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Jailed 10 yrs: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on corruption

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Ex-New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin jailed for 10 years | Mail Online

[h=1]Corrupt ex-New Orleans mayor jailed 10 years for living large on laundered money as city suffered in wake of Hurricane Katrina[/h]
  • Ray Nagin, 58, received the sentence for bribery, money laundering and other corruption on Wednesday
  • The crimes spanned his two terms, including the chaotic years following Katrina
  • The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 10:27 EST, 9 July 2014 | UPDATED: 15:17 EST, 9 July 2014

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan handed down the sentence Wednesday morning.
Nagin was convicted February 12 of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various projects.
Scroll down for video


article-2686228-1F832F2100000578-103_634x383.jpg


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Corrupt: Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is surrounded by the the media as he arrives for his sentencing hearing Wednesday, where he was later handed a 10 year prison term for money laundering, accepting bribes, and other corrupt misdeeds

The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business.
The 58-year-old Democrat had defiantly denied any wrongdoing after his 2013 indictment and during his February trial.
Nagin was a political newcomer when he won election as New Orleans' mayor, succeeding Marc Morial in 2002. He cast himself as a reformer and announced crackdowns on corruption in the city's automobile-inspection and taxi-permit programs.


[h=4]More...[/h]


But federal prosecutors say his own corrupt acts began during his first term, continued through the Katrina catastrophe and flourished in his second term.
Until his indictment in 2013, he was perhaps best known for a widely heard radio interview in which he angrily, and sometimes profanely, asked for stepped-up federal response in the days after levee breaches flooded most of the city during Katrina.
He also drew notoriety for impolitic remarks, such as the racially charged ‘New Orleans will be chocolate again’ and his comment that a growing violent crime problem ‘keeps the New Orleans brand out there.’








article-2686228-1F83564200000578-920_634x401.jpg


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Then: Elected in 2002 with strong support from the business community and white voters, Nagin won re-election in 2006 with a campaign that sometimes played on fears among black voters that they were being left out of the city's spotty recovery


article-2686228-1F8353C500000578-351_634x423.jpg


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A New Orleans neighborhood destroyed by hurricane Katrina is shown in this 11 September 2005 photo. Many of Nagin's misdeeds occurred as the stricken city struggled to re-emerge from the rubble of Katrina

Elected in 2002 with strong support from the business community and white voters, Nagin won re-election in 2006 with a campaign that sometimes played on fears among black voters that they were being left out of the city's spotty recovery.

He was limited by law to two consecutive terms but a third term would have been unlikely, giving plunging approval ratings and the stricken city's continued recovery struggles. He was succeeded in 2010 by Mitch Landrieu.
Most government pre-sentence reports and recommendations were not made public but a filing by Jenkins ahead of the sentencing hearing indicated prosecutors were pushing for a sentence of 20 years or more under federal sentencing guidelines.
Defense attorney Robert Jenkins said that would amount to a virtual life sentence for the former mayor. Jenkins said Nagin's family needs him, there is no danger of Nagin committing more crimes and that the crimes for which Nagin was convicted constituted an aberration from an otherwise model life.
Prosecutors said the schemes that led to Nagin's conviction included two family members: His two grown sons were never charged with a crime but they were part of the family business that received free granite from a contractor.
They also said that what Jenkins calls an ‘aberration’ was behavior that spanned six years and involved multiple contractors.



 
Ex-New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin jailed for 10 years | Mail Online

[h=1]Corrupt ex-New Orleans mayor jailed 10 years for living large on laundered money as city suffered in wake of Hurricane Katrina[/h]
  • Ray Nagin, 58, received the sentence for bribery, money laundering and other corruption on Wednesday
  • The crimes spanned his two terms, including the chaotic years following Katrina
  • The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 10:27 EST, 9 July 2014 | UPDATED: 15:17 EST, 9 July 2014

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan handed down the sentence Wednesday morning.
Nagin was convicted February 12 of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various projects.
Scroll down for video


article-2686228-1F832F2100000578-103_634x383.jpg


+3


Corrupt: Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is surrounded by the the media as he arrives for his sentencing hearing Wednesday, where he was later handed a 10 year prison term for money laundering, accepting bribes, and other corrupt misdeeds

The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business.
The 58-year-old Democrat had defiantly denied any wrongdoing after his 2013 indictment and during his February trial.
Nagin was a political newcomer when he won election as New Orleans' mayor, succeeding Marc Morial in 2002. He cast himself as a reformer and announced crackdowns on corruption in the city's automobile-inspection and taxi-permit programs.


