in previously healthy young and middle-aged people.

Without question, pregnant women are at increased risk of complications. This heightened risk takes on added importance for a virus, like this one, that preferentially infects younger age groups.

Finally, and perhaps of greatest concern, we do not know how this virus will behave under conditions typically found in the developing world. To date, the vast majority of cases have been detected and investigated in comparatively well-off countries.

Let me underscore two of many reasons for this concern. First, more than 99% of maternal deaths, which are a marker of poor quality care during pregnancy and childbirth, occurs in the developing world.

Second, around 85% of the burden of chronic diseases is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries.

Although the pandemic appears to have moderate severity in comparatively well-off countries, it is prudent to anticipate a bleaker picture as the virus spreads to areas with limited resources, poor health care, and a high prevalence of underlying medical problems.

Ladies and gentlemen,

A characteristic feature of pandemics is their rapid spread to all parts of the world. In the previous century, this spread has typically taken around 6 to 9 months, even during times when most international travel was by ship or rail.

Countries should prepare to see cases, or the further spread of cases, in the near future. Countries where outbreaks appear to have peaked should prepare for a second wave of infection.

Guidance on specific protective and precautionary measures has been sent to ministries of health in all countries. Countries with no or only a few cases should remain vigilant.

Countries with widespread transmission should focus on the appropriate management of patients. The testing and investigation of patients should be limited, as such measures are resource intensive and can very quickly strain capacities.

WHO has been in close dialogue with influenza vaccine manufacturers. I understand that production of vaccines for seasonal influenza will be completed soon, and that full capacity will be available to ensure the largest possible supply of pandemic vaccine in the months to come.

Pending the availability of vaccines, several non-pharmaceutical interventions can confer some protection.

WHO continues to recommend no restrictions on travel and no border closures.

Influenza pandemics, whether moderate or severe, are remarkable events because of the almost universal susceptibility of the world’s population to infection.

We are all in this together, and we will all get through this, together.

Thank you.

the honorable thing

So is this the honorable thing William Jefferson kept referring to before his trial? Paying his five daughter’s college tuition? One to the tune of ~$25,000 to Harvard, among others?

His honorable thing justification is straight up bullshit. One could argue that our federal tax money could go towards grant monies, and Jefferson just bypassed all the grant red tape to directly pay for his daughter’s tuition. Yet he used money allegedly from Nigerian sources, in return for business contacts. That slippery slope argument does not work. It is morally wrong, not to mention it does not take into consideration the millions of other parents who WISH they could send their children to the best universities in the country, yet cannot afford it. Heck that is the reason keeping ME from applying for a PhD program, I simply cannot afford the ~$10,000-$12,000 per semester tuition, nor do I wish to be paying off student loans for the next 20 years. Plus I probably would not qualify for any grant money, never have and doubt I ever will.

For someone to convince themselves that this is not problematic shows the moral bankruptcy of character. It is a shame that this continues to happen over and over and over again with political representatives. I am sure the presence of his daughters to justify the “honorable thing” will garner some sympathy, but hopefully the jurors will see through the smoke and mirrors.

Exhibits in Jefferson trial reveal payments to daughters’ colleges
by Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday June 10, 2009, 7:30 AM

WASHINGTON — There is no doubt about what former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, considers his greatest accomplishment: his five daughters and their academic achievements.

“The most important thing in life is for your children to have success; if you have that, nothing else matters, ” Jefferson said in an interview last month. “The most heart-warming thing for me in my life is my children have been able to have these outstanding educations.”

But even as Jefferson was joined by his wife and five daughters Tuesday at the opening day of jury selection for his corruption trial at the federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., prosecutors released a 152-page list of trial exhibits that is dotted with the names of his daughters and the elite colleges and universities they attended.

