Posted on 09/05/2005 8:52:42 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Monday, Sept. 5, 2005 11:38 p.m. EDT Mayor Nagin: Gov. Blanco Delayed Rescue
After days of blaming the federal officials for not responding quickly enough to the Hurricane Katrina crisis, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin praised President Bush on Monday - and charged that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had delayed federal rescue efforts by 24-hours.
"I'm so happy that the president came down here," Nagin said of Bush's Friday visit to Louisiana in an interview with CNN. "He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action."
But Nagin had harsh words for his state's leaders, telling CNN: "What the state was doing, I don't frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate." The New Orleans Democrat said he urged Bush to meet privately with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco during the visit. The meeting took place aboard Air Force One, he said.
After reviewing the crisis with Gov. Blanco, Bush summoned Nagin for a private chat - where, according to Nagin, Bush explained: "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor. I said . . . I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision."
Reacting to the governor's footdragging, Nagin lamented: "It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out."
"It didn't happen, and more people died."
Ours cost more than theirs!
And exactly what, then raised the Ponchartain water level so that it slopped over the levees and started eroding them?
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And it's truly naive to expect local buses to move 1/3 of the city in less than 48 hours.
And what is it to defend not using them at all -- not even trying to save as many lives as possible?
What/who are you trying to defend?
Our Mission- The American Red Cross, a humanitarian organization led by volunteers and guided by its congressional Charter and the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross Movement, will provide relief to victims of disaster and help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.
# 121,000 brochures were distributed, promoting disaster preparedness.
Board of Directors
Raymond Blanco
Raymond "Coach" Blanco, accepted a ride on a corporate jet to Louisiana State University's bowl appearance in Florida.
You are digging up very interesting things about Blanco. Good. Would be nice if reporters tried a little harder to get out the true facts like you are.
CEO/party boss
By John Maginnis , Columnist
01.18.05
When the governor's husband flew to a football game on a Shaw Group jet along with officials of a Japanese company considering building a plant in Louisiana
snip
Raymond "Coach" Blanco was being used to show off to the Shintech execs, for whom Shaw is hustling to build a $1 billion plant,
snip
Now, as more questions are raised about the Blancos' relationship with Shaw CEO Jim Bernhard (Chairman of the Democrat Party in Louisiana)
The flight of the first gentleman followed closely the story of Shaw replacing another company doing design work on the $100 million Union Tank Car plant to be built with the help of a $30 million state subsidy. When Shaw also won the construction contract, two other firms complained that they were excluded from bidding.
Shaw didn't have to fly Coach Blanco around to impress Shintech executives with how tight Bernhard is with the First Family. One needed only to read about the Mansion reception the governor held to introduce Bernhard to members of the Democratic State Central Committee or to see her seated next to him when he was elected as its new state chairman (of the Democrat Party).
Now that Bernhard has gone from political player to party boss, the question to raise is not ethical but practical. How does the CEO of a publicly traded Fortune 500 company function as a party chairman?
Shaw works for many companies receiving government contracts or public subsidies.
This the Party of the "common folk" and the "black folk". Right. I just don't get it. How can their constituents be so blind?
Governor Kathleen Blanco (center) prays with her husband Raymond and daughter Karmen Blanco during Mass at The Cathedral Church of Saint Joseph in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, September 4, 2005
http://www.krtdirect.com/photos/preview/preview.htm?doc=KRT%2Fkrtphotoslive%2Fdocs%2F184%2F492
Governor Kathleen Blanco (right) receives a reassuring hug from Archbishop of New Orleans Alfred C. Hughes after she attended mass with her family at The Cathedral Church of Saint Joseph in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, September 4, 2005. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Hughes came to Baton Rouge to lead the community in prayer.
http://www.krtdirect.com/photos/preview/preview.htm?doc=KRT%2Fkrtphotoslive%2Fdocs%2F184%2F493
Keep it coming.
ping
They're going to be getting a little wild at ULL soon.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Southeastern Louisiana University and the State Department of Transportation and Development have teamed up to start a wildflower seed bank.
The $1.7 million project was announced Tuesday by Alice Foster, wife of Gov. Mike Foster, as one of her last official duties before Kathleen Blanco is sworn in as governor next week.
