red states rule
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- May 30, 2006
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So Long, Me-Maw
In New Orleans, they arent shedding a tear over Louisiana Gov. Blancos decision not to seek a second term. A letter from the Garden District.
By Julia Reed
Newsweek
Updated: 8:35 p.m. ET March 22, 2007
March 22, 2007 - New Orleans, 18 months after Katrina, is still a city of considerable ups and downs. Tuesday was no different; as usual, the bad news came first. The first e-mail I received informed me that a block and a half from our new house, at 1:30 in the afternoon, two hold-ups occurred in less than 10 minutesand I live in Garden District, still perceived as a nice neighborhood, despite the alarming frequency of similar attacks, along with a recent rash of break-ins of both cars and houses (one of them was mine). First, a gunman wielding a chrome short nose revolver relieved a sod delivery man of the $30 in his pockets. Next, he snatched a womans purse, jumped into an unknown black vehicle, and roared away.
As crimes go in the city with by far the highest murder rate in the nation (96 per every 100,000 people in 2006; more than 40 people overall have been killed so far in 2007), these could actually be viewed as good newsnobody was killed or even shot, after all. But the real good news came in my next e-mail: Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced that she would not seek re-election to a second term.
Blanco, a former high-school business teacher-turned-public servant, elected in 2003 as the first woman governor of Louisiana, became one of the many not-so-happy public faces of Katrina, along with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and FEMAs Mike Brownie Brown. In the storms immediate aftermath, she appeared so disoriented that one press account of her public appearances went so far as to suggest that she seemed over-medicated. Times-Picayune columnist James Gill reported that Me-Maws tranked is the word on the street. (Blanco is sometimes nicknamed Me-Maw due to her grandmotherly affect.) That general perception was not helped when she was overheard by a CNN producer while still miked, admitting that she hadnt known it was the governors responsibility to call out the National Guard. She then engaged in a two-day argument with President Bush over whether the guard troops should be federalized, thus keeping those troops ready to go literally waiting on runways around the nation. (When I returned to the city 10 days after the storm, Oklahoma guard troops told me they had been given the heads up that theyd be deployed on Wednesday after the storm, and then sat suited up for three more days before finally being given permission to deploy.) In the end, she opted against federalization.
Indecision and failure to act have been the hallmarks of her administration. In neighboring Mississippi, Haley Barbour had convened two special sessions of the legislature before she called for her first one. Louisiana received the first half of the $7.5 billion earmarked for homeowners reconstruction efforts in December of 2005, and the second chunk in June 2006. The so-called Road Home program offers owners of storm-damaged homes up to $150,000 in aid. But so far, bureaucratic hurdles put in place by the state have meant that only 3 percent of the 115,000 families who have applied for help have received it. Worse, the contractor hand-picked by Blancos administration to implement the process stands to make a jaw-dropping $765 million from the job, though it has further slowed progress with computer glitches and Keystone Kops-style mistakes. By contrast, 78 percent of Mississippis applicants in a similar, but much less bureaucratic, program have received their checks.
The irony is that when the program was finally launched last summerwith the official name Governor Kathleen Blancos Road Home Programcritics cried foul, saying that she would get too much political credit for the payouts. Now, of course, she has been given all the blame for the lack thereof. A January poll showed her garnering only 24 percent of the votes in a race against U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, her 2003 opponent, who had 59 percent. Since then, she has dropped eight more points, and last week in yet another embarrassing blow, HUD charged that the state was breaking federal law by requiring homeowners to wait for a series of reimbursements rather than giving them the option of taking a lump sum.
Though the State Recovery Authority agreed to change the program to address HUDs concerns, the feedback from the initial HUD announcement had been so negative that the state Democratic Party put strong pressure on Blanco to bow out sooner rather than later, so that it could field a better candidate. Jindal lost narrowly last go-round due largely to racist voters in northern Louisiana who objected to the widely respected candidate on the basis of his Indian heritage. The current Democratic favorite is former U.S. senator John Breaux, but since he is now a lobbyist whose legal residence is in Maryland, he faces some legal hurdles; the Louisiana constitution requires that candidates be legal residents of the state for at least five years. If Breaux doesnt manage to overcome that particular glitch, other choices include Mitch Landrieu, the effective lieutenant governor who lost last years mayoral race to Nagin.
No matter who winds up running, the best news for the voters of this beleaguered city is that the election will no longer be a referendum on the past. With two strong candidates, there may even be discussion of the futureof how to solve our health-care crisis, our education crisis, our housing crisis, and on and on and on.
This should be cause for hope for New Orleanians, who have been tryingdoggedly, optimistically, and almost entirely on their ownto bring back the city, while existing in what can only be called a leadership vacuum. In the early days after the storm, Mississippis far superior response had some citizens wishing Haley Barbour could govern both states, and this week he raised more than $300,000 for his own re-election bid at a single fund-raiser here, far more than Blanco could have dreamed of drumming up. Others half-seriously advocated busting former governor Edwin Edwards out of the federal penitentiary in Oakdale; bumper stickers distributed during this years Mardi Gras read EDWARDS NOW MORE THAN EVER. Its a far cry from VOTE FOR THE CROOK; ITS IMPORTANT, the message on the popular bumper sticker during his race against the former Klansman David Duke, but no one has ever doubted his considerable political acumen or administrative skills. Currently halfway through his 10-year prison term for extorting payoffs in exchange for riverboat casino licenses, he has said nothing publicly about the governors handling of the storm, but he did tell a close friend who visits regularly that federalizing the guard troops would have been a no-brainer. The 78-year-old former governor, said his friend, is very concerned about the leadership of this state. So are we all, but our options just got a whole lot better.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17745438/site/newsweek/page/2/
In New Orleans, they arent shedding a tear over Louisiana Gov. Blancos decision not to seek a second term. A letter from the Garden District.
