So what’s missing? Almost none of the news reports I have found (even those from FOX,) make any mention of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin’s party affiliation. This is the same fool who let school buses sit parked (where they too were ruined by the flooding) rather than use them to evacuate residents from the below sea water areas.
The charges are the product of a City Hall corruption investigation that already has resulted in several convictions or guilty pleas by former Nagin associates.
Nagin’s 21-count indictment accuses him of accepting more than $160,000 in bribes and truckloads of free granite for his family business in exchange for promoting the interests of local businessman Frank Fradella. Nagin also was charged with accepting at least $60,000 in payoffs from another businessman, Rodney Williams, for his help in securing city contracts.
The indictment claims Nagin received free private jet and limousine services to New York from an unidentified businessman who owned a New Orleans movie theater. Nagin allegedly agreed to waive tax penalties the businessman owed to the city on a delinquent tax bill in 2006.
From several city contractors, Nagin is accused of accepting free travel and vacation expenses for trips to Hawaii, Chicago, Las Vegas and Jamaica while in office.
The allegations aren’t limited to his tenure as mayor. Prosecutors said Nagin accepted monthly payoffs from Fradella totaling $112,250 after he left office.
Aaron Bennett, a businessman awaiting sentencing in a separate bribery case, told The Times-Picayune he introduced Nagin to Fradella specifically to help the mayor get a Home Depot contract for granite installation work for a business Nagin and his sons founded. Fradella’s company received more than $4 million in city contracts for repair work at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and in the French Quarter after Katrina, the indictment says.
If you haven’t guessed yet, Ray Nagin’s party affiliation is Democrat. This tends to be a continual pattern of double standards in news reporting where; If it is a Republican politician in trouble with the law, his party affiliation will be stated up front and even numerous times within the article. While if it is a Democrat who is charged, there will very often not be any mention of party affiliation, requiring curious readers to do a web search to learn that little factoid.
Or perhaps I am missing something subtle; such as a natural assumption by the MSM that ‘if a politician is corrupt they generally will most likely be a Democrat.’ Therefore they have to let us “low information voters” know when it is actually the rare Republican taking bribes.