[h=4]More...[/h]


But federal prosecutors say his own corrupt acts began during his first term, continued through the Katrina catastrophe and flourished in his second term.
Until his indictment in 2013, he was perhaps best known for a widely heard radio interview in which he angrily, and sometimes profanely, asked for stepped-up federal response in the days after levee breaches flooded most of the city during Katrina.
He also drew notoriety for impolitic remarks, such as the racially charged ‘New Orleans will be chocolate again’ and his comment that a growing violent crime problem ‘keeps the New Orleans brand out there.’








article-2686228-1F83564200000578-920_634x401.jpg


+3


Then: Elected in 2002 with strong support from the business community and white voters, Nagin won re-election in 2006 with a campaign that sometimes played on fears among black voters that they were being left out of the city's spotty recovery


article-2686228-1F8353C500000578-351_634x423.jpg


+3


A New Orleans neighborhood destroyed by hurricane Katrina is shown in this 11 September 2005 photo. Many of Nagin's misdeeds occurred as the stricken city struggled to re-emerge from the rubble of Katrina

Elected in 2002 with strong support from the business community and white voters, Nagin won re-election in 2006 with a campaign that sometimes played on fears among black voters that they were being left out of the city's spotty recovery.

He was limited by law to two consecutive terms but a third term would have been unlikely, giving plunging approval ratings and the stricken city's continued recovery struggles. He was succeeded in 2010 by Mitch Landrieu.
Most government pre-sentence reports and recommendations were not made public but a filing by Jenkins ahead of the sentencing hearing indicated prosecutors were pushing for a sentence of 20 years or more under federal sentencing guidelines.
Defense attorney Robert Jenkins said that would amount to a virtual life sentence for the former mayor. Jenkins said Nagin's family needs him, there is no danger of Nagin committing more crimes and that the crimes for which Nagin was convicted constituted an aberration from an otherwise model life.
Prosecutors said the schemes that led to Nagin's conviction included two family members: His two grown sons were never charged with a crime but they were part of the family business that received free granite from a contractor.
They also said that what Jenkins calls an ‘aberration’ was behavior that spanned six years and involved multiple contractors.




he probably deserves a heck of a lot more than 10 years.
 
He should have been jailed for the fact that his lack of leadership during Katrina directly contributed to the deaths of over 1,000 people. He should have then been jailed by completely ****ting on New Orlean's historically mixed heritage with his 'chocolate city' bull****. Good riddance.
 
Hope they send 'school bus' to a chocolate prison......
 
A Corrupt Democrat Politician ?

Shocking !!

So who's more corrupt ? Kwame Kirkpatrick or Ray Nagin ?
 
Nagin was an asshole. I knew this as soon as I heard his "chocolate city" comments.
 
He should have been jailed for the fact that his lack of leadership during Katrina directly contributed to the deaths of over 1,000 people. He should have then been jailed by completely ****ting on New Orlean's historically mixed heritage with his 'chocolate city' bull****. Good riddance.

There was a lot of lack of leadership to go around. Should they all be thrown in jail?
 
10 years, bet he will get some country club prison playing backgammon with Bernie Madoff, instead of a high security prison where he gets 2 hours in the yard and has to bunk with Bubba the tossed salad king. Couldn't happen to a better guy.
 
There was a lot of lack of leadership to go around. Should they all be thrown in jail?

He was the first line of defense and he failed without a shadow of a doubt. At the very least, He should have been removed from his mayoral post. This isn't an event where the details were murky or where decisions weren't made because it may have put others in dangers. This is a situation where the first line of defense was the city and its leaders. Nagin demonstrated he wasn't ready before, during or after the event and 1,300 died as a result. Don't be hackish about this.
 
