Nagin's Seven Sins

Varg over at the Chicory has compiled a list of WHY Ray Nagin should never, ever be considered for any award related to Katrina recovery. You can read them here, along with links to back up the claims .

Here's a copy of the handout Varg has created

Bayou Sauvage Boardwalk

Last week I posted about the reopening of the Bayou Sauvage Refuge on Highway 90 in "da east".

Jennifer Zdon on the Times Pic has put together a nice little multi media
slideshow of the new boardwalk here.

Enjoy!

Still Making it Right

From today's Times Pic The Brad Pitt's "Make it Right Foundation" is quietly doing the work that they said they would just 8 months ago. New homes are being constructed in the Katrina-devastated Ninth Ward.

Click here to see some photos.

From the aforementioned TP article:
While complaints of bureaucratic sloth persist, Pitt's foundation instead provides a striking example of a private entity taking the simplest of plans -- build houses where the flood knocked them all down -- from idea to execution in a relatively short time. As of today, Make It Right has raised enough money to build at least 84 houses, with an ultimate goal of financing at least 150 houses in the Lower 9th Ward, said Tom Darden, the foundation's executive director.

Crews are hard at work on six homes, two of them modular designs, with hopes of finishing at least one by Aug. 29 and having the others near completion by that date, Darden said. The six houses will go to the first six families who closed on the foundation's forgivable loans; 20 other families have submitted applications, he said.

Have you made a donation? I have.

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Early in the week for this one, but around here the scuzzbuckets seem to just pop out of the soil as fast as the weeds after a good rain.



Veronica White is the head of the New Orleans Sanitation Department which supposedly oversees city-authorized teardowns.

Over the weekend, Mizz White's department totally screwed up, according to newspaper report .


The pile of rubble that a city-hired wrecking crew left at 5132 Kendall Drive in Gentilly Woods on Saturday was supposed to be the DeJan family's new home.

Erica DeJan and her husband, Brian, bought the two-story structure just around the corner from their current home in June and jumped right into rehabbing it.
So it came as a surprise Friday when Erica DeJan, who is nearly eight months pregnant with her fourth child, found a sticker on the house stating that Mayor Ray Nagin's administration had declared it a public health threat and planned to tear it down.

DeJan does not dispute that before she and her husband bought it, the property was a nuisance. "It hadn't been touched since Katrina," she said. "It had just been sitting."

The DeJans, though, had already gutted the house and replaced termite-damaged wood, she said. While the couple had enough money to remodel the existing structure, they cannot afford to rebuild from scratch. She laid blame for the improper demolition on a City Hall system ill-equipped to honor last-minute reprieves.

A spokeswoman for the company that tore down the house, Beck Disaster Recovery of Orlando, Fla., said the firm was notified that Saturday's demolition had been canceled.

DeJan said a city employee should have confirmed directly with the wrecking crew that her property had been crossed off Saturday's work order.

"It's just a lack of communication," DeJan said. "It's not being on the same wavelength."

This is not the first time old Ronnie's department has shown ineptitude. check out this from Squandered Heritage .

Excellence in Recovery List

It's been a rainy weekend, so in between rearranging my living room and trying to stay off my swollen ankle I decided to go thru the list of people who think that Ray Nagin deserves any kind of a reward in the Katrina recovery and see who they were. I left out the people that Howie has identified on his website.

For an up to date status of this fiasco, check up with Kevin Alleman here at Gambit.

And the "Excellence in Recovery" Committee Members are......

Juli Juneau Glass Artist (go to page 8 of link)

Donald G. Lambert Louisiana Licensing Board for Contractors (see page five of this link)

Richard Fiske - , owner, Bombay Club

William Goldring - Magnolia Marketing Co., one of the largest independently owned wine and spirits distributors in the country.

Father Michael Jacques - Pastor, St. Peter Claver Church

Coleman Adler II - president, Adler Jewelers

Joe Maselli - developer of the internationally famous Piazza d’Italia with the City of New Orleans

Wanda Davis - Director, Alexandria Housing Authority ???

Barbara Major - community organizer and trainer with over twenty years experience in many local, national, and international community development efforts.

Rabbi Edward P. Cohn - Temple Siani, New Orleans

Mel Lagarde - President & CEO of the head of the Delta region for the hospital company Hospital Corporation of America

Ashlyn Graves - Evans-Graves Engineers, Metairie

Arnold Baker - President and CEO of Baker Ready Mix Building Materials

Ethel Kidd - French Quarter Real Estate

Terry Williams - Managing Partner of Airware Consulting

Al Groos - New Orleans Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau Chairman

Ed Minyard - Unisys Emergency Management Practice for North America.

Effie S. Naghi - Jeweler

Reverend Cornelius Tilton - co-leader of strategic planning for the Greater New Orleans Pastor’s Coalition

William Sizeler - Sizeler Architects

Blaine Kern Sr. - Mr. Mardi Gras

Joseph Jaeger Jr. - President & CEO, MCC Group

Reverend John C. Raphael - Pastor, New Hope Baptist Church

Keil Moss - French Market Corporation

Dawn Leslie - Real Estate

Ralph Fontcuberta - BFM Corporation-Land Surveyors

Reverend Fred Luter, Jr. - recognized nationally as one of this city’s powerful man of the cloth.

