Low water in the Atchafalaya Basin: all that green? That should be well under water.
By: Pat Austin
ARNAUDVILLE LA – We have been in south Louisiana this week, around the Atchafalaya Basin which is absolutely the lowest I’ve seen in years. There is dry land out there where I have never seen dry land before. It is much the topic of conversation around here; for some, the fishing is great because of this. Others lament cancelled cruises and others worry about the effects on their businesses.
It is a bit shocking to see dry, cracked land and cypress stumps that have previously been completely under water.IA large part of this is due to the ongoing drought throughout the entire country which has resulted in low water in the Mississippi River.
Everything is connected.
No rain throughout the country means water levels in the northern end of the river are the lowest since 1988. Down closer to the Gulf, it is reaching 2012 low water levels. This is all problematic because now barges struggle to get through the river. Fewer barges can go through and the barges must carry lighter loads. Barges that ignore the low-water restrictions find themselves grounded, stuck in mud. Supply chain disruptions are the result.
The USS Kidd, a WWII era destroyer and now museum and tourist attraction, sits on dry land in Baton Rouge due to the low water.
Low water in the Mississippi means low water in the Atchafalaya Basin. This affects the fishing and seafood industry, tourism industry, and much more.
“There’s not any long-range models that are giving us any occasions for rainfall that’ll generate runoff to help and alleviate low-water conditions right now,” he said. “Obviously everybody’s watching that very closely.”
He explained that the rain would need to occur in the upper section of the river valley, such as Illinois, for the effects to be felt further south. Rain that falls in south Louisiana does not drain through the Mississippi, save for what lands directly in the river.
Madigan graphic courtesy of the Illinois Policy Institute
By John Ruberry
In March, after years of investigation, Michael Madigan, the decades-long speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the state Democratic party, was indicted on corruption charges. The heart of that indictment was centered on northern Illinois’ principal electric utility, Commonwealth Edison, in what the indictment termed a “years-long bribery scheme” involving contracts, jobs, and of course favors, such as legislation favoring ComEd. Earlier this month, Madigan was indicted again, this time AT&T Illinois, a subsidiary of the much-larger AT&T, was the company involved.
ComEd’s parent, Exelon, is a publicly traded company, as is AT&T.
In return for AT&T Illinois paying a $23 million fine and admitting guilt, charges will be dropped by the local U.S. attorney’s office in two years, according to the paperwork filed in federal court in a deferred prosecution agreement. ComEd agreed to a similar settlement, while paying a $200 million fine.
Madigan, 80, entered public life in 1969 as a delegate to the Illinois constitutional convention. He was elected to the Illinois General Assembly from a Southwest Side Chicago district a year later. He became House Speaker in 1983.
As I’ve remarked many times before, Illinois is in serious need of term limit laws.
While he was running what the U.S. District Attorney of Northern Illinois later called “the Madigan Enterprise,” the Boss managed to expand his power even more by becoming chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. Perhaps the most devious gerrymanderer ever, Madigan used that post and the speaker’s office to create supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. Oh, Madigan’s daughter, Lisa, served four terms as Illinois’ attorney general during dad’s reign.
During Madigan’s reign-of-error, Illinois’ pension bomb was created. The fingerprints of the Boss were on every state budget from 1983 until his departure from public life.
The Madigan Enterprise fell apart early last year after–on Illinois Democrats’ standards–a lackluster 2020 general election. The Boss, finally visibly tainted by the drip-drip of the ComEd scandal, was unable to win reelection as speaker. Madigan, bereft of the linchpin of his power, quietly resigned not only as state party chairman, but he also resigned his House seat. He even quit as Democratic committeeman of Chicago’s 13th Ward, where presumably he is still revered. Madigan was never interested in student council-style pretend-power, he only relished the real thing.
AT&T Illinois sought out Madigan because it wanted to ditch its landline telephone business, which it did in 2017. The General Assembly overrode the veto of Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, to get the job done.
According to the indictment, Edward Acevedo, a Madigan crony and former state representative, received $22,500 for an allegedly no-work AT&T Illinois consulting job. Acevedo is now serving time in prison for tax evasion tied to his role in the Commonwealth Edison scandal.
Also indicted by the feds this month was AT&T Illinois’ former president, Paul La Schiazza, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Many of the minions of Boss Madigan are still in the General Assembly, most prominently Chris Welch, the current Illinois House speaker who, Brutus-like, turned on Madigan last year.