About time. I saw him eating fine food on a linen table cloth that was catered in at one of the meetings I had to go to with him for us to beg him to sign the proper requests to get state and federal assistance... this was while the people of that city were having to loot stores just to get formula for their babies and food for their family. What the TV showed were the thugs stealing TV's, But, what I saw were, not all, but mostly desperate people doing what they had to do to survive.

Just look at some cities that had similar levels of damage; Gulfport and Biloxi, MS versus New Orleans, LA. The first two responded immediately upon notice that Katrina may hit, two days before it did in fact hit. New Orleans never... NEVER... activated their Disaster Response Plan... NEVER. It was ad hoc from day one. It was more of a "how can I make a buck off of this" than anything else.

It was sickening. Especially to see him all over the TV, blaming everyone but himself and his corrupt staff.
 
About time. I saw him eating fine food on a linen table cloth that was catered in at one of the meetings I had to go to with him for us to beg him to sign the proper requests to get state and federal assistance... this was while the people of that city were having to loot stores just to get formula for their babies and food for their family. What the TV showed were the thugs stealing TV's, But, what I saw were, not all, but mostly desperate people doing what they had to do to survive.

Just look at some cities that had similar levels of damage; Gulfport and Biloxi, MS versus New Orleans, LA. The first two responded immediately upon notice that Katrina may hit, two days before it did in fact hit. New Orleans never... NEVER... activated their Disaster Response Plan... NEVER. It was ad hoc from day one. It was more of a "how can I make a buck off of this" than anything else.

It was sickening. Especially to see him all over the TV, blaming everyone but himself and his corrupt staff.

I think what may have set NO apart was probably its size in comparison to those cities. NO had a population of nearly a half million before Katrina. Biloxi and Gulport don't even register above 150K together. New Orleans due to its much larger size would have probably been harder to organize. My problem with Nagins' handling of Katrina came after seeing this:

hurricane-katrina-41.jpg

17kd274-katrina-survivors

42.JPG

c7be43e8462c23fa045a84816a4108c3.jpg


Having seen the pictures above and hearing Nagin's comment about NO being a "chocolate city" I went: 'Nah "brother", it's a black city, a white city, a French city, an English city, a cajun city but its only descriptive wasn't a chocolate city'. That was disproven by the basic acts of kindness that crossed racial lines. I felt bad for thinking that it was all Bush's fault when things were coming into the light. Sure, he deserved some of the blame for FEMA's handling of the situation after the hurricane. Let's be honest, it was terrible and he should have been criticized for it. However, Nagin was definitely to blame for the situation getting as bad as it did. He was the first line of defense.
 
He should have been jailed for the fact that his lack of leadership during Katrina directly contributed to the deaths of over 1,000 people. He should have then been jailed by completely ****ting on New Orlean's historically mixed heritage with his 'chocolate city' bull****. Good riddance.

Sadly, incompetence in government is punished only with money and occasionally promotion. The governor also generally dicked around, though agreeably nowhere nearly as badly as this guy.
 
A Corrupt Democrat Politician ?

Shocking !!

So who's more corrupt ? Kwame Kirkpatrick or Ray Nagin ?
Good thing there are no corrupt GOP types out there...
 
Sadly, incompetence in government is punished only with money and occasionally promotion. The governor also generally dicked around, though agreeably nowhere nearly as badly as this guy.

I'm talking only as far as NO is concerned.

I think Nagin carries a lot of the blame because he should have pushed for emergency aid and measures more adamantly. Blanco was practically absent because I believe she delegated power to the people who should have been heading the preparations. I think she claimed in a cocky manner that they were prepared and then when she met up with the local leaders, realized they'd royally ****ed around with the money. Then, she got worried and called the cavalry in DC. By the time DC actually got around to figuring out just what the **** was going on, NO was underwater.

Obviously, Blanco carries some of the blame, she should have put a bit more oversight into the preparations but I think the weight of the responsibility falls on local city leaders to organize with things like evacuations. The governor should only have been in charge of allocating the resources and ensuring the state in general has taken the appropriate measures. City leaders are in charge of enforcing those measures and distributing the resources in the appropriate manner. Nagin clearly failed.
 
Good thing there are no corrupt GOP types out there...

Yea good thing....

