Important context from the article includes things such as: unspent funds remain available for future projects; the works were predicted to have a devastating impact on local wildlife, such as killing an estimated 6,000 dolphins; this is not a partisan issue, as there have been outspoken Dems and Republicans on either side; also devastating impact to the local fishing industry was predicted, prompting a $400m lawsuit to curtail the project.
gpm · 2h ago
> unspent funds remain available for future projects
Not according to the article?
> Its collapse means that the state could lose out on more than $1.5 billion in unspent funds and may even have to repay the $618 million it already used to begin building.
rascul · 2h ago
From the article:
> The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a mix of federal agencies overseeing the settlement funds, said that “unused project funds will be available for future Deepwater Horizon restoration activities” but would require review and approval.
throwawaysleep · 2h ago
You would probably make up the dolphin lives on curtailing the fishery.
bena · 3h ago
Goddamn morons running the state. Throwing away $3b in funds to pretend what’s happening isn’t happening.
birn559 · 10m ago
Very often, things make much more sense than journalists want you to believe.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
> Its collapse means that the state could lose out on more than $1.5 billion in unspent funds and may even have to repay the $618 million it already used to begin building.
This is at the same time the state is protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits.
toast0 · 2h ago
If I'm reading this right, which is hard because most of the information is missing... The whole project is $3B. Someone else is kicking in $1.5B, $618M has already been spent, so maybe completion requires $872M and not completion takes $618M. Or maybe $618M was spent of the outside contribution, so it's $1.5B to complete and $618M to cancel?
If the state doesn't have the money, cancellation sounds less expensive than completion, in the short term. Of course, the costs for not doing the coastal repairs will continue to acrue, but if there's no money, there's no money?
nine_k · 2h ago
How have these goddamn morons got elected? How high the voter turnout has been?
I'm afraid it's not stupidity, but malfeasance, likely fueled by some kind of corruption.
(It's not impossible, of course, that Louisiana's population universally hates the coastal cleanup effort and demands to stop it, no matter what it costs,and the administration just followsthe will of the people. Somehow I never heard of such unusual sentiment though.)
chneu · 1h ago
There is an amazing book about this. The author interviewed hundreds of people down in Alabama to get an idea of how they felt about these things.
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild.
The gist of it is that people think short term. They can care about the environment/greater good but if you promise them jobs/prosperity in the short term they'll usually vote for that, despite their livelihood/environment being destroyed by the industry that promised them the jobs. Then when things don't work out they blame minorities, women, etc for "cutting in line" with the help of people like Obama and democrats.
It's really not that complicated which, imo, is kind of sad.
munificent · 1h ago
> it's not stupidity, but malfeasance, likely fueled by some kind of corruption
As someone who grew up in Louisiana: it's all three. It's always all three.
KennyBlanken · 2h ago
Gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, that's how. The Republican party itself produced internal documents and powerpoints that said, essentially, "the majority of Americans don't like most of our policies so we need to cheat."
So, you get things like too few polling locations with short hours. No, limited, or heavily restricted vote-by-mail regulations (except for service members, of course.) You get voter ID laws. It's all the tail end of a very long snake of suppressing the votes of non-whites and to a lesser degree, the poor.
Methods tried: couldn't vote unless you owned land. Or paid a poll tax. Or you have to pass a literacy test with comical testing "procedures."
Each time the supreme court struck down one of their methods, southern republicans turned to some other way of weeding out black voters. Disqualifying people for being felons after Nixon's reclassification of pot to schedule 1 is one example.
Then they started leaning heavily into gerrymandering, simply carving up progressive voting areas into tiny pieces among largely conservative areas all but guaranteeing it would be impossible to elect a progressive representative.
When robodialer got to be commonplace, they started using robocalls to spread misinformation about when election day was, about polling stations being closed, telling people to go to the wrong locations, and so on.
The latest cheat: claim massive voter fraud without any evidence, but keep hammering away at the claim and then use that claim to pass voter ID laws...
morninglight · 3h ago
> ...an urgent response to climate change but Gov. Jeff Landry viewed as a threat to the state’s way of life.
Gov. Jeff Landry thinks stupidity is a way of life???
cFyrute · 2h ago
As per the article, the fishing industry is what he was referring to as the "state's way of life" here. Not "stupidity", obviously.
Not according to the article?
> Its collapse means that the state could lose out on more than $1.5 billion in unspent funds and may even have to repay the $618 million it already used to begin building.
> The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a mix of federal agencies overseeing the settlement funds, said that “unused project funds will be available for future Deepwater Horizon restoration activities” but would require review and approval.
This is at the same time the state is protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits.
If the state doesn't have the money, cancellation sounds less expensive than completion, in the short term. Of course, the costs for not doing the coastal repairs will continue to acrue, but if there's no money, there's no money?
I'm afraid it's not stupidity, but malfeasance, likely fueled by some kind of corruption.
(It's not impossible, of course, that Louisiana's population universally hates the coastal cleanup effort and demands to stop it, no matter what it costs,and the administration just followsthe will of the people. Somehow I never heard of such unusual sentiment though.)
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_in_Their_Own_Land
The gist of it is that people think short term. They can care about the environment/greater good but if you promise them jobs/prosperity in the short term they'll usually vote for that, despite their livelihood/environment being destroyed by the industry that promised them the jobs. Then when things don't work out they blame minorities, women, etc for "cutting in line" with the help of people like Obama and democrats.
It's really not that complicated which, imo, is kind of sad.
As someone who grew up in Louisiana: it's all three. It's always all three.
So, you get things like too few polling locations with short hours. No, limited, or heavily restricted vote-by-mail regulations (except for service members, of course.) You get voter ID laws. It's all the tail end of a very long snake of suppressing the votes of non-whites and to a lesser degree, the poor.
Methods tried: couldn't vote unless you owned land. Or paid a poll tax. Or you have to pass a literacy test with comical testing "procedures."
Each time the supreme court struck down one of their methods, southern republicans turned to some other way of weeding out black voters. Disqualifying people for being felons after Nixon's reclassification of pot to schedule 1 is one example.
Then they started leaning heavily into gerrymandering, simply carving up progressive voting areas into tiny pieces among largely conservative areas all but guaranteeing it would be impossible to elect a progressive representative.
When robodialer got to be commonplace, they started using robocalls to spread misinformation about when election day was, about polling stations being closed, telling people to go to the wrong locations, and so on.
The latest cheat: claim massive voter fraud without any evidence, but keep hammering away at the claim and then use that claim to pass voter ID laws...
Gov. Jeff Landry thinks stupidity is a way of life???