ULL President Ray Authement joked that the timing was good, because Raymond Blanco, husband of the new governor and longtime top administrator at ULL, probably would not be a good spokesperson for wildflowers.
I can't see the new first spouse taking this on as a project," Authement said, drawing laughter from the crowd. "I've known Raymond too long. Thank God this is happening today."
I wonder if Blanco is related to the Las Vegas "family". Sound like she runs in very tightly wound circles.
EXECUTIVE ORDER KBB 04-01
Bond Allocation? Industrial Development
Board of the Parish of Ouachita, Inc.
Industrial Development
$3,000,000
Consolidated Industries, Inc.
Waste
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EXECUTIVE ORDER KBB 04-04
Office of the First Gentleman
Mr. Raymond "Coach" Blanco travels throughout Louisiana
to promote its beautification and historic preservation, the
health and safety of its inhabitants, and other worthy projects and causes, such as the Louisiana Governor's Mansion Foundation, litter prevention and elimination, inner city education, prisoner rehabilitation, and the protection of children’s health, safety and welfare;
During her first tour of the disaster, Blanco reassured mayors of flooded towns and asked for details about what they needed. She offered quick suggestions to pressing problems. She filed away the things that would be needed: a temporary morgue, more medical supplies and the toilet paper and other basic necessities at the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of refugees were housed.
Blanco pressed for help from President Bush and called for a day of prayer, leading a service Wednesday at the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge.
snip
Blanco, a former school teacher, insisted, "Be patient, be safe" while driving. "Bring peanut butter sandwiches in your car, and bring games for the children."
snip
She met the angry and miserable people inside. She heard their stories, she said, and determined that they had to be moved to a better shelter within two days.
"It's just so traumatic for so many of them," she said.
Later that day, Blanco announced her "day of prayer." She asked everyone to honor the people inside that stadium: "These are people who have lost everything, but are still people of courage."
L.A. Coming to LA
3 August 2005 (StudioBriefing)
Louisiana, which has been successful in luring Hollywood production companies to shoot such films as Ray, Mr. 3000, The Skeleton Key, The Dukes of Hazzard and All the King's Men within its borders, has announced plans to build a $60-million studio with five sound stages and 200,000 square feet of office space. Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that the project represented "proof that we are building a permanent film industry here. ...
Don Higginbotham, " 'I think [Raymond Blanco] wants to be governor. He's power hungry'."
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Over in Baton Rouge, Kathleen Blanco has made some administrative appointments (a friend whose business comes under the purview of the DEQ pretty often tells me that the DEQ head appointment was made under political pressure from the oil and gas industry.
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The governor is involved in another high-profile bid for a manufacturing company that could bring more than 1,000 jobs and an annual payroll greater than $60 million.
The company is concerned about Louisiana's corporate taxes on debt and sales taxes on machinery and equipment used in manufacturing because of the large investment and purchases it must make, the governor said. "It reinforced my understanding that we have to begin the process of eliminating those taxes."
During the special legislative session tentatively set to begin March 7, Blanco is putting the staged elimination of the taxes on the agenda. Thursday, she said she will wait until the last minute to issue the official call in case any legislation that would help nail the company - or other prospects the state is working on - should be included.
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Louisiana's cities aren't ready to shake their dependence on the corporate franchise taxes.
The state's big-city mayors pledged support Thursday for Gov. Kathleen Blanco's efforts to attract more jobs to the state, but asked her not to eliminate the local portion of a tax on manufacturing equipment she wants to phase out in coming years.
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Blanco sets her schedule
Governor Kathleen Blanco will call a special legislative session in March "to repeal some business taxes and perhaps handle a few other matters."
She also has two big conferences planned to study solutions to state health care and economic development.
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Nagin administration under fire again
I don't know how this lawsuit will turn out, but it's a good lesson that people should be very careful about what they email. A few days ago I linked to a fairly flattering profile of New Orleans politician Kimberly Butler. She was forced to resign from the Nagin administration (she was the commissioner of administration) for a variety of stated reasons, but she contends in a new lawsuit filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that it was because she is a woman and a Christian.
The emails she cites are pretty damaging to the administration, and even if her lawsuit fails I don't see how the mayor can justify what some of his top aides were writing about Butler.
