New Orleans Notebook: Freezing Budgets, Overheating Pants

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Recommended playlist for driving around New Orleans: Songs off the CDs my friends sent each other while we were spread around the country for several months after Katrina. Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks,” of course. Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting,” where “I’ve got the ways and means” rhymes with “New Orleans.” (It’s okay because it’s a song, though employing that long “e” under any other circumstances would be supremely uncool.) The New Pornographers’ “The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism” for obvious reasons; an Erasure cover of Abba’s “S.O.S.” because we thought a reference to a sinking ship was kind of funny.

My destination: The University of New Orleans. I’m working on a story about the state of higher education post-Katrina, which may or may not end up being a story about how Bobby Jindal’s a douchebag.

My first interview was with a former provost and current faculty member. He does not like it when legislators blame UNO’s drastic budget cuts on diminished state revenues without mentioning that the tax code was recently revised specifically to diminish revenues. Back in 2002, an amendment called the Stelly Plan eliminated some sales taxes but implemented a new income tax. Two years ago, Jindal eliminated the new income tax without implementing anything to make up for the revenue loss.

So UNO is on a budget freeze. An assistant told me that no one is authorized to buy pens; she confessed to having stolen and hoarded some from another office. I talked to a faculty member on his way to a meeting where they were going to make a list of staff to be fired when the next round of budget cuts come through. “It’s like something out of a terrible movie,” he said, “where some of the prisoners have to die and the officers are all gathering around to decide…Have you ever seen Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory?”

I got a way rosier picture over at the vice chancellor for campus services’ office. Though the campus still has some significant Katrina damage, five years later, the university has already spent $60 or $70 million and has $30 million or so to go before reconstruction is complete. Whether or not there is any faculty around to teach the students, supposedly it’ll be done by the end of next year.

UNO is in better physical shape than some other institutions are, certainly better than some entire neighborhoods, like the one I’m staying in. It is, as it tends to be, too hot to wear pants if you don’t have to, and the other day I took a phone call leaning against the cool glass of the living room windows. I later apologized to the friend who’s giving me run of his unused property for showing the neighbors my underwear. “Those houses across the street are still empty,” he said. “There’s nobody there.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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