Levees Not War

We’re Levees Not War, and We Approve This Message:

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The text of the commercial, running in various media markets in Louisiana, goes like this:

We know how David Vitter handled his “serious sin.” And when David Vitter’s staffer violently abused his girlfriend, Senator Vitter let him keep his job—working on women’s issues. David Vitter on women: he voted against equal pay for equal work; against coverage for mammograms; even against protections for women raped on the job. David Vitter: for women, his “serious sin” isn’t even his worst.

See Charlie Melancon’s “Serious Sins” web site. Click here for Talking Points Memo’s article about the ad, and Vitter’s commercial that prompted Melancon to bring out the big guns (linking Melancon with “millionaires and illegals”). TPM comments, “No Wallflowers in This Race.”

Charlie Melancon, a Democratic congressman for Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district, is running for United States Senate. Levees Not War strongly endorses his candidacy and will be pushing for him between now and the November elections.

Did you miss us? We apologize for a longer-than-usual absence, but there was a family medical emergency involving coronary intensive care that showed us all too dramatically (as though we didn’t already appreciate it) the life-or-death urgency of access to good health care. (Mom is recovering now, thank God.)

We’ve also been busy again with Organizing for America health care phone banks. On Thursday night some two or three dozen volunteers gathered in an apartment in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park to phone voters and urge them to call Congressman Scott Murphy in New York’s 20th congressional district to urge him to reverse his November “Nay” and vote for the health reform bill on Sunday. Our group made 1,446 phone calls, spoke to 417 people,  and got 232 to commit to calling Congressman Murphy. Rep. Murphy has now announced that he will vote for the health bill. (See our previous post “Scenes from a Health Reform Phone Bank.”) One woman we spoke to said she had already called the congressman once; was it okay to call again?

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President Obama visits New Orleans for about four hours today. He will visit the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School in the Lower Ninth Ward from about noon till 1:00 p.m., and then will hold a town hall meeting at UNO from 1:15 to 2:00. This is his first visit as president. He has been to New Orleans five times since Hurricane Katrina (Aug. 2005). His last visit was before the Louisiana primary in February 2008, when he spoke to a full house at Tulane University. It’s a brief drive-by visit, but as usual we have to be thankful for any attention we can get.

Louisiana senators Landrieu and Vitter have criticized the brevity of the president’s visit—they’re not the only ones—though Landrieu yesterday on MSNBC softened her tone, saying she understands he has “a lot on his plate” and expressing gratitude for the visits of housing and education and other cabinet members and the help they’ve provided and promised. See Landrieu’s informative 8-minute video (above) for a review of the critical issues facing the state that she hopes the president will focus on. In a letter to the president Vitter urged Obama “in the most respectful way possible to expand your visit to ensure that it includes several important site visits, helicopter tours of coastal erosion/hurricane protection issues in parishes surrounding New Orleans, and focused discussion with community leaders regarding ongoing challenges.”

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On June 1, Times-Picayune Washington correspondent Jonathan Tilove reported on the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act (H.R. 2269), a bill reintroduced in Congress on May 5 by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and supported by Louisiana congressmen Charlie Melancon, Anh “Joseph” Cao, and Rodney Alexander, among about a dozen others. The bill would bring an estimated $6 billion to $7 billion in investment to the Gulf Coast to create 100,000 environmentally sustainable (“green”) jobs and training for residents of the Gulf Coast to rebuild their communities devastated by hurricanes. It would establish a Gulf Coast Civic Works Commission within the DHS’s Office of the Federal Coordinator of Gulf Coast Rebuilding to coordinate projects, rebuild infrastructure, and revitalize the region’s workforce.

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