Thursday, February 18, 2010

It's Like the Trinity....

...you're not supposed to understand it cause it's a goddamn mystery.

UPDATE: Claude Mauberret drops out of assessor's race

I have it under good authority from multiple sources that this plan was hatched between Mauberret and Williams last summer before the race even started.

The idea is that if they could both get into the runoff, one of them would drop out while the other carried out the following game plan: Which ever one takes the single assessor's seat would then hire back all the independent assessors, i.e., Arnold, Mauberret, Heaton, Mire, etc., as Deputy Assessors and essentially we're right back to the same old scheme we had before we decided to create a single assessor system.

The only real chance at change was Lemle, as my fellow bloggers heralded before the election:

NOLA-dishu: Dirty Politics and the Campaign for the Next Assessor

Most consequential race flying under radar

In some respect, I agree with Eli's title....the assessor's position does have enormous consequences on the city as a whole although the cause/effect isn't as immediately recognizable as higher profile government positions. But the cumulative effects of bad tax assessments can be devastating to the community as I came to realize while making "Left Behind".

So essentially in our attempt to move from 7 assessors to 1....we now have 7 assessors with a Super-Assessor....or 7-6=8

It's like the Trinity....3 is 1, 1 is 3....don't question the logic just have blind faith in the powers that be. Williams is the Pope and the 7 deputies are the archbishops, the question is how they decide the tithe and divvy up the alms....I assume it's every padre for himself.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who oversees the assessor?

Jason Brad Berry said...

you and I.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Ultimately the State Tax Office, I'm told.

Jason Brad Berry said...

http://www.latax.state.la.us/

Anonymous said...

I've said it before (well, anonymous me anyway...) and I'll say it again:

Systemic reform is needed, not just a new mayor (and the systemic reform needs to be applied to him, not excused because of him). That partly includes:

Passing and enforcing Fielkow's transparency ordinance (which the LA SOS says we don't need anyway but the mayors say we do);

Pre-review of contracts;

Itemized budgeting;

City Manager responsible to the Council;

City Assessor who works for the Council and who basically plugs in the numbers;

A city inventory; and

An accounting, audit and org-charting of all 142+ entities identified by IG Cerasoli.

Anonymous said...

That was so sad about Lemle.

Anonymous said...

@Anon: "That was so sad about Lemle."

Yeah, did you see this bit from Ch. 4?:

"Williams said he's spoken with Mauberret, 1st District Assessor Darren Mire, and 6th District Deputy Assessor Janis Lemlee about possibly working in his office."

Wait and see if she gets to be part of the ol' team too.

http://www.wwltv.com/news/Newly-elected-Williams-looking-for-more-efficient-assessors-office.html

Anonymous said...

yeah except it's NOT the same as having multiple assessors again. with one office we now have ONE budget, ONE software system, ONE set of policies by which we are all evaluated against.

I'm not sure how the cynics can't see the benefits of this, deputy assessors or no.

Anonymous said...

I thought the Trinity was onion, celery, and green pepper.

Anonymous said...

...i always wondered: why celery? i mean, when i eat celery stalks its not very flavorful. why wouldnt it be, oh i dunno, garlic?

Anonymous said...

I thought the Trinity was when you met a nice girl who still let's you put it in all three...

Anonymous said...

thanks for that, last anon.

To answer above anon's question about celery, I think it is because the mirepoix, the "trinity" in French cooking, onion, celery, and carrot, may have influenced the Louisiana trinity.

Celery was and may still be considered an important medicinal vegetable, and was for some reason considered an aphrodisiac food.

Culpepper's herbal says it is used to detoxify the body and purify the blood. Chinese medicine considers it bittersweet and cooling.

Jason Brad Berry said...

So I would parallel celery to the Holy Spirit, then....the most mysterious of the constituent elements which make up the Trinity.

I never really understood what the Holy Spirit was as a Catholic kid. It was always represented either by a flame or a dove...two metaphors which certainly don't mix unless you like char-grilled poultry.

Then I was subjected to the evangelical churches in my small hillybilly town, where people would get up in the middle of the church aisles and go completely apeshit...they were supposedly filled with the holy spirit. So I always figured it was like moonshine.

Hey maybe I just figured out the mystery of the Trinity....a moonshine blood mary with a celery stalk, carrot and onion...the one true path to salvation. We'll throw a clove of garlic in there for good measure.

I'll down one of those, then I'll ask my wife about the other anon theory....no....never mind...that's the path to divorce, not salvation.

I think we just invented a new drink...the Bloody Trinity. Damn, this blog is on roll, we've created two new words...carpetblogger and chronocentrism....and we we've created two new drinks...the MAS Portal and the Bloody Trinity.

Are any of you guys patent lawyers?

Anonymous said...

Irish Catholic kids are told that the Trinity is like a shamrock, three in one: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

My RK (Religious Knowledge) teacher explained that one way of thinking of the Holy Ghost was to think of it as Love, even as "The Love between the Father and the Son".

She also said it was "the female aspect of the Divine", which after telling us it was about the Love a father has for his son was totally confusing.

Then we got to the flame and the dove.

By then were were of course sure to never ask a question of anyone in authority ever again as they were all obviously...apeshit was a marvelous word to use.

I think adding to all of this by understanding the Holy Ghost as somehow akin to celery makes as much or more sense than any of the rest of it.

I'd like one of those drinks, please.

Jason Brad Berry said...

yeah i want one of those drinks too...i was thinking about it and I bet it would be rather goddamn tasty. I'm really curious what the garlic clove would do to it.

I think the rule of thumb should be you have to drink to drink 3 of them then you can understand the mystery of the Trinity.

By the way..are you sure you're RK teacher wasn't talking about the love between THE Father, as in Padre, and a son?

The power of the Holy Spirit compels you...to keep your mouth shut.

Anonymous said...

I was going to write something rude about priests but I decided not to.

Fill in the blank with your own rude thought about preists.

Would the assessors know anything about Mr. Aryan and his Land Enterprises?

Buildings being just given away to "foundations" that pledge to do good with them, a pledge given once they are dragged into the sunlight and the bad start they are off to is revealed...

The people who do assessments must know something about the properties deemed so worthless they just give them away?

Anonymous said...

I have a juicer. I juiced a green pepper and a celery stalk; mixed that with the tomato juice and other Bloody Mary ingredients. Finished the trinity but adding little cocktail onions. It was pretty good.

Jason Brad Berry said...

but did you make it with Vodka or Pure Grain? Since you can't get real corn squeezed moonshine down here, I would substitute Everclear. Plus I think you need to add some minced garlic just to see what that does.

lil'oya said...

for instances of nagin giving buundles of land to his buddies, you should look into neighborhood housing services'(NHS) 07-08ish acquisition of major acreage in lots around st. bernard and claiborne.