Ray Nagin And The Perpetual Crying Of “Wolf”
Having recently visited New Orleans for the first time (and coming away with a very favorable impression), it pains me to see Mayor Ray Nagin once again acting the fool:
“Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere,” Nagin reportedly told a crowd of representatives from newspapers that target African-American readers. “They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community.” According to the Post, Nagin went on to deride an unnamed white candidate who opposed him in his bid for reelection as “the golden boy,” and that his vow that New Orleans would remain a majority black city had stirred forces against him. “Everybody in America started to wake up and say, ‘Wait a minute. What is he doing? What is he saying? We have to make sure that this man doesn’t go any further,’” Nagin said, the Post reported over the weekend.
Almost immediately after the New Orleans Times-Picayune broke the story locally Monday, angry letters started pouring in to a forum set up on the paper’s Web site. Nagin’s press office ignored requests for comments but by Monday afternoon, at a press conference announcing financial assistance for small and minority owned businesses, an uncharacteristically testy Nagin defended the speech, saying his comments were taken out of context. “You won’t find anything that I said that was a racial plot,” Nagin told reporters. “As soon as I say something, and it’s at a majority black event, then I’m being racial. That’s just not fair.”
Nevertheless, Nagin’s comments struck many in New Orleans as an affront. And it was dismaying for many residents to see the mayor appear to return to the racially divisive themes that helped him coast to victory last spring over his white mayoral runoff opponent, Louisiana lieutenant governor Mitch Landrieu. “I haven’t uncovered the conspiracy yet, even though many local, national and statewide leaders believe that,” said Oliver Thomas, a New Orleans City Council member who is arguably the city’s second most powerful political figure.
Citing “incompetence and a lack of resources” as the main culprits in New Orleans’ halting recovery, Thomas told Time.com that the city’s biggest challenge may be retaining the residents who have returned. “We are recovering, but it’s mostly citizen-driven,” he said. “I hear people talk about who we bring back. My concern is who we keep. A lot of people have tasted the way of life in other places — better roads, better schools, safer streets. So how long are they going to stay here if the infrastructure can’t support them, if the criminal justice system can’t protect them and if the school system can’t support them?”
Many of those who have returned — perhaps half the city’s pre-Katrina population of 465,000 — are coping not only with rebuilding their own homes and lives, but a severely damaged public infrastructure, skyrocketing rents, the nation’s worst per-capita murder rate and mushrooming insurance costs. Yet many areas are rebounding, most notably in districts where residents, not content to wait for directives from the city, have banded together to rebuild their own neighborhoods.
The first question any decent reporter should ask a politician who describes a plot like this is quite simple: “Who’s ‘they’?” Nagin should not get a free ride from any audience, black or white, and he needs to concentrate on what he can do to bring down the crime rate and rebuild…
Comrade Mark,
The real question that ought to be asked is: “How is it that New Orleans remains so poorly served when it’s neighbors in Alabama and Mississippi, with substantial black populations who were also terribly hit by this devestating hurricane, have been industriously and positively rebuilding and responding to the situation?”
Why is it that New Orleans remains a boil on the body politic so long after everyone else seems to have patched things up and moved on? Could the answer possibly be Ray Nagin and his band of corrupt incompetants? Could it be the culture of corruption that he and most of Louisiana have developed over generations? Could it be linked as well to the vasy entitlement programs there that keep the poorest in virtual bondage, dependant for nearly everything, on the holder of the Mayoral Office? Yeah….. could well be…
New Orleans is a social cess pool that needs to be cleaned out and filled in. Bulldoze the whole thing away before it sucks more hard earned cash away from programs the nation really needs. Build a large port facility on it’s ashes, raised up with an artificial island like the Japanese did for their airport in Tokyo Bay. Go further inland and build another such island, above the floodlevels, for worker housing, and bus the folks back and forth.
We need a port facility at the mouth of the Mississippi. We do NOT need another city built below sea level.
Respects,
Why does Mayor Nagin make the same salary as pre Katrina. There are only 180,000 of us left in NOLA. Also I saw he has body guards, a new Lincoln Towncar with tinted glass, special wheels and a driver. The other day he smirked and laughed at us when the press asked questions. Up in New York on WOR radio, WABC John Gambling called him a clown, he is snubbed by Mayor Bloomberg and every New York politician and real estate developer because he dissed them early this year when he laughed at the WTC victims and rebuild process. Why is the Road Home program paying a consulting group $750 million over 10 years to distribute $750 million to us homeowners. They have to decide who has low income renters? That s everyone in this (small) city. I suggest we continue to pay his (Nagin s) lunches at KPaul – let him stay there all day so he can leave us alone. His arrogance and lack of experience are unacceptable; a case in point why affirmative action has been a failure at executive level.