Scumbag du Jour: Mayor Ray Nagin

[QuiGon]

What a lowlife this guy is. He makes George Bush look like Einstein. Listen to this gem:

"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."

I can't wait to see how the radical left amongst us tries to defend him now...

[Turd Furguson]

But its Bush's fault!!!! Those people arent responsible for their own lives. Bush caused the Hurricane by not signing the Kyoto Accords and then deliberately kept black people from leaving New Orleans and then deliberately blew up the levees saying "Kill all dem Darkies!!"


Bush Bad!

[Real World]

Was just going to post the article too. This guy is a maroon. Let's be fair and say that there are idiots in both parties. I'm not trying to harp on a minority, or ridicule a lefty. I just like to point out stupidity and poor leadership when I see it. Here is the article. I'll comment below.


New Orleans Mayor Takes Swipe At NYC

Nagin Cites Failure To Rebuild Ground Zero While Defending Katrina Clean-Up

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 2006

Quote

"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."


Mayor Ray Nagin


(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.


The part that sticks out to me is the sentiment against private development. This guy is a moron. He should be salivating at the very idea that business's want to invest in NO's downtown. Letting these company's come in and build in area's that were previously occupied, and are in a position to be totally reconfigured, should be looked at as a god send. By having a bustling, modern downtown which would attract more tourists and higher spenders is what he should want. It will mean jobs for his chocolate friends. Of course, Willy Wonka Nagin wants to preserve the "heritage" of the past. The welfare, crime filled, high murder rate culture NO is known for.

What a dumb leader.

[wistahpatsfan]

Nagin's a complete and utterly incompetent moron. He spends his time whining to the rest of the country because the people of NO can't find their bootstraps, never mind pull themselves up by them. Maybe he should go up river to Grand Forks and hire some of those folks to get things going. He'll never get his "Chocolate City" built by whining, and the people of NO sure as hell won't do it. Start over.

[DarrylS]

I think what he is talking about is "gentrification" which may effect the traditions of NOLA, this could be good or bad, but either way NOLA will never be the same and it is a difficult change for him and the rest of the residents of that city. The reality is that this is a service city, and there are no one to fill these positions and in nearby Mississippi.

My Bro in law lives there, recently they came up to spend some time with us, and they are very discouraged on many fronts... primarily things are not the same and so much different. They have two properties, neither one was damaged, and one is for sale with no takers. They describe a typical street in the Garden district as one house occupied, the next for sale and the third deserted.

I did not take the interview as whiny, sounds more matter of fact than anything else, but I guess you can hear what you want to hear from anything. I am sure Rush, Hannity, Savage and crew will have a field day with it.

[PatsFanInEaglesLand]

Originally Posted by QuiGon

I can't wait to see how the radical left amongst us tries to defend him now...

Not bad, only 1 so far.

[shmessy]

Why should everyone on the left defend this idiot? Should everyone on the right defend defend Duke Cunninghamor Pat Robertson?

This type of thread is knee-jerk mindlessness.

[sdaniels7114]

He shouldn't have made that callous a reference to the WTC site; but then again perhaps he didn't. Its not like Quigon provided us with a link to see for ourselves, or even to get a sense of the context. Look at Boston, the Rose Kennedy Greeway still exists on paper only and its a tiny, PLANNED urban project.

[ctpatsfan1]

Originally Posted by sdaniels7114

He shouldn't have made that callous a reference to the WTC site; but then again perhaps he didn't. Its not like Quigon provided us with a link to see for ourselves, or even to get a sense of the context. Look at Boston, the Rose Kennedy Greeway still exists on paper only and its a tiny, PLANNED urban project.

yeah but Realworld provided the entire article. He said, he was a fool for saying it, he needs to apologize, stop pointing fingers and fix his city.

[FreeTedWilliams]

New Orleans and Palestine are pretty much in the same boat. Both elected their current leaders knowing that they were incompetent, or terrorists (you decide who is who) and now both are reaping what they have sowed.

Granted New Orleans had a choice between Nagin and another corrupt Landrieux (funny to think that the Palestinians had a more diverse election choices than the citizens of New Orleans, well it would be funny, if it wasn't the truth), so maybe we won't blame them as much as the Palestinains. But I will waste no more time of either of them.

New Orleans is a great city, rich in history and culture, I've been there four times (f%&ing Keith Smart), however long before Katrina, is was a very dangerous place. People getting shot daily, and not just the people looking to get shot, innocent by-standers, tourists, I even know a woman who got hit by a stray bullet standing on the side of the road in NO watching a Mardi Gras parade. That along with corruption so bad it would make Kevin White blush! New Orleans was not doing too well prior to Katrina.

It is now at a cross roads, it can try and rule out the corruption, graft, and crime and and re-build, or it can become a vast vapid wastland. I am adamant against the US government giving NO any more money! The amount of fraud and abuse from the Katrina funds is proof enough. NO made it's own bed, and now unfortunately, they have wet it.