Who is still in office is something for Illinois voters to think about when they make their election choices this autumn. Especially since, I suspect, it’s hard to fathom that ComEd and AT&T Illinois were not the only companies that tried to illegally curry favor with the Madigan Enterprise.
I recently read Matt Rosenberg’s What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed Off Native Son—my review is here. In it, Rosenberg recalls a conversation with a former Chicago alderman, Dick Simpson, who told the author, “We have a rule about bureaucratic crime, that if one person is convicted there were probably ten people involved with that particular crime or that general pattern, that were not caught.”
When Madigan was sworn into office as a state rep in 1971, Illinois had 26 electoral votes. In 2024 it will only have 19.
Surprised?
Disclosure: The author of this entry worked for AT&T Wireless for over a decade.
We have a family tradition of visiting a local restaurant every Sunday after church. It’s all around fun: a nice family outing while supporting a local business that treats us well. The fact that we’ve enjoyed it so much made it extra hard when we chose to cut it, along with many other things, out of our budget.
Despite shopping at Walmart, Sams and Aldi and not changing our lifestyle, its now increasingly more difficult to pay the credit card every month. After this last month, I dug through the last years worth of bills and noticed an ugly trend: the food bills steadily going up. What used to be a 40 or 50 dollar Walmart visit has turned into 100 dollars. Between that and gas, any sort of buffer we normally had is now gone.
So we’re cutting. Biden-flation is now responsible for screwing over our local restaurant because we simply can’t afford to eat there anymore. Most of our friends are simply racking up credit card debt. Long term, I know that’s not going to work, so I move money around and find ways to pay it off, but its becoming harder and harder each month. Forget about planning a vacation, we’re just trying to make each day work. At some point, if it doesn’t stop, we’ll simply be slaves to ever increasing debt.
So yeah, inflation isn’t just some interesting news story to me. Its very real, and I’m watching it gut the hard working middle class, especially those that have large families and can’t just stop expenditures like buying groceries.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Please consider donating to DaTech Guy or buying the author’s book, especially with Christmas coming up.
Large corporations have become the attack dogs of the Democratic Party. These mega businesses do the dirty work for their corrupt political masters. This partnership has done tremendous harm to the American people, yet far too few are aware of the harm.
Social media corporations are engaging in mass censorship of anyone who dare to post anything that contradicts the established progressive narrative. This is being done at the behest of the leadership of the Democrat Party. Joe Biden himself has called on the social media giants to censor political opponents, deputizing them.
I have received a great many lengthy stints in Facebook jail for voicing the truth that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Trump, along with a very large percentage of my conservative and libertarian friends. Twitter is far more rabid when it comes to silencing the truth about the stolen election.
Censorship by social media is one of the primary reasons why the fraudulent election was allowed to stand. The economic catastrophe the United States now faces is a direct result of the partnership between the Democrat Party and the social media giants.
Social media corporations censored all news that contradicted the established Democrat narrative regarding the Wuhan Flu pandemic. This kept Americans so fearful that the majority of Americans accepted the trampling of our most fundamental rights. This resulted in an extreme level of economic harm to all of us.
Far too Americans know of the unacceptable level of dangerous side effects caused by the COVID vaccines. Most Americans unquestioningly accept vaccine mandates from all levels of government. The CDC is now about to declare that the COVID vaccine become a yearly vaccine for all children.
News corporations cram the Democrat Party platform down the throats of the American people and denigrate everything the Republican Party stands for. These mainstream news agencies bury Democrat scandals and bury those of Democrats. This is election tampering in the extreme.
Every time a state bucks the Democrat playbook, large corporations scream bloody murder and demand the state change its evil ways. Steps to thwart the Democrat’s transgender ideology are not allowed, neither is calling for an end to abortion, or preventing the Democrats from stealing elections.
Environment Social and Governance is the latest collaboration effort between the Democrat Party and corporations. This will further cripple the oil and gas industry here in the United States.
We the people need to fight against this alliance. Government solutions are not the answer, except where it comes to ending legal protections that enable this partnership. We the people must begin a grassroots effort where we punish these deputized corporations by withholding our business and sharing our displeasure in a public way. We need to engage in a financial and public relations guerilla style war against these corporations who do the Democrat’s bidding.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 