“New Orleans, New Orleans, there’s no place I’d rather be.”
DA Eddie Jordan: Puts city in the position of paying $3.7 million to wrongfully severed employees – harbors armed robbery and murder suspect – resigns – has problems stepping down
Mayor Ray Nagin: 2008 budget calls for 2-mill property tax increase to fund the operations of new IG Robert Cerasoli. Attaching the justified requirements of City Council to this undesirable tax increase is not “very clever,” it just shows how much the mayor wants to to show City Council who’s boss at the expense of taxpayers. Meanwhile, same mayor in same budget calls for flak jackets, “Harry-Lee style” tanks and machine guns to combat criminal element.
NOPD & Chief Wiggum Warren Riley: 179 murders since January 1, 2007
State Senator Derrick Shepherd – Accused of money laundering – investigated – denies his own wrongdoing and that of Dolla Bill and Mayor Nagin. Can you say “blackmail,” kids?
Garbage Scandal – City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis is tied to two shady city-wide and school garbage contracts. More at Editor B‘s (the post is up to 54 comments, so it’s the place to be for this discussion). Now, Louisiana House candidate, Una Anderson, is accused of taking money from the same two companies in exchange for a school garbage disposal contract. Whether they are being accused rightfully or as part of a smear campaign, it all stinks worse than the trash in question. The receptacles themselves are rotten: after each giant garbage can is stolen twice (for hauling looted copper or for whatever other purpose), despite the fact that they have useless barcodes and are to be monitored by our own beleaguered NOPD, the third one costs the taxpayer an extra $80 to replace. The only reason these cans have to be issued by the City is so they fit on the automated lift that empties them, never mind that the garbageman has to roll them from the curb to the truck. Someone made a lot of money from this deal.
[Add your favorite New Orleans circus sideshow here.]
To display how interconnected all of this is, which only makes it more unpalatable, Una Anderson was on the Orleans Parish School Board as was Cynthia W-L’s dad who is in cahoots with Rep. “Dolla Bill” Jefferson who helped DA Eddie Jordan’s rise to power but is now backing away from him because he doesn’t want Eddie’s shame to spurt all over his daughter’s bid for the State Senate, and somewhere in there is Stan “Pampy” Barre who rolled on our ex-City Councilman Oliver Thomas, whose resignation and incarceration left us with this whole mess of having to choose between Cynthia WL and Jackie Clarkson as the replacement. Confused yet? Sorry, that was only one round of Two Degrees Of New Orleans Politics. This is why the entire lot ought to be sent packing.
And then what? More of the same with different faces. Without an overhaul of How Things Work in New Orleans, nothing will change. Even Keva Landrum as the new District Attorney will not change the facts that witnesses will not testify for fear of violent retribution, the police still do not present prosecutors with viable cases, our once state-of-the-art crime lab is woefully understaffed and underequipped and men under the age of 30 will continue to kill one another over guns, drugs and turf because that is all they have to go on in a city that could not be bothered to care about them when they were children. So, the real question is one of changing the grease on which this city’s gears operate or, more drastically, replacing the whole mechanism itself. As Schroeder puts it in Cliff’s last post about Eddie Jordan, “The strategy should be not just to change the faces of corrupt officials in the system, but to change the system itself to prevent corrupt officials from gaming the system.”
Public school students aren’t allowed to take their textbooks home and are given Bs just for showing up to school. Citizens invariably default to voting for someone of their own color when push comes to shove. Our system of government allows for the formation of a Thieves’ Guild that results in keeping our kids dumb and the citizens dumber. The answer lies not in replacing the roster, but in changing the game and incentive. Once we figure out how, let’s bottle and ship it all over the United States, especially to Washington DC, where they’re no different from us, only more “sophisticated.”
as a teacher in a public school, i know why they’re not allowed to take textbooks home. it is unfortunate, but i know i’ll never see them again. we issued science books to stay home and had enough for another set in class. that is the plan for our math books, tentatively. but they are being destroyed. i only have a few kids i trust with the textbook and that is sad. the best we can do is try and prepare them enough in class and send as much information home on paper as possible (lots and lots of copies, unless you have a copy limit, which sucks). many teachers don’t do that, to the disadvantage of those kids who are really trying. just can’t win sometimes.
I’m aware why they’re not allowed, but that too is a part of the problem. There is no value for education and books. We had to buy our own textbooks and keep them pristine in order to a) study and b) re-sell them the next year. Is resale a possible incentive?
Hey, if you want me to come talk about earth science, the process of research and careers in science, technology and the oil industry, let me know.
Thanks for connecting the dots, madame. I still think all these pols need to be duct-taped into the garbage cans they shoved down our throats.
In the case of the IG maneuvering, I think it goes beyond showing who’s boss. The reporting was pretty vague, but when my dear councilman introduced changes to weaken the IG’s office, the paper did say that those were changes that Nagin wanted. It’s obvious that Nagin’s never been a supporter of an independent IG, I think some other recent stories make it obvious why.
Whoosh!
There’s a whole post in the reply to this sweeping survey of political corruption.
Seconding the motion to duct tape public officials to garbage cans — but we should also put them in Jackson Square where we all get a chance to throw our growing recyclable collections at them.
As for Warren Riley — thinking about this lately — does anyone believe he’s done such an extraordinary job that he deserves his executive pay earning over $150,000 a year?
One more set of connecting dots: prior to her tenure on the School Board, Una Anderson was Oliver Thomas’ chief of staff.
Somebody needs to do a chart!