Ray Nagin In No Position Change Things

Ray Nagin, the terrible Mayor of New Orleans who should be out of a job soon, is trying to exercise a bit of power over the federal government in order to pander to the voters who remain in his city. Nagin approved the plans for the trailer park that is being installed for single mothers and their children. The problem is, he approved plans that allowed them to be built near an affluent neighborhood and now those residents are complaining. Since they are there and can vote Nagin has decided to pander to them rather than take a decision and stick to it. This should not surprise anyone since he could not make decisions and ultimately allowed a lot of his constituents to be abandoned.

How often have we heard that George Bush does not care about the folks in New Orleans (especially the black ones) and that the federal government did not do enough? Now, a trailer park is nearly completed and Nagin has put the brakes on. This park could give housing to some of the people of his city but he would rather screw them for a few votes. Interestingly enough, Nagin thinks that now that he has halted this he can force FEMA to erect more permanent housing.

Some might look at this as a racism incident but the neighbors who oppose the trailers only oppose them being right up against their houses and say there is a 120 acre lot across the street from them that would be great for the mobile homes. The city is playing games with this saying that FEMA did not have the proper permits but FEMA says the plans were approved by the city and they might try to make NO pay the 1.6 million dollars spent on the project.

No one lives in the trailer park, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency has nearly finished. And now Mayor Ray Nagin says no one will.

This week, Nagin suspended construction of FEMA trailer parks in the city after a confrontation between federal workers and angry homeowners.

The mayor said FEMA had failed to get proper permits for the site at Lakewood Estates, a community of spacious homes in the city’s Algiers neighborhood.

FEMA insists the mayor approved the plan in December and that the agency obtained all required permits. Civil rights activists are angry with Nagin, too.

They say the black mayor – who faces re-election in three weeks – is bowing to pressure from well-off white voters who do not want 34 low-income families moving in next door.

Have we not spent more than enough money there? Federal taxpayer money is being sucked down a huge hole and people who receive such generosity are demanding how that money is to be spent. With the corruption that NO is famous for, what makes anyone think the $1.6 million would not be siphoned off FEMA money any way? I am so tired of hearing about how the response to Katrina was terrible and how the administration is inept blah, blah. I have net seen FEMA rushing out to tornado ravaged areas to help the people there and I have not seen the news telling us how terrible it is. Perhaps it is because most people effected by the tornadoes were white.

Big Dog

Source AP

[tags]Ray Nagin, New Orleans, Katrina, FEMA, hurricane, ellection, disaster[/tags]