[Post updated, 9/2/10]

A group of like-minded criminal justice reform advocates is soliciting donations to buy a full-page ad in the Times Picayune next week to protest Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s plan to expand the Orleans Parish jail.

Gusman is proposing a new jail that ultimately will housing about 5,800 people, says the group — up from its existing 3,552 beds. The advocates hope to start a citywide conversation about the proposal by soliciting donations of $22.39 — the daily cost the city pays the sheriff for each inmate. The group also is asking donors to consider what else the city could spend the $22.39 on.

“We’re hearing everything from mental health programs, after school programs, to better street lights and fixing the potholes in the French Quarter,” says Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which is headquartering the effort. “I think it really highlights the fiscal tradeoff the city is making when [it decides] to focus on expanding the jail instead of other services.”

The ad will cost $12,000 and is expected to run next week, Kaplan says.

“In just a few days we have had about 250 contributions, and we’ve raised over $5,000 in grass-roots donations,” she says. “I think what we’re seeing is definitely a groundswell of support for reform of Orleans Parish Prison. This is just through email solicitation and word of mouth.

“The donations are coming from all kinds of likely and unlikely allies. We’re seeing contributions from former judges, former city council members, local musicians, average citizens.”

Some private donors have agreed to match the funds raised by the effort. You can make a donate online through  Paypal until the end of today. There’s an anonymous donation button, if you don’t want your name to appear in the ad.

“A jail comfortable for our community needs to be no more than 857 beds,” says Norris Henderson, executive director of Voice of The Ex-Offender (VOTE), which supports the effort. “We’ve been locking people up for convenience.”

According to the group: Currently 3,500 inmates are in the Orleans Parish Prison, 2,700 of whom are “city prisoners.” That represents the highest rate of detention of any urban jail in the country and is three times the national average. There have also been a series of documented civil rights issues with conditions at the jail.

If you are interested in more details, Karen Gadbois at The Lens has been chronicling the city’s efforts to convene a private advisory committee around the jail expansion process.

Sheriff Gusman responded with an emailed statement through his public relations firm, the  Ehrhardt Group. He questioned the statistics cited by  the group, saying “all of the projections from the Juvenile Justice Project and percentages relative to our population are wrong.”

The sheriff wants a smaller, more efficient jail complex, he wrote, pointing out that the pre-Katrina jail complex housed over 7,500 inmates. Although 4,200 beds is still more than the current 3,552 beds.

The statement also focused on the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, writing: “This special interest group’s willingness to allow the current inmate housing situation to continue, while pursuing its own agenda, is short-sighted and a threat to public safety.”

“Demanding an artificially small facility just to satisfy a quest for national comparisons, in other words to wish New Orleans to be safer, is unrealistic and it puts the public’s safety at risk,” Gusman continued.

The full text of the planned ad is pasted, after the jump, along with the text of Gusman’s statement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Mary Landrieu joined U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon and other Gulf Coast leaders at the downtown Marriott hotel this afternoon to launch the “Ready 4 Takeoff Coalition,” a broad-based lobbying and public relations effort to attract federal compensation and defense spending to the region in the wake of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve been hit and hit and hit and hit again,” Landrieu said. “By storm after storm, flood after flood, and now the BP oil spill, and also the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling, which may cost us more jobs than the oil spill itself.”

The senator was ushered off to her next appointment without taking questions. The press kit for the event was short on details but said the coalition was “committed to building a better tomorrow for the innumerable families, workers, suppliers, manufacturers, and small and large businesses within the region.”

Its economic development initiatives include securing a $40 billion federal government contract for EADS North America to build a KC-45 Real Tanker (pictured) in Mobile, Ala.

Ready 4 Takeoff — get it?

“There’s going to be a significant amount of money paid to the federal government in the aftermath of the spill,” Landrieu said in prepared remarks. “And our congressional group is claiming that 80 percent of that money be spent in the Gulf of Mexico region. Whether it’s $5 billion or $20 billion, depending on if the courts find BP simply or grossly negligent, we’re going to spend that money from Florida to Texas.

“BP is going to replace every blade of grass, every fish destroyed, every pelican oiled, and we are going to hold BP accountable.”

The other politicians and commerce leaders from Mississippi, Florida and Alabama talked in similarly broad terms about BP being made to pay, but were also short on specifics when it came to defense spending, even though the coalition’s members include Airbus Americas, which is owned by EADS North America and stands to benefit directly from the tanker contract.

