Thread: Ray Nagin rides again

Ray Nagin rides again
By Michelle Malkin · August 25, 2006 11:58 AM

http://michellemalkin.com/



http://michellemalkin.com/archives/images/nagin002.jpg

Tim Sumner of Take Back The Memorial smacks Ray Nagin for his petulant comments on Ground Zero. http://takebackthememorial.org/?p=281


New Orleans Mayor Takes Swipe At NYC
Nagin Cites Failure To Rebuild Ground Zero While Defending Katrina Clean-Up
NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 2006

(CBS) Confronted by accusations that he’s taking too long to clean up his city after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin defended himself by remarking on New York City’s failure to rebuild Ground Zero.

Nagin made the remarks in an interview conducted by CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts which will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. EDT.

On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned without the owners' permission. But when Pitts points to flood-damaged cars in the street and a house washed partially into the street, the mayor shoots back. "That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair."

Nagin is confident New Orleans will be whole again and will even be able to withstand another hurricane of Katrina strength, pointing out that taller and stronger levees are being built. It will take time. "We’re into a five-to-seven-year build cycle … . At the end of the day, I see the city being totally rebuilt. I see us eliminating blight, still being culturally unique," Nagin says.

One example of new development Nagin points to is a 68-story Trump Towers condominium complex, a project that makes some critics wary that New Orleans will lose the heritage that made it unique. "I think you are looking at basically a town that will be a playground for the rich for the next 40 years," Leonard Moore, a professor of African-American history at Louisiana State University, tells Pitts. "I look at the post-Katrina piece as a game of musical chairs….Once the music gets turned off, the white folks have a place to sit down, a place to sleep, a place for their children to go to school. We’re going back to a trailer."

Nagin says he is looking out for the poor, mostly black, residents who are dispersed all over the country, some of whom are waiting to return to the city. "What I do have a problem with is some entrenched interests that are looking and salivating over certain sections of the city," Nagin says.

The mayor says these interests want him to keep those poor people from coming back so they can get rich developing the land. "I don’t think that’s right," Nagin says.

But before any rebuilding can take place, the clean-up and restoration of the city’s infrastructure must be complete and it will be Mayor Nagin, recently re-elected, who leads the efforts. "Should things have happened quicker? Yes. But everyone has their own style of leadership, and right now our political leader, our political father is Ray Nagin," says Oliver Thomas, New Orleans City Council president.

"So for the next four years, we’re going to sink or swim with him," Thomas tells Pitts.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1933092.shtml



Allah sums it up: "[C]alling Ground Zero a 'hole in the ground' that’s still not 'fixed' is, well, about par for the course for the king of the memorial motor pool." http://www.lonestartimes.com/2005/09...al-motor-pool/
http://www.lonestartimes.com/2005/09...-at-the-wheel/



Let me put it more bluntly: He's an ass.

And his own constituents know it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-nation

Nagin Tries to Whet Appetites for New Orleans
In Houston, the New Orleans mayor appeals to evacuees' taste buds in a bid to lure them back.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2006


HOUSTON — Appealing to a pent-up longing for authentic filé gumbo, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin came to Texas on Tuesday and tried to talk the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees still here into returning home.

Nagin's nostalgic references to the Crescent City's matchless cuisine had heads nodding. So did his political commentary, including a claim that unspecified "powers that be" did not want evacuees to go back to New Orleans.

But if his audience in Houston's 3rd Ward neighborhood was any indication, Nagin will need more than culinary rhetoric to persuade still-traumatized Katrina survivors to return to a city that remains in tatters. "He didn't say anything I needed to hear," Cornelius Bradley, 75, said as he limped out of the auditorium, leaning on a wooden cane. "How's all this talk about red beans and rice going to help me?"

Nearly a year after the storm hit, there are as many as 150,000 evacuees still in Houston — more than any other city. About half of New Orleans' 470,000 residents have yet to return. And with polls in Texas showing that many plan to stay here, New Orleans leaders increasingly regard luring people back as a top priority.