Nothing in the court document suggests that Jefferson’s daughters were aware of or complicit in the crimes the government alleges he committed, only that the former congressman’s children, and the very expensive private schools they attended, were the beneficiaries of what the government says were bribes paid to ANJ Group — a Jefferson family enterprise — in exchange for the influential lawmaker’s help in securing contracts for American companies in western Africa.

The prosecution’s contention that Jefferson solicited bribes to help pay his daughters’ tuition or other expenses at Harvard, Brown and Boston universities and to help provide for them would seem to provide a motive and a measure of poignancy to the proceedings at the Virginia courthouse.

“Every last one of them is well-educated in their fields, ” the Rev. Samson “Skip” Alexander said last month before a tribute to Jefferson in New Orleans by supporters. “It’s a tragedy, ” Alexander said, noting how such an accomplished family — “Are there five sisters anywhere with better academic credentials?” — now finds itself shadowed by this trial. “It’s not a black tragedy, ” said Samson. “It’s an American tragedy.”

Tuition talk on tape

The prosecution’s case will depend heavily on hours of secretly recorded tapes of Jefferson talking to Lori Mody, a Virginia businesswoman who went to the FBI with her suspicions about what Jefferson was doing, and ended up wearing a wire.

In the transcript of a conversation taped June 17, 2005, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, Jefferson explained to Mody how ANJ was named for his wife and children.

The “A, ” he explained, stood for Andrea, his wife, and daughter Akilah. The “N” was for his daughter Nailah. And the “J” was for his three eldest daughters: Jamila, Jalila and Jelani.

“Before I started paying for tuition, I wasn’t poor, ” Jefferson told Mody. “But now I’m kind of poor.”

“Now it’ll be flowing in, ” Mody said.

Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock and Jelani Jefferson Exum are all graduates of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where their father, who grew up in Lake Providence, one of the poorest patches in America, received his law degree.

Jefferson’s fourth daughter, Nailah Jefferson, a documentary filmmaker, is a graduate of Boston University and Emerson College. His fifth daughter, Akilah Jefferson, is a graduate of Brown University and now a student at Tulane University School of Medicine.

“It’s a true blessing to have children with talent who stuck with it all the way through, and didn’t compete with each other but really encouraged each other, ” Jefferson said last month, noting that he was especially proud that his daughters were not just smart but “nice and smart.”

“There’s no gloating, ” he said. “They kept their humility.”

Big checks to colleges

The exhibit list is studded with checks Jefferson and his wife, or ANJ, wrote to their children and to the schools they attended.

There are payments to Brown of $2,942.90 on July 31, 2001, $4,287.72 on Oct. 18, 2001, and $19,518 on Aug. 2, 2002. There are payments to Harvard of $6,500 on June 18, 2001, of $3,504.75 on July 31, 2001, and, on May 17, 2004, a check for $23,645.78 from ANG to Jelani Jefferson Exum, who in turn wrote a check to Harvard for $24,830.78. And there is a $2,402 check from ANJ to Boston University on Oct. 15, 2001, and another $11,145 check from William and Andrea Jefferson to Boston University on June 21, 2002.

Along the way, there are checks of varying amounts for each of the daughters, and $33,000 in checks in 2002 and 2003 to the campaign of Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, a former state representative.

Arriving at the courthouse Tuesday, Jefferson described himself as “blessed” to have his wife and daughters by his side as he stands trial. In his 2007 book, “Dying Is the Easy Part, ” Jefferson presents himself as a doting, devoted and demanding father.

In an e-mail a couple of weeks before the trial, the eldest, Jamila Jefferson-Jones, wrote, “We do not currently have a family spokesperson, nor do we anticipate having one in the future.”