Butler claims Nagin's male advisers repeatedly harassed her because she was a woman and a fervent Christian, creating a "hostile work environment" that eventually led to her "wrongful discharge." Evidence of the harassment is included in e-mails that Rice, Meffert, Evans and Forster sent to each other, referring to Butler as a "bitch," a "queen" and "Kimbo," which the complaint cites as a synonym for bimbo.
The foursome also made comments such as, "Why don't you go pray on that," and referred to the act of following her directives as singing "Kumbaya," according to the complaint.
...
Butler's complaint also charges that:
-- Nagin participated in a conspiracy to have Butler removed, as evidenced by an e-mail Forster wrote stating that he had given the mayor 90 days to "do something about her," or he would quit.
...
-- Rice, Meffert, Evans and Forster objected to seeking Butler's approval on decisions because she was female, again evidenced by statements in e-mails such as "She's trying to assert herself again," and "She still thinks she is queen." Additionally, executive team members stated to each other that, "We need to keep her in the pot or her stock rises over ours again."
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Yesterday Kathleen Blanco worked on the future of public education. In one day she convinced Cecil Picard to commit to another four years as head of BESSE, and she recommitted her pledge to find the money to maintain existing pre-K funding.
It's all in a day's work for the new Governor. In the second story up there she even promised to have a word with the Citigroup officials who made the decision to outsource their NOLA call center to India. We still don't have any word on whether or not she convinced the State Farm people to stay in Monroe, but I really doubt she'll have any luck with Citigroup. If I find out she promised them $40 million in subsidies and tax breaks (maybe free phone service?) to hang around I won't be surprised.
***STATE FARM MOVED FROM MONROE, LA & BLANCO WAS PART OF THE REASON***
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tonight we had the good fortune to dine with the "first gentleman" of Louisiana, "Coach" Raymond Blanco.
By dining with him, I mean he sat in the lounge with quite a bit of liquor and what was undoubtedly a table full of "good ole boys" of whom no one in my humble family recognized. They puffed on big cigars and seemed to be engrossed in some heavy-duty gamesmanship.
The Blanco gang is far from being the “new kids on the block”. Kathleen’s husband, Ray, has been a stalwart in numerous campaigns going back to the early 60’s. The governor-elect and her husband were key players in the Bennett Johnston campaign for governor in 1971.
Ray Blanco knew when to pull the switch. He had been advising the governor-elect and others for too many years not to know that it was time to go negative with about five days to go.
bttt
City-Journal summarized their criticism this way, "Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco lost whatever fragile authority they ever had over New Orleans early Monday {August 29, 2005}, as the waters still rose."[10]
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Ray Nagin never sold out the Black majority in New Orleans, since he was never a Black leader, nor had he held elective office prior to winning the Mayor’s job. Nagin is precisely what he appears to be: a businessman on the make, adept at using politics to effect bigger deals, a prime advantage in the thoroughly politicized world of cable television. The former $400,000-a-year Cox Communications vice president’s main asset in the 2002 campaign was that he wasn’t part of the local Black political machinery. It also didn’t hurt to have the support of virtually the entire local corporate community.
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Kathleen Blanco was so intent on ignoring Black Democrats, she at times appeared to be losing the governorship on purpose. So cluelessly grateful is the national Party for having been spared yet another gubernatorial defeat, they now speak of the schoolteacher who rose to Lieutenant Governor in 1996 as a bright political star. If that is true, then the southern Democratic skies will surely soon be falling.
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Ray Nagin is co-owner of the New Orleans Brass hockey team and vice president of the regional Cox cable system. The city’s Chamber of Commerce endorsed him as “an excellent spokesman for New Orleans.”
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Cuba (AP) -- U.S. governors coming to Cuba to secure trade deals face more than just business haggling.
Perhaps Heineman was taking cues from a visit to Cuba by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco earlier this year. The governor, a Democrat, signed agreements to sell US$15 million worth of Louisiana products to the island, but then faced an attack by Republicans upon her return for having a lobster lunch with Castro.
Blanco also watched her words while here. In Havana, she said members of the trade delegation would share their experiences and views on the embargo with the state's members of Congress, but stopped short of saying she would lobby for an end to the restrictions.
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