Nagin skips lunch to talk to City Council
7th August 2008
Now that he’s in the crosshairs of the public, the press, city and federal investigators, and the City Council — after obfuscation and lies and retractions and reversals and obstruction — now, finally, Ray Nagin is saying he wants to be on the same team as the City Council.
You gotta give him credit, though. It’s 12:15 p.m. as Nagin is speaking. He could have skipped out on the Council meeting to have lunch instead.
Nagin locked horns with Arnie Fielkow. Fielkow said that the most important thing moving forward is to ensure that the public has complete confidence in public officials.
Hmm … Cynthia Hedge-Morrell declined the opportunity to ask questions.
Stacy Head isn’t in Council chambers.
Shelley Midura is asking tough questions, and said that no one has “the list that counts” except the mayor’s office. No one in the mayor’s office said the NOAH lists hadn’t been reconciled two or three weeks ago when these previously blogged questions were finally being addressed by the press.
Nagin says the NOAH records have been a challenge. Wasn’t Nagin a business manager? Didn’t this guy learn how to create systems of accuracy, efficiency, and accountability in the private sector before he became mayor? Wasn’t he the darling of fiscally-conservative, pro-business Republican voters? Oh … that’s right … I keep forgetting. His former employer, Cox Cable, is a monopoly.
Midura asks in what form did Nagin’s administration contact HUD to investigate NOAH.
Nagin says he’ll have to look into that to find out.
Yesterday, WWL radio reported that one of its producers called HUD to ask if anyone in HUD was contacted by Nagin’s office. The HUD official said that no one in the Nagin administration ever contacted HUD.
Now James Carter is talking. How long has the reconciliation of NOAH records been going on, he asks. And who is conducting that review? Some of those people conducting that review would themselves be subjects of an external review, correct?
Nagin answers that he doesn’t know who or what is going to be investigated.
Nagin says that 90 discrepancies have so far been found in records, and in at least 46 cases no work was done for which payment was made. His office is sending out letters to those contractors asking for reimbursement. He wants to finish the review to determine “the real number” of remediated properties and put it on a web site so people can verify the work that was or wasn’t done.
Jackie Clarkson is saying “we have to face this together,” oozing complements on Nagin for agreeing to provide testimony before the Council, and for not impeding any investigation.
Update:
Listen | A recording of the WWL broadcast of Ray Nagin’s remarks at the City Council hearing.
Listen | A recording of Karen Gadbois calling WWL to clear up the comment made by Ray Nagin that the NOAH investigation was done by amateurs. Karen also offered a rebuttal to a veiled racist comment by a Mandeville caller who said New Orleans has become “decrepit.” The guy also happened to be an apologist for Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price, who used his influence over law enforcement officials to slip out of two DWI incidents without prosecution. Another woman who lives outside of New Orleans called in later to say that if more people leave New Orleans and move to the North Shore, the North Shore would go bad too. Plus, listen to how completely flying-off-the-handle, talking-over-his-guests, redneck Spud McConnell sounds. He parrots his redneck callers until he finds himself out of his element when someone rational calls. Then he goes haywire trying to contain himself, eventually resorting back into the comfort of his bad old redneck ranting ways.
Update 2:
I should also have noted, Cynthia Willard-Lewis was reportedly a no-show, as E noted. New Orleans Nation saw Willard-Lewis in attendance, but she decided not to say anything, perhaps because her brother was involved in the scandal. Stacy Head was reportedly out of town.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Thank you for posting these clips. I was getting out of my truck to go to work right when it started.
Also I’ve been following your take on the local radio media and I hope you keep beating that drum.
I don’t know if you left for Katrina or if you did when you got back but the air waves the first few months after the storm were very freeform and inspiring in as far as what they could be.
Take care , Rick.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I had to take some pepto after talking to Spud. He dumb!!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Willard-Lewis was there, she just had no questions. Hedge Morrell walked out midway thru, which was amazing for a budget chair.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Dumb does hurt!
