Ex-New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin sentenced to 10 years
Source: USA Today
NEW ORLEANS Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, the businessman-turned-politician who became the worldwide face of the city after Hurricane Katrina, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Wednesday.
Nagin, 58, was found guilty Feb. 12 of fraud, bribery and related charges involving crimes that took place before and after Katrina devastated the city in August 2005.
Pre-sentence reports by prosecutors and others were not made public. Nagin, based on sentencing guidelines, had faced a possible range of 12 to 30 years.
A jury convicted Nagin of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes -- money, free vacation trips and truckloads of free granite for his family business -- from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various hurricane recovery projects.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/ray-nagin-new-orleans-mayor-sentencing/12397415/
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)away, equally corrupted by the limitless ad money raining down on them,
ELI BOY 1950
(173 posts)him...stop defending creeps like this...
tabasco
(22,974 posts)Do you normally just make things up? Like playing pretend? FUN!
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)defence.
There a a few trolls lurking around, more than usual.
randys1
(16,286 posts)how about the political prisoner Siegelman, Obama hasnt pardoned yet
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)Nagin deserves this, but a whole bunch of others deserve a whole lot more. If Cheney can write editorials, Nagin should be a NYT editor by today's standards.
ELI BOY 1950
(173 posts)Ecumenist
(6,086 posts)understand it. cheney, rumsfeld, bush, rice are bonified war criminals BUT are walking around free and unpunished. HELL, cheney keeps opening his mouth about things that he's been wrong about 100% of the time. REALLY? That DU'ER IS A FOOL??!!
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)littlemissmartypants
(22,691 posts)Hassin Bin Sober
(26,330 posts)"Mr. Nagin has been a devoted father, husband, and supportive child to his parents, and greatly cares for the well being of his family, and is their caretaker," Jenkins wrote.
...... So was Michael Corleone
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... in New Orleans as cheap labor instead of hiring local people displaced by Katrina who needed a job then. I wondered if Nagin was involved with this, but it sounds from the comments in this story that he was "frustrated" with the tons of latin immigrants that were brought in as "cheap labor" for the city. If you read about the way these people were exploited far more than H-1B visa people have been as guest workers for the tech industry, it illustrates the end game of what corporate America wants to turn this country in to, and who they will and won't prosecute in this pursuit.
http://www.workingimmigrants.com/2006/08/new_orleans_suit_over_h2b_gues.html
And these lawsuits have been reported on as recently as last year for these H-2B workers...
http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/archive/2013/06/28/multiple-trafficking-rico-civil-rights-violations-lawsuits-filed-on-behalf-of-h-2b-visa-workers.aspx
Those candidates running in 2016 need to be reminded of this kind of crap when H-1B visa expansion being part of our immigration bill are being discussed and whether they support them or not.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)easy victims who won't turn around and kick the employer's ass with a lawsuit. They're protected like the rest of us and they should make sure they get that protection.
alp227
(32,026 posts)uppityperson
(115,677 posts)from nola
But, she added, "the seriousness of Mr. Nagin's offenses can hardly be overstated."
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)But I still respect Mr. Nagin's passion in that phone call about the lack of response for Katrina.
Igel
(35,317 posts)Nagin screwed up in the days and months before Katrina, and screwed up big. Same aftewards.
Even after there was a good chance of Katrina's landfall being at NOLA, he frittered away the time. He could have called for evacuation earlier.
Worse yet, there was supposed to be an emergency evacuation plan coordinated with the state for the feds and the state to follow. There were federal employees assigned to help devise one. And yet in the year before Katrina, the big issue involving that plan was $ and power: Who's control what? Where would the $ flow? So when they went to activate that plan, the state had to fall on backup plans that were old and not well coordinated. NOLA screwed up. Given money, manpower, and a legal requirement they twiddled over power and money because there was no viable enforcement mechanism.
Then there was the circular firing squad after Katrina, as everybody continued to fight over power. "Why aren't you sending in the National Guard?" "Because we haven't gotten a request." 2-3 days after landfall, they made their request. It should have been ready to go by the time the eye of the storm had left the parish.
Who's going to arrange distribution? Who's going to say where this unit moves? Where are we putting the distribution points? Who's organizing the rescue? Nagin wanted the power. The governor wanted the power. Brown probably wanted the power--even if he had no power until either he was bestowed the authority by locals or Bush "federalized" the response (which at the time was a big deal with Nagin and the governor both saying that would be a horrible/racist/humiliating/inappropriate response while reporting everything was fine, everything's okay down here like Skywalker on the Deathstar).
So much blame to go around the only reason to seriously fight it and protect our ego and credibility is to try to shift it away from our clan onto anybody else we can possibly find.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)And, indirectly, pointed to the Mayor's office.
Those of us living around the Gulf had a front row seat to what was going on in N.O. before and after Katrina
AND
with BP's actions a few years later.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)........
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Coman compared Nagin's crimes with those of other public officials who drew stiff sentences, including former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (28 years), former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (14 years) and former Birmingham, Alabama, Mayor Larry Langford (15 years).
Won't they face trial? If we're interested in restoring "public trust," how about sending a few bribers to prison? Or are we only concerned with the bribee?
Igel
(35,317 posts)Sorry, there are others. And if every story had to include every fact that every reader thought relevant, we'd get one story a day and it would have scores of photos and 25k words text.
Here's a news story that wasn't important. Note that if a man's going to be convicted for bribing the mayor, you can pretty much expect the next sound will be that of the other shoe falling--Nagin's conviction.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/03/sentencing_for_rodney_williams.html
There are probably more, hard to imagine that Nagin only chowed down at one trough. Before being outraged over a story that doesn't include everything that it possibly could, before being outraged that we're not being spoon-fed like infantile consumers, check Google or Bing. My ever-so-clever search terms were "Who bribed Nagin?"
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Why the press ignores the truth:
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powells nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powells legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice
in behalf of business interests.[/font color]
Though Powells memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administrations hands-off business philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)
So did Powells political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment right for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.
CONTINUED...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
alarimer
(16,245 posts)I'm guessing quite a lot of it is based on reality, where groups and individuals get money but don't actually do any work. Also doing work without the express permission of the homeowner.
It seems like the government was throwing money at the recovery efforts without any sort of accountability or controls.
JohnnyRingo
(18,635 posts)I really liked Ray Nagin from back in the day, and didn't even know this trial was proceeding. Still, I have little sympathy for elected officials that betray our trust. Shame on him.
ELI BOY 1950
(173 posts)americannightmare
(322 posts)if he's a white republican...