By Julia Reed
Newsweek
Updated: 8:35 p.m. ET March 22, 2007
March 22, 2007 - New Orleans, 18 months after Katrina, is still a city of considerable ups and downs. Tuesday was no different; as usual, the bad news came first. The first e-mail I received informed me that a block and a half from our new house, at 1:30 in the afternoon, two hold-ups occurred in less than 10 minutesand I live in Garden District, still perceived as a nice neighborhood, despite the alarming frequency of similar attacks, along with a recent rash of break-ins of both cars and houses (one of them was mine). First, a gunman wielding a chrome short nose revolver relieved a sod delivery man of the $30 in his pockets. Next, he snatched a womans purse, jumped into an unknown black vehicle, and roared away.
As crimes go in the city with by far the highest murder rate in the nation (96 per every 100,000 people in 2006; more than 40 people overall have been killed so far in 2007), these could actually be viewed as good newsnobody was killed or even shot, after all. But the real good news came in my next e-mail: Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced that she would not seek re-election to a second term.
Blanco, a former high-school business teacher-turned-public servant, elected in 2003 as the first woman governor of Louisiana, became one of the many not-so-happy public faces of Katrina, along with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and FEMAs Mike Brownie Brown. In the storms immediate aftermath, she appeared so disoriented that one press account of her public appearances went so far as to suggest that she seemed over-medicated. Times-Picayune columnist James Gill reported that Me-Maws tranked is the word on the street. (Blanco is sometimes nicknamed Me-Maw due to her grandmotherly affect.) That general perception was not helped when she was overheard by a CNN producer while still miked, admitting that she hadnt known it was the governors responsibility to call out the National Guard. She then engaged in a two-day argument with President Bush over whether the guard troops should be federalized, thus keeping those troops ready to go literally waiting on runways around the nation. (When I returned to the city 10 days after the storm, Oklahoma guard troops told me they had been given the heads up that theyd be deployed on Wednesday after the storm, and then sat suited up for three more days before finally being given permission to deploy.) In the end, she opted against federalization.
Indecision and failure to act have been the hallmarks of her administration. In neighboring Mississippi, Haley Barbour had convened two special sessions of the legislature before she called for her first one. Louisiana received the first half of the $7.5 billion earmarked for homeowners reconstruction efforts in December of 2005, and the second chunk in June 2006. The so-called Road Home program offers owners of storm-damaged homes up to $150,000 in aid. But so far, bureaucratic hurdles put in place by the state have meant that only 3 percent of the 115,000 families who have applied for help have received it. Worse, the contractor hand-picked by Blancos administration to implement the process stands to make a jaw-dropping $765 million from the job, though it has further slowed progress with computer glitches and Keystone Kops-style mistakes. By contrast, 78 percent of Mississippis applicants in a similar, but much less bureaucratic, program have received their checks.
The irony is that when the program was finally launched last summerwith the official name Governor Kathleen Blancos Road Home Programcritics cried foul, saying that she would get too much political credit for the payouts. Now, of course, she has been given all the blame for the lack thereof. A January poll showed her garnering only 24 percent of the votes in a race against U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, her 2003 opponent, who had 59 percent. Since then, she has dropped eight more points, and last week in yet another embarrassing blow, HUD charged that the state was breaking federal law by requiring homeowners to wait for a series of reimbursements rather than giving them the option of taking a lump sum.
Though the State Recovery Authority agreed to change the program to address HUDs concerns, the feedback from the initial HUD announcement had been so negative that the state Democratic Party put strong pressure on Blanco to bow out sooner rather than later, so that it could field a better candidate. Jindal lost narrowly last go-round due largely to racist voters in northern Louisiana who objected to the widely respected candidate on the basis of his Indian heritage. The current Democratic favorite is former U.S. senator John Breaux, but since he is now a lobbyist whose legal residence is in Maryland, he faces some legal hurdles; the Louisiana constitution requires that candidates be legal residents of the state for at least five years. If Breaux doesnt manage to overcome that particular glitch, other choices include Mitch Landrieu, the effective lieutenant governor who lost last years mayoral race to Nagin.
No matter who winds up running, the best news for the voters of this beleaguered city is that the election will no longer be a referendum on the past. With two strong candidates, there may even be discussion of the futureof how to solve our health-care crisis, our education crisis, our housing crisis, and on and on and on.
This should be cause for hope for New Orleanians, who have been tryingdoggedly, optimistically, and almost entirely on their ownto bring back the city, while existing in what can only be called a leadership vacuum. In the early days after the storm, Mississippis far superior response had some citizens wishing Haley Barbour could govern both states, and this week he raised more than $300,000 for his own re-election bid at a single fund-raiser here, far more than Blanco could have dreamed of drumming up. Others half-seriously advocated busting former governor Edwin Edwards out of the federal penitentiary in Oakdale; bumper stickers distributed during this years Mardi Gras read EDWARDS NOW MORE THAN EVER. Its a far cry from VOTE FOR THE CROOK; ITS IMPORTANT, the message on the popular bumper sticker during his race against the former Klansman David Duke, but no one has ever doubted his considerable political acumen or administrative skills. Currently halfway through his 10-year prison term for extorting payoffs in exchange for riverboat casino licenses, he has said nothing publicly about the governors handling of the storm, but he did tell a close friend who visits regularly that federalizing the guard troops would have been a no-brainer. The 78-year-old former governor, said his friend, is very concerned about the leadership of this state. So are we all, but our options just got a whole lot better.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17745438/site/newsweek/page/2/