In addition to the refueling jet, the initiative seeks to push the federal government to purchase more Gulf Coast seafood for military and school contracts, accelerate revenue sharing from offshore oil and gas development, and acquire federal money for projects like the U.S. High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program in Alabama and Mississippi.

The roundabout nature of the rhetoric stood in contrast to the specific request for a $40 billion defense contract.

“We’re talking to each other, building relationships and coalitions,” Mobile Mayor Sam Jackson said after Landrieu had left the building.

“People are scared of what they can’t see, and what they don’t know,”  Melancon said. “It’s important the message gets out to people that the beaches are open and the seafood is safe to eat.”

Again, no mention of the military jets being safe to refuel. But you can sign the petition online, if you’re interested.

During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, based largely on information provided by Chalabi and his allies—almost all of which have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate.

At what point are some in the media going to admit they Judy Millered the impact of the oil disaster?

The Washington Post: Scientists report undersea oil plume stretching 21 miles from BP spill site

Academic scientists are challenging the Obama administration’s assertion that most of BP’s oil is either gone or rapidly disappearing — citing, among other evidence, the discovery of an undersea “plume” of oil stretching more than 21 miles from the well site.

The New York Times: Gulf Oil Plume Is Not Breaking Down Fast, Research Says

“I expect the hydrocarbon imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life,” Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, told Congress in prepared testimony on Thursday. “The oil is not gone and is not going away anytime soon.”

The Wall Street Journal: Study Says Gulf Oil Spill Caused Manhattan-Size Plume

At the height of the Deepwater Horizon spill, oil escaping from the damaged well was trapped underwater in a drifting plume of hydrocarbons the size of Manhattan and helped turn the Gulf of Mexico into a test-tube of experimental petroleum chemistry, scientists who probed the submerged spill region said Thursday. …

By confirming the existence of this submerged plume, the new data also challenge government estimates that the vast majority of the 4.9 million barrels of spilled oil is already gone from the Gulf or being rapidly broken down by bacteria, several marine experts said.

Instead, some of that oil may persist deep underwater and in seafloor sediments—at levels thousands of times higher than those caused by the natural oil seeps that dot the Gulf sea floor—where it can elude conventional detection and clean-up efforts, scientists said.

Meanwhile, here’s ABC News’ front page at this moment. It contains news about Jennifer Aniston, the “Mystery of Beer Goggles Revealed,” the new girlfriend of cable star Jesse James, and something about blind waiters serving people in the dark … but not word one about the reappearing oil, much less the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico:

The phrase “Sounds like an Onion headline” is pretty common these days. I saw this, and asked the reverse: “Shrimp Boat Captain Worn Out From Long Day Of Putting Human Face On Crisis“

The Onion’s coverage of the oil disaster has been perfect — biting commentary wrapped in easily viral, satirical news nuggets. But the headline above, and its following story, seem almost true. Fishermen, shrimpers and Gulf coastal residents really are feeling pretty overwhelmed. Yeah, it’s a funny bit, but there’s some truth in there. Kindra Arnesen says she has been interviewed at least 300 times, and it’s not enough. She knows residents on the Gulf need the media to tell their stories, so she’ll keep telling hers. Other reporters have talked with dozens of sources on the Gulf, more than once or twice. It’s exhausting work, so a lot of phrases and information are repeated.

And now we’re in Day Two of shrimping season. Is testing enough? Will people eat the catch? Are suppliers and warehouses and factories even buying? Few are on the water. Others are sticking with the BP checks, knowing there’s plenty of work to do and hoping BP is willing to stick with them through the bitter end in the months and years to come.

Below, Kindra Arnesen (at 10:40) and fishermen’s families at a Sunday rally in Panama City Beach:

It was Michael Grunwald’s July 29 story in Time — “The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?” that set off a cascade of disingenous national media stories asking “Where is the oil?” And there’s nothing more disingenuous than the use of the question mark in that headline, which allows for all kinds of wiggle room and crawfishing when people sit down and consider the obvious: that an oil disaster several times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill does not just “vanish.” Grunwald may have been careful to make it clear that the long-term effects were unknowable, but that didn’t stop other media outlets from running with that horrible, misleading, crawfishing headline as the takeaway, and so we had things like this:

So today I’m wondering if this report by actual marine scientists — not BP officials, not BP-paid experts, and not cable-news blowhards — will get the same splashy treatment:

A report released today by the Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia concludes that up to 79 percent of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem.

The report, authored by five prominent marine scientists, strongly contradicts media reports that suggest that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill remains.

“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” said Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”

Download the UGA scientists’ report here … and then keep an eye out to see if it gets the same sort of screaming headlines that Grunwald’s story did.