[StBernard] Why Should Anyone Care About Louisiana?

[Westley Annis]

Louisiana is solidly Republican and is not a swing state, but it should be
front and center in every political discussion in this important election
year. Louisiana ranks fourth in crude oil production, and 2 percent of U.S.
oil reserves are located in her waterways. The state's natural gas reserves
account for about 5 percent of the U.S. total, and it is the port of entry
and exit for the largest inland shipping waterway in the United States.
Commerce and the economy from Minneapolis to New Orleans rises and falls
upon the Mississippi River infrastructure, tariffs, and value added taxes.

Polls show Louisiana still solidly in the red column, even with Obama's
recent surge in national polls. Louisiana has a popular incumbent Democratic
senator in Mary Landrieu who has come out enthusiastically for Obama now
that she is solidly ahead in her own reelection bid. Her opponent, state
Senator John Kennedy, ran as a Democrat in 2004 and lost to Republican David
Vitter, who was recently involved in a sex scandal. This is Huey Long
country after all, and politics can be as crazy as Mardi Gras. 

That's the thumbnail political/economic sketch.

The human sketch is surprising, sad, and begs many questions that the
candidates should answer, noting Louisiana's importance to the US economy
and how the local population supports an infrastructure that impacts the
rest of the country. Consider the fact that Louisiana is ranked number 42 in
per capita income in the United States, and 19.2 percent of Louisiana's
population lives below the poverty line, and the reasons why someone should
care about Louisiana become more compelling. 

Newly elected Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, who some see as future
presidential timber, is at the helm of state government. It is highly
unlikely that candidates will make appearances down here in the final two
weeks of the election, even though many parts of the state are still reeling
from the after effects of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and crashing oil prices
are putting a damper on rosy predictions for budget surpluses. 

Governor Jindal admits a one billion dollar budget shortfall is inevitable
next year, but does not seem worried. He says now that he won't raise taxes.
Perhaps it is because oil continues to flow like never before in Cajun
country. The oil and gas industry is booming and "millionaires are being
made overnight," according to Dr. Loren C. Scott president of Loren C. Scott
and Associates, an economic consulting firm. {Source: Tri Parish Times,
October 8, 2008}

The New Orleans Times Picayune senses something in the winds, and it is not
just the smell of the petrochemical plants. The Times Picayune said Tuesday,
"in recent weeks, just as the financial crunch has slowed business on a
global scale, the state appears to have tipped toward a decline on key
indicators, creating an unclear and perhaps gloomy forecast for Louisiana
commerce and government."

Falling oil prices in a state where each dollar paid per barrel equates to
$12 million dollars can wreck a budget in a hurry. Louisiana counts on
severance taxes and royalties from oil and gas production on its turf. There
are other shortfalls as well. Jindal's budget advisor, Angele Davis, told
the press this week that corporate income tax has declined for the first
time in five years and personal income tax has fallen for the first time in
20 years. That's the thumbnail political/economic sketch. 

Louisiana is America's third largest producer of petroleum and also leads in
petroleum refining. You will find the largest concentration of crude oil
refineries, natural gas processing plants and petrochemical production
plants in the entire Western hemisphere here. Louisiana supplies twenty five
percent of the US supply of natural gas. Port Fourchon in Terrebonne Parish
serves over 90 percent of the Gulf's oil production activity.

Go over any bridge from New Orleans to Lake Charles after dark and this fact
is brought home with the orange glow of gas vents painting the night sky a
sickly hue, blotting out the stars, and creating a huge carbon footprint.
Louisiana is America's second largest producer of natural gas, supplying
more than one-quarter of the total U.S. production. Louisiana pioneered the
techniques of offshore drilling and the oil companies ruined the protective
barrier of the wetlands in the process. 

Speaking of wetlands, Louisiana has the longest coastline (15,000 miles) of
any state and 41 percent of the nation's wetland -- or it used to before the
last three years of hurricanes, beginning with Katrina and ending with Ike. 

Louisiana leads in sugar cane production and petrochemicals. Louisiana is
also home to "cancer alley," the geographical corridor between Baton Rouge,
New Orleans and the Delta Parishes (counties). You will find clusters of the
rarest childhood cancers here, as well as epidemics of lung cancer and
spikes in childhood asthma during sugar cane burning season.

Louisiana's commercial fishing industry produces 25 percent of all the
seafood in America. More shrimp are caught in Louisiana waters than in any
other place in America, but the industry is in deep trouble because of
foreign imports of cheaper farm raised shrimp, and the imports are full of
pollutants according to some studies.

The standard of living in some areas compares with third world countries.
You don't need a study to prove this. Just drive around.