But, asked to square the father depicted in “Dying Is the Easy Part” with the man described by prosecutors, Jefferson-Jones replied simply: “The man described in the Government’s indictment does not exist.”

ignorance and arrogance

It still blows my mind how LSU is toying with health care in New Orleans almost 4 years later. They tried to play the Federal bluff using Katrina to strong arm a new hospital out of the morass. Meanwhile indigent health care continues to languish in southeast Louisiana. Did it ever occur to LSU to simply pick up the phone and ask another successful medical complex (UAB, MD Anderson, Vanderbilt, et al.) how they accomplished their goals? Cause it seems like they are floundering in a lethal combination of ignorance and arrogance…

I don’t believe that deflecting critique by calling New Orleanians idiots and backwards and reluctant to change is broad enough smoke and mirrors to jam LSU’s agenda through the process. And the argument that he doesn’t care to find out the “unique” communication style of south Louisianians (case in point his bewilderment to the use of the term “krewe”), by dismissing it as not worthy of his time does nothing to endear folks to LSU’s cause. You know the old saying “When in Rome”…

James Gill: LSU trying hard to save city from itself
Times-Picayune June 02, 2009 4:59PM

Pearls before swine is putting it mildly. The sparkling intellects of LSU offer New Orleans a lifeline, but the populace is too stupid and backward to be roused from its torpor. Time is running out to get the rabble in line. So says LSU President John Lombardi, who nevertheless remains determined to save New Orleans from itself.

Lombardi is just the man for the job, being, as he is fond of pointing out, from the efficient north. Lombardi got on his hind legs in New Orleans last week to rally the LSU troops in support of the “major academic medical center” proposed for a vast tract in Mid-City. Lombardi’s plans to win over the doubters evidently do not include a charm offensive. He has “never met a place like this, ” where people speak in a “code” he neither understands nor wishes to understand. He doesn’t know from “krewe.” The city does not contain “as many sensible people” as he had hoped — sensible people, of course, being those who agree with him. New Orleans is “on the edge” and Lombardi is offering it one “last opportunity to be a competitive, high-powered American city.” But he is up against idiots who want to “preserve old New Orleans in amber, ” and force LSU to revamp and reopen the old Charity Hospital. It is imperative that the issue be “settled this year, ” and the “Legislature needs to get out of our way.”

Lombardi has all the answers, and he has no patience with lesser intellects. He may well be correct that his medical complex would not only provide care for the uninsured, but bring in the paying patients, re-establishing New Orleans as a major training center and creating good jobs out the wazoo. Right now New Orleans is losing out to Houston, Birmingham and even, an aghast Lombardi told his audience, Arkansas. But if the medical-complex proposal does provide what Lombardi calls a chance “to transform” a city he despises, LSU is hardly the ideal institution to take the lead.

Smug and supercilious academics are always hard to love, all the more so if they don’t talk straight. Hardly a week goes by without a story in the paper about the arrest of some wretch who submitted a fraudulent FEMA claim after Katrina. Try to pocket an illicit couple of grand and the feds will haul you off pronto. LSU, of course, would never do that. It doesn’t deal in such small sums. For a few hundred million, however, it will let its superior imagination run riot. In seeking the full replacement cost of $492 million for Charity, LSU provided an account of the storm damage that was wildly exaggerated. Doctors and military personnel who worked at the hospital immediately after the storm have testified that the hospital had been readied for re-use within weeks, and have produced photographs to prove it. But LSU told a tale of terminal destruction in hopes of grabbing the maximum loot. FEMA was smart enough to see through the misrepresentation, setting fair compensation at $150 million.

Far from being embarrassed by its duplicity, LSU still hopes to get the full $492 million on appeal. Lombardi told his audience that the feds “owe” the state that much and that it is “the critical linchpin point amount.” Does that mean the medical complex won’t happen unless LSU can pull the wool over FEMA’s eyes? That must be a challenge even for the geniuses who run LSU.

It may not be enough anyway, for LSU will still need to borrow at least $400 million, and state Treasurer John Kennedy said last week that bond underwriters will laugh LSU out of the room when they see its business plan for the medical complex. Kennedy uttered those unkind words just hours before Lombardi addressed the troops, assuring them that the business plan had, in fact, been “validated by every smart consultant in the western world.” You’d have to be as dumb as Lombardi thinks we are to believe that. Gov. Bobby Jindal isn’t. The LSU plan, he declared Monday, is inadequate.”

