Louisiana Corruption = Big Mess
By J. Grant Swank Jr. (09/27/05)
How can we upright Americans trust the Louisiana clique with handouts from private and public funds? We can’t. There’s a bad history there in Louisiana, New Orleans in particular.
No wonder one of the New Orleans officials, as Katrina was hitting hard, said to another local politico that perhaps God was cleansing the place. I thought to myself: "You bet. In more ways than one."
That part of this prideful nation is sludge up to its ears. The record proves it.
John H. Fund of NewsAndOpinion.com comes clean with his assessment of the situation related to money handed over to the state and local boys and girls in Louisiana. And it is not pretty reading.
He calls the geography under inspection to be "a swamp of corruption." Then he elaborates with "Louisiana’s political culture needs a cleanup."
US President George W. Bush offered $62 billion in emergency moneys. Gets this: few accountability sendbacks have been put into the equation! Not sound for dealing with Louisiana and especially New Orleans. Not thinking clearly on that move.
Even with that handout, Louisiana’s senators brashly come up with this: They asked, without blinking an eye, for a growing figure of $250 billion from feds. Count those pennies and weep.
Figure into that math fraud and waste and mismanagement and hideaway items in officials’ attics and cellars and backyard sheds. Let’s recall that the police just happened to come upon chainsaws, beverages, food and roof tarp in New Orleans Chief Administrative Officer Cedric Floyd’s home. Other city personnel are having their households inspected as I type. I wouldn’t know why.
According to Democrat House Appropriations Committee Representative David Obey, accountability for the money flow down South is just not there. It’s a trusting net that is breaking loose every day. And more threads will come undone as more honest persons look into those in authority hiding this-and-that behind their backs.
Here’s the dubious history we are working with according to John H. Fund:
"Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes. ‘The governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president, and a swarm of local officials’" were all convicted.
"Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes.
"Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes. Much of the region has long had a relaxed attitude towards corruption."
New Orleans, if true to its past, will clean up the fed handout with glad hands. Former Mayor Marc Morial’s colleagues were legally brought down recently because of alleged kickbacks related to public contracts. Representative William Jefferson's house was raided by the FBI due to suspicions that he had "misused his office."
The New Orleans police office needs the spy glass closely scouring its walls. Honest people living in that metro have endured much deceit from those whom they should have been able to trust to the last blue hat on the force. But not so. It’s been a troubling existence for those with integrity living in that city.
Often police have been found involved in crime rather than wiping it out. In fact, according to NewsAndOpinion.com "more than 50 officers went to prison in the past dozen years, two of them to death row." A police district was "caught altering its data."
More: Bob Livingston, Republican, pointed out that the Orleans Parish Levee Board took money for levees and built a casino, convention center and Mardi Gras fountain. Could that be one of the reasons the levees were not strong enough to withstand hurricane force? Just could be one of the factors.
When a board member overseeing the moneys was asked how moneys could be moved so easily he responded: "’We were trying to be good neighbors.’"
Sounds like the Mafia comradeship to me.
Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
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