Blanco and Nagin have blood on their hands but they now want the rest of the Country to trust them:
Louisiana has been painted broadly and regularly as a state teeming with corruption, a place where politics is a sport that many unethical, roguish and thieving people like to play.
Now, the reputation that many of Louisiana’s own residents reveled in – or at least joked about – is the state’s albatross as leaders try to persuade the rest of the nation and the holders of the federal purse strings that Louisiana is worth repairing.
The struggle was never more evident than last week when Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin appeared before congressional committees asking for help to rebuild after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in a series of speeches that each included a defense of the state.
With several members of Congress openly suggesting since Katrina that Louisiana isn’t trustworthy enough to handle billions of dollars in disaster relief aid, Blanco pledged accountability in spending.
She said the state was hiring a nationally recognized accounting firm to review the flow of federal dollars through Louisiana and that she would hire another accounting firm to audit those first auditors.
[…]The problem is Louisiana officials have gone to jail over the years. One of its congressmen currently is under investigation. Federal prosecutors set up shop before the hurricanes in the Orleans Parish school board offices. Jefferson Parish judges have been convicted recently as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation.
Unfortunately, the list tends to go on, so Louisiana officials will have to keep pleading their case – and promising to be more ethical and upstanding than many of their predecessors.
Louisiana and ethical in the same sentence, now that’s funny.
Instead of accounting for “every single penny” given since Katrina how about accounting for “every single penny” given in the last twenty years to this corrupt state?
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