Rick — thanks for the encouragement. I sometimes wonder if I’m not just tilting at windmills. BTW, the GM at WWL has been rejecting a call for a community radio show, even as WWL hosts acknowledge in between ads that the stories they’ve been talking about have bubbled up from the community.
Brian, sometimes body gestures mean more than words. I appreciated your blow by blow eyewitness account.
August 8th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Edwards is an asshole…what kind of man cheats on his terminally ill wife while at the same time milking her sickness for votes?
I know he was your man…what you think about it?
August 8th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I wouldn’t know, Joe. But maybe you’d like to try to explain what kind of man cheats on his physically injured wife after she was his number one advocate helping him to survive and get out of that POW camp?
I suspect he’s your man. What do you think about it?
I didn’t support Edwards knowing he was cheating on his wife. I supported him based upon his attention to the New Orleans recovery.
So what’s your excuse? You should already be fully aware that McCain is a wife cheater and continues to be a wife abuser. What’s your excuse, Joe?
August 9th, 2008 at 1:24 am
i still think a podcast of nola bloggers would be a nice antidote to our radio choices.
of course some one would have to ride herd on the cats and be the boss of the bloggers which would make them the bad guy.
on a side note i’ve been listening to 106.7 ’s the home team the last two mornings and their rants sound to my ears just as obstructive and divisive as the “all rush” channels morning crew.
keep blogging on this subject . i think people will start changing their sources of info as long as they keep getting more options.
hell who among us would have thought the gambit would have an interesting blog a year ago?
i just don’t think the f.c.c. radio model is ripe for change but at the same time the extra h.d. radio waves might be once the h.d. radios get cheap.
what ever the future holds
take care and thank you for being a voice in this town.
August 9th, 2008 at 8:45 am
My problem with edwards is that he milked his wifes cancer for votes while at the same time getting some snatch from another woman on the side.
McCain is an ass for what he did - and he admits it.
I’m voting for McCain b/c it is the lessor of 2 evils. I don’t know what Obama believes in, he has shifted so much on so many issues (I like he recent stances more than his previous ones, but is he just saying these things to get elected - 99% sure this is so).
Obama admits he will raise gov’t spending (which is already at historic highs per GDP, one reason I can’t stand the Bush admn) and increase taxes. the top 10% wage earners already pay 70% of taxes; and the bottom 50% only pay 3%. This disparity will only worsen under Obama.
Dude has never accomplished anything, never had a real job…I’m sorry, its not his time.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:35 am
[…] just tumbled to Schroeder’s wrapup of Thursday’s city council meeting over at People Get Ready. It’s really well-written, but what makes it a real keeper is the […]
August 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Schroeder, this is a great wrapup - thanks. I posted a link to this page over at the Gambit blog.
Unfortunately, I also posted a link to the Gadbois/Spud clip, and somehow it embedded in the Gambit page rather than linking back to you. This was not my intention (I’m still a chimp when it comes to WordPress), so please believe me when I say I wasn’t trying to kype your work. If it’s a problem, let me know and I’ll get it down.
(And if someone wants to school me on WordPress so this doesn’t happen again, send me an e- or leave a comment here.)
Re Edwards: I agree with Joe. I may be in the minority on that, but that’s cool.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:44 am
PS - when I said I agreed with Joe, I meant in comment #5, not comment #8. Heh. If there’s one thing Edwards and McCain have in common (and I suspect there’s a couple of ‘em), it’s that both men seem all too willing to jettison their principles (and their voting records) to appeal to their newly discovered bases.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Joe:
“he has shifted so much on so many issues” … like McCain?
“just saying these things to get elected” … like McCain?
“he will raise gov’t spending … and increase taxes” … don’t fool yourself. Bush has so completely destroyed the fiscal condition of the federal treasury that taxes have to be increased on future generations if we don’t fix the problem ourselves. The only question to realistically and responsibly ask is, who’s going to pay for Bush’s folly? The middle class? Or will the rich and the corporations they run pay their fair share too?
“Dude has never accomplished anything, never had a real job” … oh, just like McCain? He’s been paid by taxpayers his entire life.
