We Could Be Famous: Kos Post Pimp
Kos Post Pimp
I wrote a goodbye to Robert Cerasoli at Daily Kos. Check it.
By E at 11:34 AM
Labels: robert cerasoli
The Obama administration needs to quickly announce who will be the next Gulf Coast Recovery Czar and if he will be replacing Jim Letten as US Attorney for Louisiana (and the US Attorney for VA).
Donald Powell was a farce as GCRC. He was a Cheney/Bush bootlicker who was as obstructionist as the current minority in Washington. He did nothing to alleviate the deficiencies with the Stafford Act that severely impeded the flow of recovery funds to the region. His standard answer was that everything was TOO EXPENSIVE. He never took into account this was one of the worst natural and man-caused disasters ever and it should be expected. Doug O'Dell was a breathing marshmallow who was never supposed to do anything. Had the Cheney administration not had a partisan agenda in the aftermath of Katrina they could have criticized the way Nagin, Blanco and Jindal/Rainwater offices were doing their part.
We need our congressional delegate to appropriate as much money as possible to our state. Our needs are great and there will surely be a certain amount of “you already got yours” coming down the pike. As has been stated in other postings every federal dollar that we can get in the name of recovery and economic stimulus will be disproportionately paid by other parts of the country. The Diapered Dork and his five Baby Wipes do not seem to comprehend this.
Letten has run a scandal free office that should have been much more effective this last three years. His successor should come in with a mandate to work hand-in-hand with the IG’s in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He needs to put the fear of God into Jindal/Rainwater/Teepel and Nagin.
The new US Attorney for Virginia needs to put Dollar Bill in the piggy bank or let him prove his innocents. Louisiana is being blamed for this lingering stench.
I thought it was generally understood that Letten was staying on.
Good stuff, E. Am I being naive in thinking that Odom and the eventual IG can do a job that would approximate the work Cerasoli would do? He did (almost) all the hard work of getting the office set up; I'm hopeful that the new IG will ride that momentum into some real change. That being said, I really am sick of officials coming in and getting us just far enough for them to skip outta town (not Cerasoli, but Blakely, etc.)
Your letter really is great at articulating how tough it is to talk about New Orleans, and it is absolutely a symptom of how far out of lockstep the city has always been with the rest of the country. That's not to say that we don't face issues similar to those in other major cities, but it is much harder to see how to help us. That's why the Lower 9 is depicted as a typical inner city neighborhood when it is anything but...
Without romanticizing too much, I think the inscrutability of New Orleans to both newcomers and those observing from afar is part and parcel of it being a place that is far more bound up in community and history that almost anywhere else I've lived (Madison, Chicago, Boston)--and to understand the city is to know those stories about the block or the city at large. And that takes time, but it is a process that is way too devalued nowadays, especially in this country. That's the beauty of New Orleans, and the power of its recovery and development: we can show the rest of the country how to have development without homogenizing. However, we certainly aren't going to get there being led by our political leaders. Which is why losing Cerasoli does hurt really badly.
But that's why you can't leave NOLA either, E!
Excellent post, Eli. You represent us well.
We Could Be Famous: Kos Post Pimp
Kos Post Pimp
I wrote a goodbye to Robert Cerasoli at Daily Kos. Check it.
By E at 11:34 AM
Labels: robert cerasoli
The Obama administration needs to quickly announce who will be the next Gulf Coast Recovery Czar and if he will be replacing Jim Letten as US Attorney for Louisiana (and the US Attorney for VA).
Donald Powell was a farce as GCRC. He was a Cheney/Bush bootlicker who was as obstructionist as the current minority in Washington. He did nothing to alleviate the deficiencies with the Stafford Act that severely impeded the flow of recovery funds to the region. His standard answer was that everything was TOO EXPENSIVE. He never took into account this was one of the worst natural and man-caused disasters ever and it should be expected. Doug O'Dell was a breathing marshmallow who was never supposed to do anything. Had the Cheney administration not had a partisan agenda in the aftermath of Katrina they could have criticized the way Nagin, Blanco and Jindal/Rainwater offices were doing their part.
We need our congressional delegate to appropriate as much money as possible to our state. Our needs are great and there will surely be a certain amount of “you already got yours” coming down the pike. As has been stated in other postings every federal dollar that we can get in the name of recovery and economic stimulus will be disproportionately paid by other parts of the country. The Diapered Dork and his five Baby Wipes do not seem to comprehend this.
Letten has run a scandal free office that should have been much more effective this last three years. His successor should come in with a mandate to work hand-in-hand with the IG’s in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He needs to put the fear of God into Jindal/Rainwater/Teepel and Nagin.
The new US Attorney for Virginia needs to put Dollar Bill in the piggy bank
 or let him prove his innocents. Louisiana is being blamed for this lingering stench.
I thought it was generally understood that Letten was staying on.
Good stuff, E. Am I being naive in thinking that Odom and the eventual IG can do a job that would approximate the work Cerasoli would do? He did (almost) all the hard work of getting the office set up; I'm hopeful that the new IG will ride that momentum into some real change. That being said, I really am sick of officials coming in and getting us just far enough for them to skip outta town (not Cerasoli, but Blakely, etc.)
Your letter really is great at articulating how tough it is to talk about New Orleans, and it is absolutely a symptom of how far out of lockstep the city has always been with the rest of the country. That's not to say that we don't face issues similar to those in other major cities, but it is much harder to see how to help us. That's why the Lower 9 is depicted as a typical inner city neighborhood when it is anything but...
Without romanticizing too much, I think the inscrutability of New Orleans to both newcomers and those observing from afar is part and parcel of it being a place that is far more bound up in community and history that almost anywhere else I've lived (Madison, Chicago, Boston)--and to understand the city is to know those stories about the block or the city at large. And that takes time, but it is a process that is way too devalued nowadays, especially in this country. That's the beauty of New Orleans, and the power of its recovery and development: we can show the rest of the country how to have development without homogenizing. However, we certainly aren't going to get there being led by our political leaders. Which is why losing Cerasoli does hurt really badly.
But that's why you can't leave NOLA either, E!
Excellent post, Eli. You represent us well.