This week George Bush was in Alexandria with the Central Louisiana Chamber
of Commerce saying "I have heard that people's attitudes are beginning to
change from a period of intense concerns -- I would call it near panic -- to
being more relaxed," he said. 

Chamber President Elton Pody was "impressed" that Bush took notes at the
meeting, which he later folded up and put in his coat pocket, according to a
report published on an Alexandria blog Bush also said that without prayers
and Christian guidance, he wouldn't know where he would be. He said that he
was "sure the Lord would never give him more than he could handle."

One wonders if the same can be said of the poor and dispossessed of
Louisiana. The oil machine is humming and perhaps that is why the national
press ignores compelling social and economic issues, and no pressure is put
on the candidates to comment specifically on how to fix our national energy
policy.

Some may shrug and say, "well this is the deep south after all," still under
the Napoleonic Rule of Law. That is a common misconception. It is incorrect
to equate the Louisiana Civil Code with the Napoleonic Code but it is a
regular occurrence.

Louisiana is the place where back bayous run deep and mysterious, home of
filming for the Tarzan movies and creepy horror films. Holy Cajun healers
practice here, and so do Voodoo priests and priestesses in a largely
Protestant religious landscape. 

Cajuns and Creoles, descendants of French-speaking Acadians from colonial
French Acadia, populate the Delta region. They are the remnants of the great
American Diaspora celebrated in Longfellow's Evangeline. 



Driven out of Nova Scotia for refusing to pledge allegiance to British rule,
the Acadian "migration" can be called a genocide and descendants are still
paying the price. The cemeteries are hauntingly beautiful and Evangeline
lives in memory in St. Martinsville as if she were real. Some believe that
she was. 



Evangeline's memory gives hope to a vanishing culture and lifestyle, where
until recently, English was considered a second language in some areas.

Louisiana residents are experiencing a huge disconnect between what the
politicians and industry experts are saying vs. the personal realities of
their livelihoods. Louisiana lost 1,700 manufacturing jobs from August 2007
to August 2008.

Since the hurricanes of 2005-08, a large part of the labor force has left.
No one knows for certain, but New Orleans seems to be short about 200,000
people since Katrina, most of them poor and reliably Democratic voters who
have moved on. FEMA graft and mismanagement is an on-going story and no
longer surprising or newsworthy.

General Motors recently laid off almost 800 employees at its Shreveport
plant. No surprise there. The plant produces gas guzzling pickups and
Hummers -- but if the oil continues to come out of the ground like never
before -- producing those overnight millionaires--why lay them off? Is there
enough oil, or not?

Other analysts say that the Louisiana economy is outperforming the nation
because of oil, hurricane reconstruction, and imports fueled by a weak
dollar. Talk to locals and the obvious question is "where's the money?"

A 49-year-old grocery clerk at a neighborhood market in Morgan City said she
has never registered to vote. When asked why, she did not bat an eye,
saying, "Why should I? Politicians ain't gonna do nothin' for me baby." 

Yeah, everyone here calls you, "baby." I kind of like it -- a comforting
greeting for a road warrior.

I ask the clerk about the stories that there aren't enough workers to fill
the offshore job openings.

She looks at me like I'm nuts and tells me that her two sons were laid off
twice by the oil industry in the last year. They are welders and pipe
fitters; just what the industry claims they are looking for. Morgan City has
is anchored to the offshore drilling and oceaneering industries. The Morgan
City Daily Review recently published a sixteen-page broadsheet supplement
featuring three of the companies, Oceaneering, Diamond Services, and Veolia
Environmental Services. 

Morgan City is also home to "Mr. Charlie," a once cutting-edge offshore
drilling rig that is now a training facility for would be roustabouts. Mr.
Charlie drilled the first oil well for Shell in the Mississippi River and
was kept in service for thirty years, before retiring to its place on the
Morgan City waterfront in 1986.

I stopped by the rig museum where Charlie is tethered and class was in
session for offshore trainees, so there is truth to the rumor that the jobs
are out there.

Still, the money is not reaching the local economy. The neighborhood within
shouting distance of Mr. Charlie looks like something out of the Great
Depression. A source within the ocean industry responded to my query about
"where's the oil money?" with the admonition that "perhaps the money just
stays in the same circles." There is also the consideration that the older
labor is unskilled.

Louisiana is also home to Capitol city Baton Rouge, named as "one of the
best places to ride out the coming recession," by Business Week. "Gulf
Opportunity Zone incentives following the 2005 hurricane season definitely
have insulated Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the national financial
downturn," Business Week said. I am wondering how this can be true.

So, is it possible to separate economic fact from fiction in Louisiana?