On Tuesday, Nagin was here for the opening of New Orleans' first "Journey Home Center." The centers are billed as a one-stop facility where evacuees can learn about housing assistance, job training and other services to help them resume their lives in the Big Easy. "We're going to make the impossible possible and get our people back home," said the Rev. Tom Watson, co-chairman of Nagin's repopulation committee.

"We are writing — or rewriting, if you will — the history of New Orleans," he told the more than 200 people who attended the ceremony.

Nagin started by saying that he planned to hold his tongue. But the notoriously spontaneous speaker still offered a blunt assessment of the state of his city as Katrina's anniversary draws near. "I'm going to be honest with you — there is still a lot of devastation in the Lower 9th Ward. There is still a lot of devastation in New Orleans East," Nagin said, adding that evacuees who return "may want to consider moving to another neighborhood until your old neighborhood comes back."

Nagin also took several swipes at the federal government, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency, remarking that "at times, it didn't seem like FEMA gave a you-know-what."

He urged evacuees to write Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to say, "Where's my money?" and put pressure on the state's $7.5-billion "Road Home" housing grant program, which has yet to provide any funds to the more than 100,000 people who have applied for assistance.

The mayor said that it seemed as if powerful people did not care about rebuilding New Orleans, a statement that resonated with the crowd. "For some reason, there's powers that be that do not want this city to come together," he said. "And we can't allow that."

Although Nagin's speech drew applause, many evacuees said they had hoped to hear more specifics, such as how New Orleans officials planned to combat crime or whether they would put a ceiling on housing costs that were rising beyond the reach of many families.

" 'The Road Home.' It's a nice message. But when is the governor going to get together with the mayor?" said Dorothy Stukes, an evacuee who was stranded in the Louisiana Superdome last year.

Stukes, 55, is part of a group called the Disaster Survivors Assn. that is helping evacuees in Houston with rides to work and other basic needs. "Tell me, what are people supposed to go home to? The levees are not completed. The housing isn't there. There are rotten buildings just sitting there decaying. I have three grandchildren with asthma. No way they can go back there," she said.

Nagin did not pretend he had those kinds of answers. He stuck to the New Orleans food as his selling point. "We want you all back to New Orleans as soon as possible," Nagin said, wrapping up, "because the red beans ain't the same without y'all."


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[color]There are areas of New Orleans still without potable water, power, phone, or mail service. MOST of St Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes as well as areas of Camereon Parish. They are THIS week finally giving grants to help people rebuild. People are being warned to evacuate the Coast in advance of Ernesto because the levees are not complete.[/color]

What a moron, but I think we already knew how ignorant he was with his chocolate remarks a few months back.

Part of the problem is that people are filing lawsuits to prevent the city/state/federal agencies from the "destruction" of "private properties". In my opinion, if it has lain abandoned since last year - you have forfieted your "rights". There is nothing left that is salvagable in these homes, anything cloth, wood, paper, or fabric is destroyed by the mildew; anything else ( if it wasn't broken ) has been picked over by the looters and sight-seeing vultures.

Beyond that - Nagin's idiotic staements aside - it is comparing apples to oranges. It took months to get the water out, it took months to repair the roadways for access, some area's are STILL without power, phone service, or potable water due to the damages to the superstructure. 9/11 affected ( physically ) a few square miles at most. Katrina wiped out an area the size of Great Britain. The rescurers, workers, & volenteers could go home at night. Our policemen, firemen, emergancy personel ect lost everything they owned - there is nothing to go "back" too. We housed EMS workers at our church - most of them had only the clothes their backs. They drove almost 2 hours everyday to work a 12 hour shift to drive 2 hours back to sleep on a cot in a gym. And got up to do it all over again. For weeks.


Nagin should NOT be allowed to talk to people without one of his "handlers" around to shoot him with a tranquillizer dart when he gets "stuck on stupid"