Oh, happy day
Gracias.
A VERY SPECIAL HAT TIP: Huge props are due local blogger Jason Berry, whose American Zombieinvestigative blog was the first to expose Nagin, Meffert, St. Pierre and others for many of the allegations now contained in the federal indictment of Nagin. Bloggers are too often disparaged for their free-wheeling commentary and not often enough given their due for their groundbreaking investigative work. Berry deserves the thanks and praise of all honest New Orleanians. Without him this day might never have come. Thanks, Dambala.(basks in the glow)
Gracias.
3 comments:
Thanks Zombie, great work.
I have been following you from the beginning and I can remember (years ago) telling people that the crime camera / city wide wifi networking were going to be a HUGE scandal for the Nagin administration. Good to see that they are finally getting to the bottom of at least SOME of the things that we have known all along.
It is good to see that most of the major players are getting their day in court, but I can't help but wonder about some of the other dirty dealings that they got away with. Things like the contract to remove flooded cars after Katring, the hugely inflated garbage contracts, and I also can't help but wonder what city has the mesh networking equipment that was given to the city to set up the free wifi. I bet one of merfs companies sold that to someone.
I have not forgotten about those Katrina cars, either.
Dambala, you wrote about that man from Tennesee, Dennis Churchwell or Churchill, something like that. If there was any kind of follow up, I missed it.
Some of those cars made it out of New Orleans, and wound up all over the States. I remember a story about at least one that ended up in Portland, WA.
But there were also stories about those cars turning up in South America.
If they did turn up in South America, did they get out of the city by land, crossing over to the South from land based border crossings, or did they go out of the city through the port?
If they got out of the city through the port, a whole lot of people managed not to see them.
If you can manage not to see things leaving the city, you are probably equally blind to things that might be coming in.
However the cars left the city, quite a few people had some form of temporary blindness concerning them.
When I get migraine headaches, sometimes I have those visual disturbances. It's a hell of a light show, as if the pointalist painters had done their work in the age of the electric guitar.
Chocolate and stress can bring on the kind of "temporary blindness" that besets me.
Somehow I suspect that the causes of the temporary blindness of the folks who let those cars get out of the city had a different set of causes.
Contraband leaving the city and contraband coming into the city may travel the same routes. The kinds of contraband that come into the city may be easier to repackage into smaller "units", but it is not as easy to chop up a car, or a bunch of cars.
It becomes more challenging if those cars already have some kind of official paperwork connecting them to their official removal from the streets. More challenging still if they were already impounded some place.
I know jack shit about cars. I know less than jack shit about shipping, logisitics, and the other things you'd need to know about to see what might have happened to those cars.
But I do like stories, and the story of those cars is one I am still waiting for someone to tell.
Don't forget about all the local connections to Churchwell:
http://thelensnola.org/2009/06/16/bread-crumbs-to-follow/
Also, the $100,000 in Memphis- and NOLA-based campaign contributions to Nagin right before the 2006 election at the same time the car contracts were a hot topic:
http://www.theamericanzombie.com/2009/04/leave-it-to-mr-mcbride.html
http://www.theamericanzombie.com/2009/06/incoming.html
http://www.theamericanzombie.com/2009/06/whos-protecting-slumlord.html
There's a whole dimension to Nagin that's never been touched.
Post a Comment