"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
-Kanye West
I figure George W Bush, wherever he is, must be smiling today.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/18/16587058-former-new-orleans-mayor-ray-nagin-charged-with-katrina-related-corruption?lite
I always maintained that the incompetence of Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco contributed much more to the death and devastation in New Orleans than all the blame that was hurled at Bush. Now we learn that New Orleans mayor Nagin lined his pockets with money from the disaster.
This is as low as one can go.
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5 comments:
"I always maintained that the people I don't like on general politics were more responsible for failure than the people I admired for their general politics, so if someone I don't like got indicted, it shows that unindicted people I don't like were also incompetent, and the incompetent people I do like were competent since they weren't indicted for actual corruption."
You're doing a heck of a job, Fousie.
For the record, once I heard Nagin say the plan was for the feds to come evacuate everyone, adding "That was the plan, man," I had no doubt as to his absolute incompetence. I have no doubt as to the Bush administration's FEMA being an absolutely incompetent agency led by political hacks either.
Blanco? I was never sure whether she was crying out of empathy or frustration. A little empathy doesn't hurt. When you are in charge and people are hurting, you can't afford frustration. Just get to work.
Under President Obama, FEMA has gotten to work, with competence, skill, and delivered what it is supposed to deliver. That's more important than how incompetent three out of office characters were or were not.
No kidding?? How interesting. Why am I not the least bit surprised?? More yet to come??
I truly believe that State/local government corruption in Louisiana in general, and New Orleans in particular, actually puts both Chicago and IL, as well as NYC, to shame, which is certainly saying something. Some of the stuff that goes on there is almost, but not quite, like being in Mexico or other points south.
"For the record, once I heard Nagin say the plan was for the feds to come evacuate everyone, adding "That was the plan, man,"
As all the city busses sat in a parking lot until they were submerged.
Say what you want, in addition to the buses and many other instances, it was not Bush and his FEMA who sent tens of thousands of unfortunate souls to unprepared, unsecured, and essentially unprovisioned Superdomes and Convention Centers.
A lot was/still is said about what Obama allegedly "inherited" from Bush. Post-Katrina, Bush inherited a LOT of stuff from Blanco/Nagin et al, and a LOT of catch-up time was needed to cure some of that stuff before real efforts could begin.
elwood, Nagin and Blanco were not responsible for semi truckloads of ice being driven around the country from point or origin to New Orleans to North Carolina to Baton Rouge to Texas to New Orleans, because nobody could figure out what to do with it... FEMA is not merely an overlay on state and local efforts. They are responsible to come into a badly battered local situation with competence and materiel.
Moving local buses to high ground, however, would be a local transit responsibility.
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