New Orleans Today Sandra Bullock, recently an Academy Award winning best actress and since Hurricane Katrina a laser focused supporter and annual homecoming queen of Warren Easton High School on Canal Street, demanded her piece on a promo video done by “Women of the Storm” about Gulf restoration be removed because she refused to front and ‘ho for oil companies. No worry, Senator Mary Landrieu, who wears a permanent tattoo signaling her allegiance to oil companies working in the Gulf, was glad to step right, no research needed, to take one for the storm troopers.
Bullock doesn’t like being played for a fool it seems. She just solved a little problem like that in her personal life from what I’ve read. After doing her part, hoping to help Gulf recovery, she came to understand (thanks to www.deSmogBlog.com which I’m putting on my Google Reader, thank you!) that the storm troopers were joined at the hip with America’s WETLAND Foundation, which has been a “soft core” coastal restoration outfit created (according to Bruce Alpert in the Times-Picayune) with state money and slicked down with oil company contributions (which is a little disingenuous given the huge role they have played in coastal destruction!).
Bullock wants to know the “facts” her release said about the connections. To start with the storm troopers have been a vehicle for Anne Milling since Katrina and based on cozy, old school, uptown relationships with the Times-Picayune, Whitney Bank, oil interests, and others have been a favored darling at the fuzzy point of “elite panic” about the city and its future since the storm. Other than fly an almost entirely lily white delegation of upper crust women to DC in a chartered plane to speak for our 2/3rds African-American and poor city, I’m not sure what they ever did at all, but they were the long toothed, debutante ball in a bad post-K season. America’s WETLAND Foundation’s chair is her husband King Milling, a former bigwig at Whitney Bank, the old school and oil field standard in New Orleans. Milling is Mr. Public Relations, having been quoted by me in the past for his refusal to accept pay limits as a bailed out bank and his opposition to rebuilding the 9th ward and other black majority parts of the city. Of course he’s there as a front for oil and finance interests. No waves will hit them from on his shore watch.
Alpert quotes: “A written statement Thursday from Women of the Storm said America’s WETLAND is listed as a sponsor of the Restore the Gulf effort because it agreed to help with logistics, such as presenting the signed petitions to Congress and the administration.” Huh? What are the storm troopers going to do then? Or the US Mail if planes are not landing at National or Dulles airports? DeSmogBlog says both groups are fronts for a taxpayer bailout for British Petroleum’s cleanup and a full tilt, no change charge to return to business as usual by the oil companies in the Gulf. Neither group has gotten the memo that those days are now gone in the wake of the oil spill.
So, I’m for running Bullock for Governor. She makes stuff happen. She seems like she doesn’t want to shill for either the elites or the special interests. She doesn’t hesitate to walk her own talk. Rather than just politic about education, she rolls up her sleeves and makes change happen. She actually seems to care about both Louisiana and New Orleans and given her deep Austin, Texas roots that must represent a life changing experience, which is also a good thing. Given our constant war with crime as well, her experience with the FBI from “Miss Congeniality” won’t hurt. She’s a huge football fan from what I gather from “Blind Side” and that puts her in good stead with the vast majority of Louisianans smitten with the LSU Tigers and the New Orleans Saints. Given the amount of tax money that the State of Louisiana hands over to the film industry in tax breaks, she would at least make sure we got something on the backside because he has experience watching the books of these film folks.
I’d switch from a clown now to a star tomorrow in a flash: Sandra Bullock for Governor of Louisiana!