In proportion to the amount of corruption thats rampant in the Democrat party, there's really not much in GOP malfeasance.
 

I've been a lot of places during bad times and I've seen a lot of bad things as well. What I saw in NoLa saddened, enraged, and shocked on one hand and gave me faith in mankind, joy for the spirit of the human heart and the knowledge that when all else fails us, we can lean on, count on and rely on each other - regardless of race, age, sex, social status, income level or even if you didn't speak English.

NoLa during Katrina was a dichotomy of both what we fear most and what we love most about ourselves.

I left the politics out of my post when I mentioned him blaming everyone else on TV, because that's exactly what he did - he blamed everyone of both parties above him; from the Dem Governor to the Rep President to the Dem Senator and so. He didn't give a crap as long as he could fool those poor folks into believing his crap, which is what the "chocolate city" comment was for. I, too, thought that comment, for NoLa especially, was ironic as hell. Of all the cities in this country, I would dare to say that NoLa is the most diverse regarding cultures, races and history... second only to New York, but a hell of a lot more interesting and fun (IMH southern O).
 
Ignore the partisanship, guys. Keep the good discussion going. This is about one person (Ray Nagin) and their utter failure as a human being and city leader. He got what he deserved and it came with interest. It doesn't have to be a right/left issue.
 
I'm talking only as far as NO is concerned.

I think Nagin carries a lot of the blame because he should have pushed for emergency aid and measures more adamantly. Blanco was practically absent because I believe she delegated power to the people who should have been heading the preparations. I think she claimed in a cocky manner that they were prepared and then when she met up with the local leaders, realized they'd royally ****ed around with the money. Then, she got worried and called the cavalry in DC. By the time DC actually got around to figuring out just what the **** was going on, NO was underwater.

Obviously, Blanco carries some of the blame, she should have put a bit more oversight into the preparations but I think the weight of the responsibility falls on local city leaders to organize with things like evacuations. The governor should only have been in charge of allocating the resources and ensuring the state in general has taken the appropriate measures. City leaders are in charge of enforcing those measures and distributing the resources in the appropriate manner. Nagin clearly failed.

You got it. That's exactly right. It's also the way the laws are written about disaster response and recovery.

The local is where the work either gets done or doesn't get done.

The state allocates resources from a state level, coordinates resources from mutual aid assistance from unaffected areas and federal assets to where they are needed (which has to be requested by the locals first) and depending on the state, they may contribute money for reimbursement of costs.

The feds are basically a big check book and technical adviser. There are very few real mission assignments that the feds can self perform (although it's mostly contractors). FEMA can provide through the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) ice, water, temporary housing (which can take weeks to set up), temporary roofing (the blue tarps you see on roofs on the news), search and rescue through FEMA USAR teams, temporary field hospitals through FEMA DMAT teams, mass casualty assistance through FEMA DMORT teams, other medical assistance through the NDMS (national disaster medical system), debris removal through USACE contractors, emergency power (prime power) through USACE for generators for hospitals and other critical facilities and emergency flood fighting through USACE contractors, dead animal disposal for major livestock kills, and a few other items.

But none of what FEMA does is anywhere close to what most people think FEMA will or can do. The local government is supposed to do most of the work, or contract it out, and FEMA will pick up anywhere from a minimum of 75% of eligible costs to up to 100% during extraordinary events such as Katrina, which was in fact 100% federally funded.

Hurricane Sandy was not 100%, by the way. It was either 75% or 85% depending on the type of work done. Debris removal was 85%, everything else was 75%, with the states and local government picking up the rest. NY paid half the local share, as did NJ. So, unlike NoLa, local governments in NY and NJ had to pay anywhere from 7.5% to 12.5% of the total costs. That may not sound like much, until you know that debris removal in Nassau County, NY was over $250 Million. That means that the locals had to pay almost $40 Million, just for debris removal, out of budgets that didn't have any extra money just laying around. The reimbursement from the feds is supposed to be raised to 90% according to the Sandy Recovery Act, but most locals haven't seen the money yet.

So, to recap, the local government is actually in charge... Period. A disaster response and recovery either succeeds or fails based on the local government. Not the state and not the feds, although they can make it harder with red tape, but not make it fail.
 
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