Look, Joe. The question you should ask yourself is who has intelligence and judgment to make better choices moving forward. I can’t discount the fact that Obama doesn’t have executive “experience”, but a whole lot of people in this world do worse despite their executive experience. Bush, Jr.? J.H.C. — the guy claimed his experience “owning” a baseball team before he was handed the Texas governorship as his grooming for the presidency. One could argue that no one has the necessary experience for the White House. The most important consideration, then, is, who will surround himself with a better team and make the right choices for the future of our nation and the world.
Here’s one interpretation I suggest everyone should pay attention to:
http://www.charlierose.com/guests/richard-holbrooke
August 9th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
We have learned from Dubya that the US must not elect a president without executive experience. We cannot afford to make that mistake again. Despite your earlier downplay of the terrorist threat, it is a terrifying reality that requires a vigilant president, one with significant foreign policy experience. Obama does not have that, and it is not good enough to suggest that he will learn on the job and make the proper choices from among options given him by his advisors. If Obama has one recurrent and egregious fault, it is that he has consistently surrounded himself with the wrong mentors and advisors. His entire life and worldview has been informed and shaped by outcasts, domestic terrorists, class-conflict activists and misguided polemicists. There is every reason to believe that a President Obama will continue to be guided by such dangerous malcontents. And that in and of itself represents a domestic threat that every card-carrying member of the Obamanation must give pause to contemplate.
August 9th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Actually, Mad, other than having no executive experience, Bush, Jr.’s more egregious fault was his facile manipulation by a cabal of people who knew ahead of time what they wanted to do — so much in fact, that they staged his grooming and imaging from a dumb drunk frat boy into a guy with the right pedigree to appeal to rednecks and evangelicals on hot button issues. If you seriously and honestly think about who the people are who have the most forward looking ideas for addressing the most vital issues in international relations and counterterrorism, health care, the economy, and energy policy, you’ll soon discover that they’re all Democrats. Don’t tell me that bombing Iran along with endless war in Iraq while expanding the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the current health care system, more tax cuts and subsidies for the rich to export investments to other countries, and more oil drilling — i.e., the status quo — is a policy for the current success of the U.S., or for our next generations of Americans. We are failing to provide for our own citizens, while a narrow minority in the upper crust of society is enjoying the profits, as we fall behind the rest of the world, and lose both our claim to moral authority and financial power. We only useful as consumers. And not very good at that given diminishing incomes (in current terms, and historically, adjusted for inflation).
Really. If your fear is that Obama is some sort of radical commie — take off the Rush-tinted glasses, dude. He’s Harvard educated. Barack Obama is more invested in the neoclassical economics than John McCain, who doesn’t even know what the word means.
I’m not unfamiliar with your “domestic terrorist” allegation — I know what and who you’re talking about, although I would chose a better, less loaded term. By the way, what “class” are you, Mad? Do you feel that some people make more money than you who haven’t deserved to? If you don’t, is it just possible for you to imagine why some people might feel that way? Is that “class conflict” or just sour grapes and people should accept the station in life they were given when they were born? I suspect that you, like most of America, are a victim of an strident and cruel ideology of class dropped on America by the Republican Party in the last thirty years — except that Republicans don’t call it “class” — they call it “opportunity” — opportunity for them, in which 90 percent of America isn’t invited to participate.
August 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
No worries Kevin.
I hope you’ll come around to seeing that you’re wrong about the cranky old guy who wants to bomb everything, drill everywhere, and screw everyone.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Schroeder, maybe I didn’t express myself well earlier — but my visceral disgust with John Edwards in absolutely no way translates into support for McCain. I agreed with Ray on the issue of Edwards’ absolute assholery, not on anything related to McCain…whose “straight-talking maverick with experience” image seems about as authentic as Edwards’ faux-populism after a decade of voting and talking like a Southern-fried Joe Lieberman.
August 10th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Yeah, well somehow I didn’t think you were riding the straight-talk express wreck. With regard to Edwards — who’s practiced grin is a shallow artifice — you have to admit that the apology was an impressive, although calculating act of desperation, in the same way that a person might dive out of a car if the brakes failed before hurtling over a cliff.