Steve Dwyer - Lawyer, Dwyer & Cambre, Metairie

Lisa Roth - Architect

Raoul Chauvin - Engieering Consultants, Infinity

Reverend Willie Gable - Progressive Baptist Church

Henry DiFranco - Not sure if this is the man or not, but this Henry DiFranco is in the "recovery" bid-ness.

Angela O'Byrne - President, Perez Architecture Firm

Frank Nicoladis - N-Y Associates, Architects

Reverend Sam Johnson - New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Joseph Parrino - Fleur de Paris hat shop

John Schackai III - Independent Architectect

Reverend Richard Bellizan Sr. - another man of the cloth who loves Ray Ray

Prisca Weems - Environmental designer

Hans Wandfluh - General Manager of the Royal Sonesta Hotel

Reverend Reginald Nicholas Sr. - Pastor, Olive Branch Baptist Church

Ray Liuzza - Part owner Doubletree Hotel

American Zombie blogs about Bernardo , Nagin's personal "photographer" and apparent organizer to the event and his lurid past peddling cocaine to performers at House of Blues and sexually harassing the staff there.


Bernardo's the sleazy looking dude on the right

Clancy DuBos opines Nagin will never be remembered for being the beast that (Idi) Amin was, but he’s about as delusional if he thinks anybody beyond his small circle of sycophants actually deems him worthy of an award for “courage and leadership” after Katrina.
AMEN.

Is this for real?

From the TP
Mayor Ray Nagin takes his fair share of shots from New Orleanians who are less than thrilled with his leadership in restoring their beloved city. But a group of about 50 civic worthies apparently couldn't be happier with him.



The group plans to have retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, credited with restoring order after the storm, hand Nagin the newly minted "Award of Distinction for Recovery, Courage and Leadership" next week as part of a ceremony marking Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary.

I'm gonna puke.

Here's a list of the assholes sponsoring this.


Howie Luvz Us has done the work I was going to do by providing links to info for the "supporters" on that list . Thanks, Howie.
REACTIONS across the blogsphere

Schroeder has an excellent entry and suggests an "Excellence in Recovery Chutzpah Award" for Nagin and his ilk

Humid City

Gambit

Library Chronicles

Oyster

Ghosts of Katrina

Times Picayune photographer extrodinaire John McCusker has assembled a slideshow from his former neighborhood nearly three years post Katrina.

bring a kleenex

Scuzzbucket of the Week #3

It's been a busy week for scummy people.

Thursday's nomination for "shit of the day" goes to United Airlines their lowlife idea
From the Washington Times:

American Airlines is charging troops for their extra baggage, a practice that forces soldiers heading for a war zone in Iraq to try to get reimbursement from the military. One of the country's largest veterans groups is asking the aviation industry to drop the practice immediately.

American, which recently charged two soldiers from Texas $100 and $300 for their extra duffel bags, said it gives the military a break on the cost for excess luggage and that the soldiers who incur the fees are reimbursed.

"Because the soldiers don't pay a dime, our waiver of the fees amounts to a discount to the military, not a discount to soldiers," said Tim Wagner, spokesman for American Airlines. "Soldiers should not have to pay a penny of it."

I never understood charging men and women who are putting their lives on the line. I used to send boxes of goods to soldiers in Iraq but had to stop when it was costing me over $100 in postage for two boxes. It sickens me.

Scuzzbucket Twins

From the "lovely lah-dee-dah" metropolis of Mandeville, Louisiana come the mayor-with-a-drinking-problem Eddie Price and his sidekick Police Chief Tom Buell.



Not only is it unsavory enough that the mayor would not go to jail several instances of drunk driving. Last month four Causeway police officers, including Chief Felix Loicano, lost their jobs after an outside review recommended that they be fired or resign for treating Price leniently after he crashed through a tollbooth barrier on the bridge April 22.

Now Eddie and Tom are in deep shit after publication of a Legislative Audit
that claims these two theives have been stealing money from the city, from charity to benefit themselves and other cronies.
touched a responsive chord.

From 2002 to 2007, the Mandeville Police Department's Citizen's Service Fund received donations totaling $217,938. But according to a Louisiana Legislative Auditor's report, only $16,492 of that money was used to buy Christmas presents for needy children -- less than the $26,055 that was spent on materials to solicit donations.

The report states $15,775 were used to purchase Wal-Mart gift cards for residents and city employees including Price who, over the five-year period, received $1,300 in gift cards. The report also states Price was given additional gifts, including a gun cabinet and a crossbow, that totaled $1,607.

Yesterday Price called for revised procedures from his office for better documentation of monies spent. What gall.

And now the Louisiana State Attorney General is investigating these scumbags.

Stay tuned.

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Actually, this scum has been a scuzzbucket for a loooooong time.




David Duke former Ku Klux Klan leader believes that an Obama victory be a "visual aid" for his "cause". His election, he says, would trigger a backlash - whites rising up, a revolution of sorts - that he and his ilk think is long overdue.

Rot in hell, scum.

Courtesy 2 Millionth Weblog

To the French Relay Swim Team