Editor/publisher Steve Shirley of the Morgan City Daily Review (circulation
5,597) sat down with OfftheBus for a good two hours and offered a regional
tutorial. Shirley still runs his newspaper the old-fashioned way and prints
the broadsheet in the back room on a mammoth Goss press. The Internet
newspaper meets with a "real" newspaper guy. It's the local guys who
understand their community best and Shirley is passionate about Louisiana.
He's lived in the area for 35 years and hails from Spartanburg, SC, a
southern boy, through and through.

Pale blue eyes flashing behind gold-rimmed glasses, Shirley moves his arms
up and down as he illustrates Louisiana's economic fortunes in relation to
the price of oil. Responding to a question about the seeming inequity of
Louisiana's dismal place ranking in per capita income, Shirley is quick to
respond that it was not always so.

"In the 1970's Louisiana was in the top five ranking for everything. The
crash happened in the eighties when all of the white-collar jobs left and
went to Houston. Mobile, Texaco and Shell, they all just left," Shirley said
while his eyes conveyed deep frustration that it happened at all.

"After that we lost the blue collar coattail industries like Halliburton and
Brown and Root. They all lost touch, keeping field offices open, but only
the grunts stayed while the bosses left."

Shirley emphasizes that oil is booming. "Offshore is going and blowing like
never before," he said.

Does he think McCain and Obama understand the economics of oil?

"What we need is a guy who can stop the US energy patch (oil producing
capability) from being cyclical."

"So, the cry down here would be 'drill, baby, drill?'"

The blue eyes stare me down.

"Well, we are all for energy independence, I can tell you that," Shirley
says. "Nobody will disagree, it rings the cash register, although I might
want to change the slogan to 'Give us more of the royalties.'"

"In the seventies, when we were importing 25-30 percent of our oil, we were
caught with our pants down. It was a crazy then as it is now. For two months
after Ike, you had a hard time finding gas in the southeast."

Shirley leans back in his chair and reflects for a moment. My eyes drift to
the crawl on the muted television, perched on a double set of file cabinets,
tuned to CNN, and focused on the candidates out on the campaign trail. The
editor stretches and gets me refocused and back to business.

"The most important thing Louisiana needs right now is a national energy
policy. We have to take the roller coaster out of the economy here and learn
to live within the reality of what we can do. We need the same economic
protections and scale as corn producers. OPEC could put us in a real
economic tailspin -- all we would need would be another terrorist attack.
Fuel is volatile by its nature -- the energy market is volatile in a whole
other way."

Shirley fidgets and stretches again. He is clearly frustrated, but it is not
with the conversation.

"I don't think either Obama or McCain has a clue what to do about energy.
America is in a serious leadership vacuum," he says.

"The little people like Joe the Plumber have no real influence on national
politics. The pollsters tell the politicians what to say, but they won't
deliver on the promises."

I wonder silently what "Horace the Roustabout" would have to say.

Our time has run out, but my notebook is filled with other observations that
will come into play as this series continues. The story of Louisiana will
have to be a series. Trying to explain the economic realities of the delta
economy in one article is like trying to paint the intricacies of the
anatomy of a dragonfly with a paint roller.

I think about William Faulkner melded with Shakespeare in Mississippi's
Yoknapatawpha County and worry that my stories will be like "those of an
idiot...signifying nothing."

Driving through the dilapidated neighborhood just steps away from a billion
dollar infrastructure, I spy Rose's Café. The sign says "open," so I park my
car on the otherwise deserted street and try the front door, hoping for a
cold one and conversation on a hot afternoon. A newer Dodge Ram Hemi cruises
by slowly and the driver looks at me and then averts his gaze.



Bummer. A padlock ends my plans. 

I regroup and decide to take a second drive out to see the decommissioned
Mr. Charlie.


Mr. Charlie becomes a distraction from my worry, and while no one is
watching I climb to the top of the rig and look out across the waterway
which holds the key to a nation's economic security, at least for the
foreseeable future. 



It feels romantic and nostalgic to be up here, alone, on Mr. Charlie. How
many million gallons of crude were pumped through this infrastructure back
in the day? I pull the notebook out of my back jean pocket and make a note
to call to call someone with the question. One last look around and I bound
down the steps, the height producing intoxication, and walk across the grass
parking lot to my car. Turning around for one last look, I see that Mr.
Charlie is not alone; an ancient tow vessel the "Clipper Patricia" is lashed
to his side like a lover. The stories they could tell.



Oil will come into play later, but next up is a look at sugar, how it
figures into the ethanol debate, and how "cane" has been both a blessing and
a curse to the bayou country since slavery.

If only the candidates were interested in the story of Louisiana as well. It
is a fantastic story and it is a wonder that the Delta is not crawling with
writers and politicians.