Videos courtesy of Save Charity Hospital

broken promises

Looks like LSU might not get the money needed to build their shiny new hospital after all – they should have refurbished the existing building by now instead of gambling on the pipe-dream of FEMA paying for a new building

The north Louisiana bill requiring LSU to submit a business plan for the proposed hospital

top of the 5pm news

the raw video of state treasurer John Kennedy and LSU’s Dr. Fred Cerise, mano-a-mano

The 10pm news with Dr. Randolph Green admitting to holding back on information concerning the new hospital.

NEW ORLEANS – Supporters of a new LSU Medical Center have remained tight-lipped about their plans for the project and why it is needed for New Orleans, until now. Some worry the prolonged silence, coupled with strong, vocal opposition could harm their efforts to build brand new. “Yes, we have been silent, but I’m tired of it. I’ve decided I’m going to speak out,” said Dr. Randolph Green, chairman of the LSU Health Sciences Center Foundation.

Green is also a staunch supporter of an all new, LSU Academic Medical Center, and worries if supporters of the project continue their silence, a potential $1.2 billion dollar economic engine for New Orleans and the state could be lost for good.

“There are reasons we have held back, but I feel we have been bombarded from every direction and all we want to do is do something positive for city,” said Green.

He blames political agendas, preservationists and other detractors who he says have spread false information about a project he says would only bring more jobs, more money – and greater improvements to a city still reeling from Katrina. “The fact is that these are blighted areas of our community that will remain blighted unless we seize the opportunity to change it and the neighborhood into something very special,” Green said.

As part of LSU’s now open approach, Dr. John Lombardi, LSU system president, came to New Orleans Wednesday night to explain why a new medical center is essential, and how they can make it happen where all universities here would be supported, and so the state isn’t forced to fit the entire bill. “We figured out through LSU a mechanism to have a private not-for-profit corporation affiliated with LSU capable of getting bonds, building a medical center. We are in the process of accomplishing that. It is the same mechanism we used to build Tiger Stadium so we know it works,” said Lombardi.

The key is getting the backing of all, but some residents who support restoring Charity Hospital are still hesitant, and point to the latest action in Baton Rouge, as a small success in their direction. “House Bill 780 has the opportunity to say look, show us the financing, the reality, and don’t do anything until it is in place,” said Brad Ott, who heads a committee to restore Charity Hospital.

“There have been residents who say we support a hospital, and we are glad to move if given a fair price and it is not going to be a wasted move,” he said. Green worries such action in the midst of a fight with FEMA over federal dollars – and in looking toward Washington for support – puts the project in further limbo.

“Every time we have detractors, people throwing shots at us left and right about this project, about LSU trying to create a medical complex empire, they (in Washington) are watching and realize if we can’t get our act together, that money is out the window,” said Green.
As for the ongoing feud with FEMA on the $492 million, Dr. Lombardi said they are suing FEMA and pursuing all administrative and legal avenues to get those funds, critical to a new LSU Medical Center.

Exactly WHY would these “movers and shakers” feel the need to be so tight lipped? If public funds are being used to build this albatross, then their silence should be overturned. There is the reason why John Kennedy and House Representative Ricky Nowlin from Natchitoches are placing this entire process under a microscope

UPDATE 5/28

According to this article from the TP, the state is almost ready to acquire the land in lower Mid-City to build the new hospital.

…state authorities say they are within weeks of securing much of the necessary land, with no intentions of altering course as House Bill 780 by Rep. Rick Nowlin, R-Natchitoches, moves through the Legislature.”I have no plans to stop what I’m doing,” said Pam Perkins, general counsel for the Division of Administration. Perkins is leading the team conducting title searches, appraisals, negotiations with property owners and, where needed, expropriation of 70 acres for the state teaching hospital and adjacent U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.